Biomaterials for car bodies and other news…

Fibres from hemp, flax, cotton and wood are strong, as affordable as glassfibre and lighterweight than carbonfibre, according to a team from the Frauenhofer Institute of Wood Research, which has developed mouldable thermoplastic or solid duroplastic car body components into which natural fibres are embedded. These hybrid materials are also recyclable, and the research is looking into their processing and reprocessing on an industrial scale.

• Digesting the Continental Mobility Study 2015: its conclusions include statements that people (in France, Germany, USA, China, Japan) choose to drive for emotional rather than rational reasons; car ownership remains very popular and the preferred model of access to vehicles for the vast majority, even among younger generations (licence-holding is happening later in life, but still happening); money more an indicator of driving than age or location; and even that young people actively aspire to powerful, prestigious vehicles. Plus ca change, in other words, says an engineering consultancy/supplier to the automotive industry, but again, this does rather illustrate the futility of relying on ‘peak car’ to solve anything. Oh, and electric vehicles have a particular image problem: in Germany, though a majority saw EVs as eco-friendly and ‘sensible’, very few thought them sporty, fun to drive or attractively-designed, and enthusiasm and expectation of owning an EV in the future have both dipped since the 2011 survey.

• Blimey: a blanket ban on older cars entering the city centre of Lisbon, at least between 7am and 9pm. Vehicles registered pre-2000 are restricted from a central ‘Zone 1’ and those pre-1996 from an outer Zone 2 as well. Except cars belonging to residents, emergency vehicles and those running on natural gas, however, the former being a pretty big exemption, I would imagine, though the measure is expected to cut air pollution by 10% in terms of in-commuting traffic (and should improve congestion, too). More here. And some detail on the telematics-monitored incentive in Milan to encourage drivers to leave their cars at home and take public transport: one free trip each day on public transport.

• Forecasting sales of EVs and PHEVs: to remain relatively resilient despite oil prices, says Lux Research, as their niche consumer base is relatively price-insensitive (affluent people buying for environmental or technological reasons rather than economical). Could be dips till oil prices rebound, however, with non-plug-in hybrids hit hardest.

• Ford’s European Research & Innovation Centre, Aachen, is partnering RWTH Aachen University to study business models and customer expectations in its two-year Personal Mobility Experience Innovation Project, a research collaboration looking into mobility and autonomous vehicles. This aims to identify technologies, features, services and solutions “that could enable Ford to meet customers’ changing preferences and expectations for personal mobility” as well as to address environmental issues and congestion, apparently. These will include new approaches to car-sharing and personalised mobility solutions, with a look towards “delivering a wide range of hardware and software platforms and services”. Ford has also confirmed that it will contribute to the UK government-funded UK Autodrive autonomous vehicles/connected-cars research project, providing two prototypes with V2V tech. More details here.

• Meanwhile, Uber is partnering with Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh) and its Advanced Technologies Centre to research & develop autonomy, mapping and vehicle safety – more here. The statement refers to “very interesting new challenges at the intersections of technology, mobility and human interactions”.  Indeed.

• The federally-funded ESKAM research consortium (Germany) has developed its scalable electric axle module for commercial vehicles. This comprises two motors, transmission and power electronics in a unit which can be fitted to an axle, and is suitable for vehicles from small vans to large trucks. More here and here.

• The US DoT has unveiled its Beyond Traffic 30-year plan – and it sets out the need to reduce car-dependency, develop multimodal systems and public transit, invest in smart technologies, bring down the cost of implementing autonomous vehicles, and consider new funding mechanisms (including road-pricing). Handy digest at Citylab; more here.

• The EU RDE (Real Driving Emissions) tests to cut NOx have got the green light for 2017: very good news, and a much-needed step towards wider use of on-road (rather than lab) testing for other emissions. The variance between optimised lab results and real-life – for mpg and CO2 as well – is pretty damn shocking, to the extent that it makes manufacturers’ claims that they’ve cleaned up (or reduced the fuel consumption of) their vehicles pretty meaningless, ‘cos there’s no reliable baseline figures. More on the RDE progress here.

