Bio Products Opportunity

For the past twenty years, the World Solar Challenge has demonstrated the ability to run a car purely from the power of the sun. With climate change and resource scarcity registering as a significant public issue, however, the organisers last year added a new class to the competition that promotes environmentally friendly vehicles that don’t necessarily need to run on solar power. Here’s some of the entrants for this year:

• Team Ethanol, from Queensland, is using a production Saab BioPower vehicle to aim for its second consecutive Greenfleet Technology Class title. The team will be running on E85 fuel produced in Sarina, in Queensland’s north.
• The University of Adelaide has entered using its BioBike, a modified motorcycle that runs on pure biodiesel.
• Bios Fuel Corp will be running a diesel-powered vehicle on a controversial 60/40 combination of waste oil and water. The New Zealand-based team says that their H2W+ fuel is more advanced than ethanol or biodiesel.
• The Japanese H2Solar vehicle won’t be competing for a title, but the JonaSun team is using the race to demonstrate their technology. The experimental vehicle runs on both solar power and a hydrogen fuel cell.

The race is currently underway, with the first teams expected to make it to Adelaide by the weekend.

The Greens have announced today a comprehensive alternative fuels policy as part of their election campaign push. The Greens Climate and Energy spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne, called on Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition leader Kevin Rudd to develop a comprehensive strategy for “oil-proofing” Australia.

The central tenet of the policy is a significant shift over the next four decades to replacing 90% of Australia’s petrol use with electrified vehicles (with the power generated from renewable sources) and second-generation biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol, with an interim target of 10% biofuels use by 2020.

“The Australian Greens have been warning for years that the twin challenges of oil depletion and climate change mean we must wean ourselves off oil by moving to less polluting alternatives,” Senator Milne said today in a press release. “Through the campaign we will release more policies including: boosting public transport funding; increasing investment in clean, alternative fuels; helping shift freight from road to rail and sea; and replacing tax incentives to private car use with carbon-based taxes.”

“The Government and Opposition are promoting policies that will make the problem worse by locking us in to more roads, artificially cheaper fuel and even more polluting alternatives like coal-to-liquids.”

We’ll be covering every party’s alternative fuel policies as they’re&nbspannounced&nbspin the lead-up to the November 24 federal election, so keep an eye out for more news on this front. With climate change headlining the election issues and the price of oil putting more pressure on the economy, alternative fuels may yet form a major part of any party’s election promises.

(Source: Australian Greens)

Hybrid vehicle sales dipped slightly this month but remain considerably higher than last year, according to the latest figures from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries. The figures show an improvement in overall vehicle sales in September compared with August of this year, however alternative fuel vehicle sales dropped by 4.6% in a month-to-month comparison. Hybrid sales recorded the sharpest drop of 6.9%, with LPG sales lowered by 6.5% and diesel passenger vehicle sales reduced by 4.3%.

The news is not all bad for alternative fuel vehicles, with sales continuing to rise strongly on average compared to the year to date sales for 2006. Hybrids lead the way with an impressive 80.8% rise on YTD 2006, thanks to the introduction of the Lexus SUV hybrid range into Australia. Diesel passenger vehicles also contributed to a strong improvement in private diesel vehicle sales, rising 76.6% on previous year to date sales thanks to a wider range of diesel vehicles available on the market. LPG vehicles dropped slightly by 2.9% for the same period, likely due to a waning in the interest shown in the federal government’s LPG incentive program.

While pressure mounts considerably for auto companies in the US to clean up their act, and an impressive range of new technologies make their way on to the market to reduce fuel consumption and emissions, there is still some question about whether or not these innovations will find their way into Australian cars.

General Motors, the US owner of Holden, has recently announced a wide range of fuel-saving innovations to their vehicles, ranging from hybrid powertrains to diesels, direct injection engines and cylinder deactivation. Some models released under the Holden badge in Australia even have hybrid counterparts in the United States, such as the Saturn Vue (known as the Captiva MaXX here). However, despite a recent shift in focus within Holden towards being part of the global GM group rather than considering itself a separate entity, the Melbourne-based car manufacturer has made no suggestions one way or another about importing some of GM’s technology for use in its Australian-made or imported vehicles. Spokesman John Lindsay admitted to the existence of “some (VE Commodore) mules running around with hybrid systems in them”, but said that there are no plans to bring a hybrid Commodore to production at this stage. Similarly there seems to be no move to use more conventional engine technology such as direct injection in their Australian-built engines, let alone much hope for radical projects such as the Chevy Volt to make their way to our shores. Paradoxically, Holden exports a version of the Commodore Omega that is capable of using a 24% ethanol blend to Brazil (under the Chevrolet brand), but will not endorse the use of ethanol concentrations above 10% for its Australian vehicles.

The situation seems paralleled&nbspat Ford, with the US branch currently&nbsplooking into longer-term solutions such as&nbsphydrogen-hybrid Focus and HySeries experimental vehicles, as well as&nbspan existing range of ethanol-capable&nbspand hybrid vehicles and powertrain developments such as continuously variable transmission. &nbspFord Motor Company Australia recently made the tough decision to close its production of the “Barra” engine at Geelong in favour of importing the more efficient Duratec engine from Detroit, which is a significant move for the industry, however the company has made it clear that the likelihood of seeing a Ford-badged hybrid on Australian roads in the near future is remote.

With the Australian market too small to cost-effectively innovate on a large scale, the auto industry’s best hope is to exploit its global partnerships and import technology to help reduce fuel consumption and emissions from Australian vehicles, but it’s likely that the cultural shift required for the industry to embrace such globalisation may take some time.

(Source: Drive, Carsguide)