Vehicles

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Synopsis: Domenii: Automotive industry: Automotive industry generale: Vehicles:

#Can a city really ban cars from its streets? The German city of Hamburg has announced plans to become car-free within the next two decades.

It is an ambitious idea, but city officials obviously feel that the personal motorcar does not fulfill a function that walking,

which will allow people to navigate through the city without the use of cars. Banishing the car from urban areas is becoming a common trend in many European cities.

London imposes a ongestion chargeon private vehicles entering the city centre during peak hours. The Danish capital Copenhagen is building bicycle superhighways radiating out from the city centre.

These developments combined may make worrying reading for driving enthusiasts. Is the era of the personal car over?

In the century since the Ford Model T was introduced in 1908, global vehicle numbers have swollen to well over a billion.

But according to recent research, the growth spurt may have peaked. Professor Michael Sivak, at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute has published just a series of reports looking at car use,

and its environmental impact. His calculations show that otorisationin the United states might have reached a peak in 2008,

and its negative impact on car sales, is taken into account. Sivak speculates that a number of factors could be contributing to the trend,

In China, Beijing and Shanghai are looking at plans to limit the number of new vehicles being registered to curb growth.

sian and developing market cities will not achieve the levels of car motorisation enjoyed in the West Energy problem Another way to examine the issue is to look at the number of households without a car.

each have more than 30%of households without a light duty vehicle, says Sivak. In fact, the figures show that 56%of households in New york (which top the list) don have a car. think that will be surprising to most people.

It was surprising to me and I am in the business. Perhaps it is not so surprising in cities like New york,

In Los angeles, only 12%of households are car-less, and in affluent San jose, heart of Silicon valley, it is only 5. 8

and cars a staggering 4, 218. BTU, or British thermal unit, per person mile is a measure of energy used to move a person a mile.

while the load in cars has decreased, explains Sivak. o you are spreading the energy across fewer people in a car.

To match the emissions levels of flying, the US car fleet needs either to improve from the current 21.5 mpg on average to at least 33.8 mpg,

or carry 2. 3 people per trip instead of the current 1. 38 people says Sivak.

#How to fix a car#without a mechanic Think of a mechanic working on your car, and youl probably imagine oil, grease,

That because modern vehicles are becoming more and more complex, with a vast array of components. Whereas in the past a mechanic,

or even car enthusiast, could reasonably recognise and understand everything that made an engine run, now the proliferation of sensors, computers,

BMW vision for the way its engineers should be working on its cars is different. Instead of reaching for any of the shiny silver tools on his cart the mechanic picks up a pair of what looks like sunglasses with connected buds for his ears.

BBC Future has reported before on the future vision of cars with augmented windscreens, or even ee throughbackseats, effectively making the car seem transparent to the driver and helping visibility.

Most of those concepts won be reality until far off in the future, but car companies are jumping into the augmented reality world.

and label vehicle components. e see a lot of use in the automotive industry. For us it always been a sector

Audi has released recently a mobile phone app in Europe that can identify over 200 elements on the inside of a car.

perhaps making simple fixes on modern cars more accessible to more of us. How often have heard you people remark that older cars are easier to work on

and that the engine of most modern cars mostly just looks like a slab of plastic? AR could help see through that plastic. ay youe driving down the road,

and a light comes on you freak out and pull over. You can then load up that scenario, based on the symbols,

Is a straight edge a part of the car, or part of the building it is parked near?

So the car of the future may come with one simple instruction DON read the manual t

Last year, a fuel cell car was due to race in the prestigious Le Mans 24-hour race in France in June

In 2008, Formula Zero a race between hydrogen-powered cars built by six competing universities tried to show that sustainable energy needn be faced po,

Can fans be convinced that environmentally friendly cars can also be fast and exciting? There are encouraging signs that this is happening.

running cars on ethanol and turning its race meets into centres for recycling everything from waste engine oil to old mobile phones.

And on Monday Formula E demonstrated its new, fully electric race car for the first time in Las vegas, capable of reaching speeds of more than 150mph (240kph),

and will see the cars competing in 10 world cities, including London, Beijing and Los angeles. The key is how effective the tech will be.