 

Design Concept of the Day: Ideo Work On Wheels

Design firm Ideo has come up with three visions for the future of automobility. There’s Slow Becomes Fast – commutes aided by smart-nav tech, autonomous vehicles and driverless capabilities enabling people to work whilst in transit; 21st Century Mule – autonomous on-demand and just-in-time delivery vehicles (arguably the most useful) working off-peak to avoid congestion and going to requested drop-off points; and Inverse Commute, whereby ‘work on wheels’ office-spaces (pictured) go to where they’re needed, with further services coming to meet them, often in under-utilised areas. Not terribly convinced by the latter – my hot-desk in a shared office (repurposed industrial space) a few minutes walk away is working well for me, thanks – but there’s certainly merits in the ideas of flexibility and moving away from the conventional trip to a fixed office location. More at ideoautomobility.com, anyway.  And all the concepts are electromobility-friendly, with inductive off-peak smart-charging and suchlike, of course.

• On a less fanciful note, EU biofuels policy is having a “butterfly effect” and harming the environment, according to this new report (via Transport and Environment, a collaborator on it): deforestation and spiking of global food prices are cited as knock-on effects, with more detail on associated increases in carbon emissions, land-grabbing and analysis of the policies in place for the past decade.

• A nice example of user innovation from the EV community: tech-savvy contributors to the active SpeakEV forum have been developing and testing an app called ChargeBump, to enable drivers to contact and negotiate with each other over use of public charging points. A “bump”, it appears, is when you ask someone plugged in and sufficiently topped-up if they can move their car on to let you use the point.

• Germany is attempting to standardise EV-charging by mandating the CCS system: there are Betamax-vs-VHS arguments emerging as to whether this is the way forward, or a dead-end with lock-in to an inferior technology… More at Transport Evolved.

• And some parochial news: Brighton & Hove has instigated its first low-emissions zone. The LEZ covers a city-centre area area (already with restrictions to passenger-car traffic) and requires buses entering the area to comply with Euro V emissions standards. Operators are updating their fleets or retro-fitting exhaust catalyst tech, with NO2 the focus. Taxis are exempt as yet but drivers have been asked to quit idling when waiting at the station rank. The LEZ comes after real-life air quality monitoring research by Ricardo, which differentiated between NO and NO2 emissions and looked at the impact of traffic flow, frequent stop-starting and uphill acceleration; more detail on this in the Q3 2014 issue of rQ.

Concept of the Day: Renault Twizy Delivery

Renault’s last-mile solution for urban delivery: a Twizy with six wheels. The extra pair support a trailer, which hitches up to a platform on what was the passenger space (such as it is); this tiny truck has been developed in Renault’s VELUD (Electric Vehicle for Sustainable Urban Logistics) project, and is under testing in Paris. Oh, and there’s some more details on Renault’s testing of the Phinergy aluminium-air battery technology at Car magazine…

• New peak car-related paper from the Department for Transport (via @Scottericlevine – thanks): Understanding the drivers of road travel: current Trends in and factors behind roads use. It’s a precursor to some updated forecasts, but the thinking appears to be that though road mileage travelled has plateaued in recent years, growth is expected to resume; it picked up in Q4 2014 after a (miniscule) dip). This report summarises a lot of recent research and links road travel with driving costs, income and the locations people live/work; trends it picks out include a levelling off of traffic on urban roads but strong growth on A-roads and motorways and steady growth on rural roads; a levelling-off of car traffic since 2000 but a rise of 31% in vans; individual use has fallen (mileage, number of trips taken) but both population and car ownership have grown; whilst young men’s driving, and driving in urban areas, has fallen, women and older people are driving more. Key factors affecting all of this – reiterated from earlier work but consistent – are the costs of learning to drive and insurance (for young people in particular); employment rates (again affecting the young in particular) and links to GDP; declines in company car usage; increasing urbanisation (though to a limited extent); increased homeworking (though ditto); the travel habits of migrants; and the later life-changes (marriage, kids etc) among young people. It doesn’t see a big impact in terms of changing attitudes, claiming that young people, though flexible in how they travel, still see cars as desirable, convenient and even as signifiers of success – though forecasting their behaviour has the most uncertainties. More detail across its 92 pages, all underlining (to me) why – alongside other measures to encourage other means of transport, etc., of course – we need to accelerate the uptake of electrification… even if patterns of usage are changing, cars aren’t about to disappear and driving isn’t really diminuishing, so we better make these vehicles cleaner.

