I looked last month at the car of the future, and particularly a superb show from Nova. Zero emission cars fueled by zero emission power plants give zero emissions. That equation works for me. (See also A Little Automotive Fun – Plus Some Serious Business from a year ago, and other posts under Transportation.)
There's a lot to say about ZEV – zero emission vehicles. For instance, "The coming large-scale hybridisation and electrification of cars promises to transform how they are made, who profits from them and the way they are sold and driven." That's a mouthful. An industry charged up is an excellent, characteristically comprehensive article from the "Financial Times." Batteries are one critical factor in this and it appears that the lithium-ion battery is the "potentially paradigm-shifting technology" here.
The "FT's" sister publication, "The Economist," has a couple of recent stories too on this. In search of the perfect battery talks about the lithium-ion battery at some length, and some other approaches as well.
Some auto companies are hard charging on this. "The Economist" had this story as well recently on Renault-Nissan's all-electric car initiative. Carlos Ghosn, President and CEO of Nissan Motor Company, plans to launch a battery-powered car in America in 2010 and is spearheading an alliance with Renault to "offer a complete range of electric vehicles in every large car-market" by 2012. They are also working with Project Better Place to put electric vehicles on the road in Israel and Denmark by 2011 and to provide a "network of charging points." See also this story from Reuters' "Planet Ark." What's the idea? See this short video from Project Better Place. (It's hokey, but you get the point with it.)
Okay, now you've got a ZEV, and a place from which to power it, but where do you get the power? If it's from coal-fired power plants, who needs it? But in Denmark, they're looking to use electricity from wind. See this release from DONG Energy, Project Better Place's partner. In Israel, solar would be a pretty logical choice.
At a conference I attended last year, I heard Cape Wind's developer, Jim Gordon, say that on a good day his offshore wind farm could not only supply all the stationary power needs of Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha's Vineyard, but the surface transportation needs as well – if plug-in hybrids were being deployed. See also the King Review Of Low-Carbon Cars commissioned by the UK government, "to examine the vehicle and fuel technologies which over the next 25 years could help to decarbonise road transport, particularly cars."
Meanwhile, if you want to go high end on the car, check out Tesla Motors. These are some sweet wheels, for a hefty price, but it's all electric.
Tesla is profiled in the fabulous Nova special I mentioned, "Car of the Future." There is some truly terrific stuff there to read and to view.