This is currently being exploited by German carmaker Audi, which uses it to recapture energy usually lost

F1 cars have used hybrid tech in the form of kinetic energy recovery systems, or KERS, since the 2009 season.

Power boost Regenerative energy recovery is also at play in the vehicle I was allowed to throw around a test track;

a modified Hybrid chevrolet Corvette, usually viewed as an all-American muscle car. This car also runs on a blend of biofuel, known as E85.

In this case, the car uses a type of advanced cellulosic 85%ethanol renewable fuel from woody biomass.

This manages to avoid some of the main problems associated with biofuels; that they use land and water that would be used better for food production.

The car also has hybrid technology with regenerative brakes. When the car is slowed, energy is recovered

and stored in a battery. When an added burst of speed is needed, a paddle behind the steering wheel provides a boost using that stored energy. n racing,

where I test-driving the car. ut if you can do that, and at the same time remove yourself from the environmental debate, it a win for everybody.

In this case, the car I am driving is a simulator perhaps fortunately as I continually crash it into the barriers.

It is one of several in a large show trailer designed to be taken to events such as races and car meets,

Over a 200-lap race, in a conventional car, I would have used 193 gallons (730 litres) of gasoline.

and tested in motorsport eventually make it into the more regular cars that we drive every day,

Would you let your child get on a bus driven by someone on mind-altering drugs? What about having an operation conducted by a surgeon taking stimulant pills?

and you increase the speed of cars, things flow quicker. But if you do so in heavy traffic you get traffic jams.

You can't drive a car unless you pass a driving test, and that's a form of coercion,

#How X-ray vision will fuel better car engines When particle accelerators hit the headlines, it's usually

and youl find researchers trying to better understand how modern car engines work, which they hope will help find cleaner,

from standard ones used in today's cars to experimental designs. Injector gadget This process allows the flow of droplets of fuel to be imaged in a way that is not possible with ordinary light or lasers, for example.

Using visible light presents challenges similar to those of using car headlights in fog which consists of droplets of water suspended in the air,

Down the centre of each of these parks run wide bus boulevards, protected cycling lanes and excellent walking paths.

Most people don't own cars, and those who do usually only drive them as a hobby,

#LA's seemingly brilliant plan half-a-century ago to re-engineer its urban environment for cars has become a global affliction.

There are now 60 million new cars being added to the planet every year, and with those vehicles come more smog,

toxic emissions and dependency on rapidly depleting resources.##As we embrace the car, our cultures become more sedentary and rates of obesity and heart disease increase.

Cars not only make our cities unhealthy, they also make our cities dangerous:##270,000 pedestrians are killed by cars every year.

To undo these decades of suburban propaganda is to essentially unravel the American dream; one which has travelled

since around the world. But there is a new dream. Walkable City#author Jeff Speck said it best in#his recent TEDCITY2. 0 talk:#

and allow cities to prioritise their people over cars. The campaign to make our cities more walkable begins in the virtual world.

Car-free neighbourhoods are already a reality in places like Vauban, Germany, where the cars are banned

and a tram to nearby Freiburg runs through the town. The Great City planned for Chengdu,

China, is intended even more ambitious to house 80,000 people in a completely car-free centre with regional mass transit connections.

Architects Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill estimate that residents will be able to walk anywhere in the city within 15 minutes.

what was planned as a journey in a car becomes a possibility#on foot. Reroute. it allows you to compare your journey for several modes of transportation at once across many different factors:

which would calculate how much walking we could add to our commute to achieve our daily step goal#maybe nudging us to get off the bus a stop early.

or ride motorbikes. The group developed an app so anyone can gather#information ranging from sidewalk quality to the speed of cars in 23 Asian cities.

The work of this organisation is especially valuable because it's helping these cities to develop more locally relevant pedestrian features

auto rickshaws and motorcycles#rather than one-size-fits-all Western street design. Perhaps the biggest deterrent for walkers is the perception that it's unsafe

But walking is the only option for a large percentage of the world's population that cannot afford a car,

it's estimated that 78%of the households in China will still not have a car.