• Two-thirds of London’s EV-charging points are unused, claims the RAC Foundation; it has analysed TfL data for June 2014 and found that of 905 points, only 324 were actually used (36%). That’s an improvement over the 24.3% used in June 2013, nonetheless, and actual charging ‘sessions’ have more than doubled (to 4,678 in June 2014). Most-used was a unit at Victoria station. Discussion on this suggests that the disused points may well be broken or inoperable, as well as being in the wrong locations.

• Google’s deploying four electric shuttle buses in its community transport programme in Mountain View, California. They’re 16-seater conversions on a Ford F150 chassis by Motiv Power Systems, and have a 100-mile range, reports Green Car Congress.

• California’s Alta Motors is working with DARPA on a hybrid-electric military motorcycle called the SilentHawk; more details here.

 

NAIAS Detroit round-up and more…

Honda’s still not production-ready with its fuel cell vehicle, but the extensively-previewed FCV Concept on show in Detroit is closer to the real deal (to go on sale in Japan spring 2016, with US and Euro sales to follow); its fuel cell stack is a third smaller than the FCX Clarity’s, but gives a 60% increase in power density. Driving range is said to be over 300 miles. Honda has also said it will add PHEV and battery-electric models to its range for 2018.

• So Hyundai has given its Sonata Hybrid saloon a plug: all-electric range of 22 miles, a total power output of 202hp and 93mpge (on the US test cycle), upping the capability of the existing plugless Hybrid model. The new PHEV has a more powerful 50kW motor in place of a torque converter in the six-speed auto ‘box, allowing for higher-speed electrically-powered progress, and supplementing the 154hp/140lb ft 2.0-litre engine. Recharging can be done in 2.5 hours at 240V.
• OK, this Chinese concept first seen at the Guangzhou Auto Show in 2013, is quite amusing. Not much info available on the GAC (Guangzhou Automobile Corporation) WitStar, though there’s a bit via PR Newswire; range-extended powertrain with 1.0-litre, four-cylinder petrol engine and motor-generator, giving 127hp/168 lb ft, an all-electric range of 62 miles and overall fuel consumption of less than 2.0l/km, apparently. Given that GAC has already launched its GA5 REV in China, the powertrain is presumably a goer.  This concept has some autonomous capability, wooden flooring and falcon-wing doors provide the requisite concept-car quirks, and we won’t talk about the arm rest with embedded (plastic) fish tank. Gallery of pics at Detroit Free Press.

• Honorable Detroit mention to Local Motors, 3D-printing and assembling its Strati EV on its stand at the show. More here.

• And the electric train: a five-week trial between Harwich and Manningtree (Essex) will see the Class 379 Electrostar in action. More here.

• Advances in lithium-sulphur batteries: BASF/University of Waterloo (Canada) are reporting stabilisation of the cathode, thus delivering improved performance and battery life. Details here.

• ULEV is putting up £5million-worth of funding for UK public-sector organisations to go electric; fire and police services, NHS bodies and local authorities are invited to apply for funding towards the purchase of EVs. More here.

• And the government-backed Go Ultra Low campaign is appealing to people’s pockets by pointing out that switching to ultra-low emissions vehicles could save them money (£860 a year in tax and fuel, it’s claimed – obviously, that’s assuming that drivers can match ‘official’ consumption figures, an issue to which I will return at a later date). It has surveyed 1690 drivers, however, and found that over a third didn’t drive a journey over 80 miles last year – thus suggesting that owning an EV would be feasible – and that there were plenty of misconceptions about EVs, PHEVs and plug-in vehicles as well as a lack of awareness about fast-charging stations, running costs and safety. Feedback from the survey and more detail here.

NAIAS Detroit: Chevrolet Bolt

Following the Mk2 Volt and Spark EV, here comes the Chevy Bolt: General Motors’ all-electric mainstream model. It’s to cost from around $30,000 and promises a range of over 200 miles. No word yet on its powertrain tech, and how that range is going to be achieved (at that price), but features we do know about – on this concept if not to appear in the first production models – include selectable operating modes (commute, weekend cruising) for throttle response, ride height and suspension settings, a smartphone app enabling ride-sharing management (vehicle location, reservations, digital key, payment), automatic park-and-retrieval (self-parking and autonomous return to driver when summoned) and projection of all app/smartphone data onto a 10-inch touchscreen display. The Bolt itself (thought to give more than a few clues as to the design of the upcoming ICE Viva small car too) is a one-box minivan-like crossover. More details here.

GM CEO Mary Barra has also issued a statement of intent: “The Bolt EV concept is a game-changing electric vehicle designed for attainability, not exclusivity,” she said. “Chevrolet believes electrification is a pillar of future transportation and needs to be affordable for a wider segment of customers… We have made tremendous strides in technologies that make it easier and more affordable for Chevrolet customers to integrate an all-electric vehicle in their daily lives. The Bolt EV concept demonstrates General Motors’ commitment to electrification and the capabilities of our advanced EV technology.”

• On a rather more rarified note, the Acura NSX: its hybrid powertrain (550bhp+ turbocharged V6 plus three electric motors) enables AWD, with torque-vectoring and a 9-speed CT gearbox. AutoblogGreen has the lowdown. OK, it’s not exactly a ‘green’ car, but the words “halo effect” do spring to mind.

• And why’s electrification important anyway? Just one example: a new study linking diesel exhaust inhalation with DNA methylation – impacts upon genetic material due to particulate matter,  implications for asthma, heart arhythmia, blood pressure. More details plus academic references here.

NAIAS Detroit: Volkswagen Cross Coupe GTE

News from NAIAS, Detroit: More to follow, but first up… Volkswagen’s prototype Cross Coupe GTE – a big US-oriented SUV to rival the BMW X6, Range Rover Evoque etc – is a plugin hybrid offering up to 20 miles in all-electric mode. Its 3.6 V6 (276bhp, 258lb ft) works with two electric motors (one giving 114bhp/199lb ft, the other 54bhp/162lb ft) to give a total 355bhp/369lb ft, 130mph and 0-602mph in six seconds. There’s a six-speed DCT gearbox and five selectable driving modes, including one giving a ‘range extender’ function to charge the battery for greater electric range. Conventional petrol and diesel ICE drivetrains will also be offered; the Cross Coupe is expected to go into production in Tennessee, where the Passat is built for the US market – and in China.

• Mk2 Chevy Volt: improved efficiency and range (50 miles in all-electric mode, 400 all-in), quicker off the mark, five-seat interior and a new 1.5-litre range-extender engine. (News on the ‘Bolt’ EV to follow). And Mercedes-Benz is adding a PHEV to its C-Class line-up; the C350 saloon gives a combined 275bhp/443lb ft and a 2o-mile all-electric range.

• Some brave information-sharing from BMW on its future plans at Autocar: a move away from the RWD & steel format to AWD in aluminium/steel/composite structures – and electrification across the board with plug-in RE-EV powertrains (engines only acting as generators to drive e-motors). Connected-car/V2V tech will play a role with features including topographic optimisation as well as coasting and aerodynamically-enhancing adaptive ride height.  The inference is that this is the longer-term plan to meet EU legislation for the 2020s, but in the nearer term, more conventional plug-in hybrids will arrive in each line-up.