In emerging megacities Mumbai in India, narrow roads and paths designed for walking have now become overrun by vehicles.

the proliferation of self-driving cars like General motors'EN-V could help prevent collisions with pedestrians (and other automobiles),

and reduce the amount of urban space devoted to cars. These smart cars would act more like a fleet of shared, self-driving taxis.

On Sundays, Bogota and Medellin#close up to 80 miles (130km) of streets to cars. Cities have seen the value of turning tarmac over to walkers and bikers,

Removing people from their cars creates a sense of social connectedness and allows citizens to interact with people from different backgrounds.

Walkers have gained now literally ground in the city#as they have around the world#with the addition of plazas and other car-free zones.

#Electric cars: Big data helps designs shift gears You wouldn't think that anybody would care about your drive to the supermarket to buy milk.

and selling electric cars, knowing about people's driving habits is invaluable to manufacturers. Electric car makers have begun poring over a wealth of data on how their vehicles are used.

The information promises to provide insights about how people drive that were impossible to gain on such a large scale before#from charging habits to the ways people adapt to life with an electric car.

Unlike older vehicles electric cars are equipped with computers, sensors, and wireless connections that allow drivers to voluntarily share information on their driving

and charging habits. Usually a new owner will be prompted to opt-in to sharing location data,

in a similar way to a new smartphone owner might be. Trip information is collected by the vehicle's computer,

including start and end times of journeys, connect and disconnect times of chargers, and the battery level.

Cars with GPS navigation systems can also collect detailed information about routes. And advanced systems can record details like how much the air conditioning is used

Many Volt drivers are choosing to share their habits online with other electric car drivers, in a kind of electric economy challenge.

or allowing them to see stats on their car via a mobile phone app, but the information is also a goldmine for car makers.

One of the best examples of just how much data is available came earlier this year

and had to have towed the car. However, Tesla hit back by releasing a large amount of raw data from the vehicle that suggested it was driven at greater speeds,

and with the heater on higher, than claimed. The company was even able to show that cruise control was engaged not,

and that the car was unplugged before it reached full charge. Now that electric cars are more abundant

the wealth of information and inferences that can be drawn are more meaningful than in the past.""We actually have data now,

a networking event for all the big players in the electric car industry. Ford's data shows that electric vehicles,

including hybrids, are being driven about 203,000 miles every day in the United states, or more than 8500 miles every hour."

"A lot of our cars are equipped with a data sharing system, #says Eric Gottfried of Nissan North america.""We find that most people drive about 30 to 35 miles a day.#

or adapting to the limits of electric vehicles, and their charging habits hint they are less likely to get so-called"range anxiety#than expected.

They can usually charge a car twice as rapidly as a standard wall socket at home-often much faster#and in the case of Tesla,

they are free for owners of the premium-priced cars. The fast chargers are like"drinking through a very thick straw#for batteries,

"Owners seem to adapt to the car to an extent, #claims Gottfried."They start to say

and I'll have my lunch in the car'.'They're adapting as they go to this technology,

#Collecting driving habit data on this scale promises to reveal much more in the coming years-and not only about electric vehicles.

As well as informing the future of vehicle design, it's possible that your next car might even reveal your hidden habits

and tell you that you're not the driver you thought you were. Perhaps that trip to the store to buy milk will say more about you than expected.

#In countries such as Britain and Japan, there is research into engines and rival vehicles which could make space travel a long-haul passenger's reality.

a vehicle could circumnavigate the world in a couple of hours. However, these flights are likely to run from dedicated spaceports

#Our composite wing vehicles, instead, will take us to the edge of space, efficiently, and allow us to glide effortlessly to our destinations, continents away.

#From cars to Marsgurgaon seems especially well-placed to lead big data analytics in the country. Kulshreshtha says there's a global lack of talent trained in both quantitative disciplines like economics, mathematics,

they make software used for everything from designing car parts to building vehicles sent into space.