• Nissan is to work with NASA on a five-year autonomous car project: a fleet of Leafs will trial both hardware and software jointly-developed, reports Automotive News, making the point that the hardware of EVs is more easily-adapted for autonomy than that of ICE vehicles.

• And data from Nissan’s CarWings telematics has shown that European Leaf owners (or at least, the 54% registered with CarWings) have been driving an average 10,307 miles a year – more than twice the average for ICE drivers. Feedback is that many owners have bought their Leaf as a second car but have ended up using it more than their other vehicle. Spanish Leaf drivers do an average 228 miles a week, Swedish Leafs do 211 miles a week, and the British 201 miles. And 89% of them (across Europe) charge overnight at home.

• Fuji Pigment Co is planning to commercialise an aluminium-air battery by spring 2015; aluminium-air is said to have very high energy density, and Fuji’s battery is claimed to have overcome the problems of anode corrosion. The battery needs to be ‘recharged’ by refilling with salt or fresh water. More – incl. academic references – at Green Car Congress.

• The RAC Foundation has now published its version of the Berrington and Nikolai study on young adults and driving (see below). Available here.

• Slow take-up and vandalism have blighted Toyota’s pilot EV-share scheme in Grenoble, reports Bloomberg (via Automotive News Europe).

• UPM has started commercial production of renewable-source biodiesel in Finland, using by-products of the timber and paper-making industries (remember the UPM-Metropolia University Biofore concept car at the Geneva Show last year?). Well-to-wheel CO2 is reduced by 80%, apparently; more at Green Car Congress.

Design Concept of the Day: EDAG Light Cocoon

One for the Geneva Auto Salon in March: German consultancy/coachbuilder EDAG is exploring future lightweight construction with its Light Cocoon concept. Its exoskeleton-style structure is described as “bionically optimised” and bionically inspired” and developed from that of last year’s Genesis (said to have been inspired by a turtleshell), and constructed in an additive manufacturing (3D printing) process using a minimum of materials. It’s the bodypanels that are most striking, however: rather than metal or plastic panels, it’s covered with a stretchy weatherproof textile ‘skin’ developed by outdoors clothing firm Jack Wolfskin. This gives an organic feel (evoked by a leaf, apparently) as well as much-reduced weight, and it’s all shown off to effect by backlighting; it “offers enormous potential and stimulus for the ultimate lightweight construction of the future”, says EDAG CTO Jörg Ohlsen. More detail from EDAG (via Car Design News).

• Ford’s CES speech: 25 “global mobility experiments” in transportation will help shape its forthcoming investments, said president/CEO Mark Fields. It’s looking into social collaboration, flexible usership models and customer experiences, addressing four global trends – population growth, middle class expansion (in developing regions), air quality and public health – and the trials include a fleet of on-demand Ford Focus Electric/Fiesta Ecoboosts in a London car-share; collecting data on driver behaviour for personalised insurance plans (London); an app with live data on traffic and parking spaces (London); and on-demand shared commuter shuttles (London and New York), as well as further programmes in Europe, the US, Africa and India. More details on these here. Following on from Ford’s Innovate Mobility Challenge Series, it’s all about data-gathering as well as communication: “We see a world where vehicles talk to one another, drivers and vehicles communicate with the city infrastructure to relieve congestion, and people routinely share vehicles or multiple forms of transportation for their daily commute,” said Fields. In line with this, Ford also showed off its latest SYN 3 communications/entertainment interface, and noted that its fully-automated Fusion Hybrid test vehicle is on the road.

• Thinking of shuttles… just picked up on a report by the LA Times saying that van-pooling has more than doubled in North America in the last six years, with further growth expected this year. That’s van-pooling as in up to five people sharing what we’d call an MPV (minivan); in the US, such schemes are administered with help from the publicly-funded Metro programme, which counts 1,375 pools in its network. Small numbers as yet in a big country, but interesting to note that it’s happening.

• And also from the LAT, while I’m there: traffic-avoidance and routing apps are encouraging drivers to cut through residential areas, the paper reports. Residents not happy. Apparently there are 2million users of an app called Waze in Greater Los Angeles… On a happier note, though, Los Angeles Metro is now testing the US’s first articulated electric bus (the big locally-built BYD Lancaster) on its Orange line.

• Further up the West Coast, news from Oregon via PluginCars: EV charging points in Eugene’s public garages have been used on average only once a fortnight. They’re in the wrong places, are now too slow, and most local EV drivers are charging at home anyway now, apparently.

 

CES: BMW ChargeForward trial and Home Charging Services

BMW is to trial grid-balancing, grid optimisation and cost-efficiency with Pacific Gas & Electric Company in its i ChargeForward Program, and is looking to recruit up to 100 i3 drivers in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 18-month program, to start in July 2015, will look at managed/deferred charging (controlled via smartphone app), and also at second-life battery applications – eight used Mini E batteries (with a remaining 70% capacity) are to be repurposed into a static solar system at the BMW tech office in Mountain View to store energy and return it to the grid. The i ChargeForward app to be trialled includes informing drivers that – due to peak grid load – charging will be stopped for up to an hour (unless they opt to continue). Also at CES, BMW demoed its i Home Charging Services, a development (pictured, in solar carport) using the Wallbox Pro to automatically charge a vehicle from cheaper off-peak power or the house’s own domestic solar electricity when available; it also showed a concept static home energy storage system using repurposed i-car batteries. More on all the above here in handy rundown; full BMW CES presskit here.

• Toyota announced at CES that it’s doing its bit to shape the future of mobility as hydrogen-driven, and has made over 5,680 of its fuel cell-related patents royalty-free, including those for technology in the new Mirai saloon; around 1,970 of these are related to fuel cell stacks, 290 with high-pressure hydrogen tanks, 3,350 with fuel cell control system software and 70 to hydrogen production and supply. “By eliminating traditional corporate boundaries, we can speed the development of new technologies and move into the future of mobility more quickly, effectively and economically”, said Bob Carter, Senior VP of Automotive Operations, Toyota Motor Sales USA. Patents will be available to automakers, fuel cell component suppliers, energy companies and firms developing/making fuel cell buses and industrial vehicles such as forklift trucks; applications for non-transportation applications “will be evaluated on a case by case basis”. Toyota’s release also refers to “the company’s aggressive support for developing a hydrogen-based society”. Indeed. More detail here.

• Audi has confirmed that its autonomously-driven A8 will go on sale in 2016: the tech will only be operating at up to 60kph and for parking manoeuvres, but this is indicative of the incremental introduction of self-driving vehicles. More here. Audi demoed its A7 Piloted Driving Prototype at CES, having had it guide itself from Palo Alto, California, to Vegas. And Volkswagen is also doing the automated-parking thing – and taking it a stage further with the e-Golf. It’s wired one up for inductive charging, and you can remotely position the car on the induction plate to maximise its uptake; more here.

• Here’s the kind of emerging service which could aid electromobility: Powertree Services has launched (in San Francisco) rental of parking spaces in apartment buildings with hook-up to rooftop solar panels for EV-charging. Drivers can charge their cars at their own building or other Powertree facilities, building owners/freeholders can earn money from the rental of parking spaces (and rooftop space). (Via Treehugger).

• Chip-maker NVIDIA is gunning for the autonomous car market, reports Transport Evolved, which quotes CEO Jen-Hsung Huan as saying: “Mobile supercomputing will be central to tomorrow’s car. With vast arrays of cameras and displays, cars of the future will see and increasingly understand their surroundings. Whether finding their way back to you from a parking spot or using situational awareness to keep them out of harm’s way, future cars will do many amazing, seemingly intelligent things. Advances in computer vision, deep learning and graphics have finally put this dream within reach”. NVIDIA’s Drive PX ‘deep learning’ system enables auto parking space location and parking – and for the owner to later summon and ‘meet’ their car at an arranged location.