In a Gurgaon business park, a room of engineers train on computer-aided design, fashioning a tool to be used in an automobile.

simulate and assemble the vehicle before any physical prototypes were built. There's a little bit of India in every single one of those products

#It's like adjusting the wing mirrors on a car. The actuators allow the mirrors to be tipped and tilted,

#Solar-power vehicles pushing boundaries of possibility The promise of fleets of clean, green transport powered by solar energy has for decades just been that:

But a new wave of vehicles is pushing the limits of what's possible. The Solar impulse plane has crossed just successfully the US in five stages#from San francisco to New york. And the world's largest solar-powered boat, the Turanor Planet Solar,

But for now, here's a selection of the fastest, highest and furthest vehicles have gone,

#Electric cars: A universal plug for all models? Electric vehicles promise us a future of guilt-free travel.

Replacing today's gas-guzzling engines with electric motors means cars will no longer produce harmful emissions.

They can be plugged in overnight at home, or in an office or supermarket parking space during the day,

We are only at the start of the electric vehicle revolution, of course, with only a few models being offered by a few manufacturers.

Seattle, Portland) the Leaf was Nissan's top selling vehicle. Tesla appears to have a big hit on its hands with the Model S. Chevrolet has the Volt (known as the Opel/Vauxhall Ampera in Europe),

whether we have the infrastructure in place to cope with the swelling demand electric cars will place on our roads and cities.

More vehicles demand more places to plug them in. And as they become one of the largest consumers of electricity people own

The Electric vehicle#Smart grid Interoperability Center aims to ease the potential strain on our resources by developing common standards

and systems worldwide that ensure vehicles and charging stations work in unison with the electric grid. It's a collaboration between the US Department of energy and the European commission's Joint Research Centre,

you are greeted by several types of electric vehicles, from cars to delivery trucks, and dozens of types of chargers."

"They want to sell their cars around the world, without having to worry about different standards, different communication requirements, different billing systems.

the physical plug to connect to the car. Often to our frustration, so many of our devices like laptops and phones have different chargers for different models,

and cars are no different. There are three competing quick-charging standards for vehicles: CHADEMO, in the Nissan leaf and Mitsubishi miev;

the SAE Combo Coupler, used by US and European manufacturers; and Tesla's charger. The centre has selected a universal design that might look familiar to petrol-powered car drivers,

because it's modelled on a fuel nozzle, with the same size inlet.""We thought through that a lot,

"They do need not to change their vehicle from the outside just to make it electric. From the consumer perspective, they're familiar with this shape#of course it has to be hooked in a bit longer.#

Global standards will mean electric car drivers can cross international borders for example, without worrying if their car will charge.

The end goal is for the whole process to be almost invisible, according to Hardy.##What also needs to be seamless is energy management."

or even half the people on the block have electric vehicles, and they all come home from work

and vehicles, talk to each other and intelligently balance power draw.""In the case of a vehicle, you're interested in

what condition it's in, #says Hardy.""If you just drove a few miles, and your vehicle is charged almost,

you don't need a lot of energy.##The centre is working on standardised devices that will be able to function with each other,

"It's going to take a lot of electric vehicles, probably millions, to influence the national grid, #says Hardy.""But it only takes a handful to impact your local, neighbourhood transformer.#

Super-shrinking the city car Look around a city at peak traffic time and you'll probably notice that most gridlocked cars contain only one person,

despite having seating for four and space for their luggage. One option is ride sharing schemes,

which aim to have fewer cars and more people on the streets. There is a problem, according to Daniel Kim, Founder and CEO of Lit Motors:"

shrink the car. Imagine if you could cut the size of a car in half,

you could fit twice as many cars onto the streets, and into parking spaces.""We want to put less car on the road,

and more people,#he says. The solution that the San francisco-based company hopes to roll out looks like a hi-tech,

streamlined egg on two wheels. The C-1 is enclosed a fully, all-electric vehicle that is a motorcycle in all but name.

It has speed a top of over 100mph (160kph), and should be able to travel up to 200 miles between charges.

Acceleration should be respectable at 0-60mph (0-100kph) in less than 6 seconds#more than enough to beat most cars away from the lights."

"What we're doing is taking the safety and the comfort of a car, but integrating that with the romance, the efficiency,

#The real innovation in the vehicle, though, is that it can stay upright, all by itself.

such as keeping the vehicle upright, or leaning it in and out of corners. The gyroscopes are under full computer control;

even if it is sideswiped by another vehicle at 30mph (50kph). Down-size desire? The prototype the company showed

and nicely packaged for our production vehicle, #says Kim. I was told that at 6 foot 2 inches (1. 88m) I am at the upper end of the height range that it is designed for,

I would feel pulling alongside a truck or SUV at speed. Lit Motors doesn't like to think of the C-1 as a motorbike as that could limit its market.

This the company believes, is a genuine car replacement for many people, but it remains to be seen

if that will translate into sales. In the US, pick-up trucks and SUVS are still big sellers.

Will their owners be persuaded to down-size to make their commutes easier? The Smart fortwo micro city car may be a good comparison.

It also cuts the amount of car on the roads by halving the length rather than the width,

and it was marketed on its ease of parking. Since its introduction 15 years ago it has become a common sight in European cities,

The market for cars is linked strongly to the price of fuel. If there is a sharp increase in gasoline prices in the future electric, efficient,

vehicles like the C-1 could see strong demand. In the US at least it will legally qualify as a motorcycle,

meaning it can split lanes and park in motorcycle specific spaces. Lit Motors also has big plans for the future,

which include new designs specifically for countries where the bike or scooter is already a dominant form of urban transport.

I will be looking at that prototype in my next column article. If you would like to comment on this article

when these satellite trucks as we say take a hit from time to time. Jeff Flock's shot just went down. Normally what happens is it will come back up here in a minute

and water heaters sprouting from government buildings hospitals police stations bus shelters as well as thousands of gaily colored private homes throughout the Caribbean island.

#Tesla Releases Patents in Unprecedented Move to Advance Electric vehicles Other automakers, you, too, can build like Tesla.

allowing its electric vehicle patents for outside use. Musk made the unprecedented announcement Thursday on his company blog. esla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport,

he wrote. f we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others,

After all, t is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis,

Musk said the patents that covered a wall at Tesla Palo alto headquarters have been removed. e believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars,

factories and vehicles to clean or crubthe exhaust from high-sulfur fuel. For the first time this combination is being developed to accommodate restricted spaces on existing ships.

while eliminating the equivalent carbon emissions produced by vehicles driving approximately 2, 750,000 miles per year. Additional total power production and carbon offset estimates for skyscraper

Dr. Scott Hammond, in collaboration with NREL Researchers, particularly Dr. Maikel van Hest, Dr. Dana C. Olson,

explained Dr. Maikel van Hest, Senior Scientist at NREL. t wonderful to contribute to breakthroughs such as this latest achievement, an important step in commercialization of their technology.

van Hest, Dr. Dana C. Olson, and Dr. Scott Mauger. NREL is among the world#s most respected

#Driverless electric cars coming to London In recent years, the motoring industry has introduced a series of technological breakthroughs to provide more effective and automated driving experiences for the modern traveler.

and manufacture the pods may eventually be extended to cars on major roads. Currently these pods are operational at Heathrow Airport;

Moreover, the production and distribution of these vehicles also provides lucrative economical benefits for Britain,

These vehicles may provide a luxurious solution to long term environmental issues. Every day more drivers emerge on our roads, emitting harmful fossil fuel gases.

and Oklahoma infrastructure in some states is scarce. o avoid feelings of range anxiety common in owners of CNG-only vehicles we made the Impala bi-fuel allowing our customers to drive on CNG when available and on gasoline

and there is no interruption in the vehicle performance. Operating on CNG can result in an average fuel savings of nearly $1. 13 per gasoline-gallon-equivalent based on a national average of $3. 24 per gallon of gasoline as reported by AAA

Also CNG vehicles typically have 20 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline-powered cars according to the California Air Resources Board.

and covered by GM three-year/36000-mile (whichever comes first) new vehicle limited bumper-to-bumper warranty

The Bi-fuel Impala is the only bifuel-capable sedan on the market to offer a factory warranty.

Founded in 1911 in Detroit Chevrolet is now one of the world largest car brands doing business in more than 140 countries and selling more than 4. 9 million cars and trucks a year.

Chevrolet provides customers with fuel efficient vehicles that feature spirited performance expressive design and high quality. More information on Chevrolet models can be found at www. chevrolet. com. quasar is a Cleveland Ohio based renewable energy company that designs builds owns

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