 

Design Concept of the Day: Mercedes-Benz F 015

Its full name is “F 015 Luxury in Motion”, but I can’t quite bring myself to type that in a headline. Anyway, this Merc concept, on show at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (more news from CES to follow), is an autonomously-driven four-door monospace lounge-saloon, longer and roomier than the S-Class, with a CFRP/steel construction said to give a 40% weight reduction, and furnished with four rotating armchair-type seats. These can be swivelled for face-to-face contact, set up for working or for entertainment, and swing outwards by 30 degrees when the doors are opened for easier climbing-in and -out. The cabin’s described as “a digital arena”, with six screens on the instrument panel, rear and side panels, controlled by touch-screen, gesture or even eye-tracking and using laser-projection and LED displays.

It can be ‘driven’ manually, it seems, but this camera- and sensor-equipped car’s in constant contact with the outside world and can be commanded to operate fully-autonomously (there’s a pedestrian-detection system with automatic braking, of course, though this, spookily, involves projection of a virtual zebra-crossing and the broadcasting of a message that it’s safe to cross. Not sure I like the sound of cars issuing instructions). Says Daimler chairman Dr Dieter Zetsche, “we have a master plan (my italics) in place to take the big leap required getting from technically feasible to commercially viable.” Dr Zetsche also makes the very salient point that, by 2030, given the expected growth in the global mega-cities, “the single most important luxury goods of the 21st century are private space and time… autonomously-driving cars by Mercedes-Benz shall offer exactly that.”

Also notable is the F 015’s plug-in hybrid powertrain, with hydrogen fuel cell plus pair of electric motors; it’ll have a range of 684 miles (124 miles in all-electric mode) and can do 0-60mph in 6.7 seconds, reports Autocar – which quotes Dr Zetsche as saying: “Anyone who focuses solely on the technology has not yet grasped how autonomous driving will change our society. The car is growing beyond its role as a mere means of transport and will ultimately become a mobile living space.” Luxury in Motion for those who can afford it, at least.

• News on the Detroit Electric SP.01 Lotus-alike (£100,500 starting price): to go into production in Leamington Spa for 2016, reports Autocar, just in case you were keeping tabs on this one.

• Some more thoughts on ‘peak car’ from Scott LeVine, looking at driver licencing amongst young men in particular: the decline in their driving (both in terms of mileage driven and licence-holding) appears to have stabilised; there appears to be little correlation between reduced driving/internet usage and attitudes to environmental concerns; economic factors are an issue (including low pay, employment rates); the more difficult driving test and cost of lessons are off-putting; still a lot of questions unanswered, basically
• And some more detail (via the abovementioned S LeV) in a report for the RAC Foundation (Berington and Mikolai), using the Understanding Society data: young adults’ licence-holding correlates with age, education, economic activity status, individual income, living arrangement, housing tenure and rural/urban locality; reported mileage relates to age, commuting, economic activity status (more pronounced effects for women), individual income and area type, with one of the most important correlates being whether they drive to work. Not driving (despite having a licence) is associated with having low socioeconomic status/being unemployed, remaining in education, living in London and in shared accommodation. The report also points out the growing phenomenon of “emerging adulthood” – staying in parental home/studying for longer, later marriage/children/home ownership, etc, “important structural changes in the way that young adults make their transition from school to work” – and the impact of intergenerational financial support (i.e. having affluent parents who pay for driving lessons). It suggests looking further into the link between lower driving and the expansion of higher education since the 1990s; and whether there is actually a shift in lifestyle and preferences that will mean this generation’s lower driving rates will continue as they age, have children and soforth.

• Trend-reporting from Ford for 2015, looking at Generation Z (born 1993-): they’re digitally-savvy, socially-conscious, into sharing rather than tying themselves into soon-to-be-obsolete tech, don’t like carrying stuff (keys, wallets etc) and are looking at a convergence of transport and communication, amongst other claimed insights in the Looking Further With Ford 2015 report, outlined and linked-to here.

• And a report by John Urry et al (incl. folk from the Centre for Mobilities Research and Liveable Cities teams at Lancaster University) for the government’s Foresight Future of Cities project. This outlines historic urban growth and suggests five possible future scenarios – High-Tech City, Digital City, Liveable City and Fortress City (surveillance, etc) – hydrogen-fuelled, shared/on-demand driverless cars and slow-moving microvehicles feature in the first three projections, related to changes in commuting/working patterns, localism, virtual communication and soforth. The fourth scenario is the Mad Max social/infrastructural breakdown… But could larger cities see a mixture/combination of these by district?

 

 

Concept of the Day: ZEB Pilot House

A house, not a car, but one designed to support the charging of an electric vehicle thanks to a positive balance of surplus energy. The prototype ZEB Pilot House, a collaboration between Norwegian architects Snøhetta and the Research Centre on Zero Emission Buildings and in situ on a site at Larvik, 80-odd miles south of Oslo, has a solar-panelled roof tilted south-eastwards for optimum light capture (at least within the bounds of aesthetic and practical considerations) and features including an app-controllable smart energy management system to optimise the energy storage system, reports Wired. It produces enough surplus energy to propel an EV 12,500 miles a year. More lowdown from its creators here. And just to show that this ain’t pie in the sky, it’s reported that a small town in southern Bavaria called Wildpoldsried has – through a government-subsidised programme to shift its inhabitants to solar, wind, biogas and hydro energy – ended up producing a whopping 500% energy surplus.

• Volvo has developed a cloud-enabled car-to-cycle helmet communication system in partnership with helmet-makers POC and Ericsson. This extends the City Safety system, which includes cyclist-sensing, to communicate with cycling apps such as Strava and alert both driver and cyclist to each others’ positions, activating auto-braking on the Volvo if necessary. This will be demoed at CES, Las Vegas, in early January. More details from Volvo here.

• A working paper from the US National Bureau for Economic Research reckons that driving a Tesla (for example) + having domestic solar panels = greater than the sum of the parts when it comes to greening-up suburban living. Conclusion is that a sub-group of “accidental environmentalists” is created, there being a positive association between Tesla-driving and installation of solar panels, and purchasers of both enjoying cost-savings. Tesla drivers are more motivated by energy independence, having the latest tech and vehicle performance than environmental issues, apparently.

• And some feedback from the US DoE via Green Car Congress) on six projects on charging behaviour, looking at 270+ public charging stations and 700-odd residential units. Most plug-in car owners plugged in to their domestic units overnight, and price incentives were successful in encouraging off-peak charging; public points were little-used but typically deployed during business hours; PHEV owners liked to top-up at free public points; power demand varied by vehicle and installation of 240-volt fast-chargers is expensive and complex; and utilities reported communication problems between smartmeters and charging points at load-reduction events (brown-outs).

• Fiat has been partnering with peer-to-peer carsharing service Getaround (USA) to offer discounts on the purchase of shared vehicles; there have been discounts of $1000 on selected 500 models made available via the Getaround Connect app and members have been claiming earnings from their vehicles each month which put them in profit against their (discounted) lease payments on their cars.

• Here’s some more at Wired on the General Electric/Con Edison/ Columbia University trial on EV fleet-charging and grid-balancing: the programme, with FedEx in New York, is looking at spreading out charging over a 24-hour period according to demands on the grid and forecasting to avoid ‘spikes’, and computer models are estimating that a building supporting 100 EVs could see a $10,000-a-month reduction in its electricity bills if using such a system.

• Waste from olive oil production can be converted to electricity, via biogas conversion and a fuel cell, reports Green Car Congress. A two-year project trialled the process on an olive farm in Andalucia, Spain. More on the EU-funded Biogas2PEM-FC project here.

• And that hybrid plane: researchers from Cambridge University, working with Boeing, have trialled a petrol-electric Honda-engined light aircraft (a converted Song single-seater) promising fuel savings of around 30%.