I like the denomination "Green Hornet" and all the greenwashing the Navy does when their only real objective is to be able to wage war even in the event of reduced oil supplies... ... which is not, from my point of view, a less honourable objective

HG was not off topic. He was just suggesting going a step further what Ford has done. But I still disagree: people do put their foot down on the accelerator. And if they don't go up to the advertised figures, it's because the engine isn't running at the speed it needs to reach that figure. But what matters is torque, not power, and I think lots of people reach the top torque figure, easily (it's just foot down at 2000 rpm on a turbocharged engine, whether gasoline or diesel). Don't put speed limits down: tax fuel if you want to reduce fuel consumption, but let people speed up and pay if they want.

Clett, GM's Volt has a 16kWh battery pack that is only cycled 50%, not a 8kWh battery pack. We have no idea how the Aptera's battery pack is cycled. Since you pay what you have on board, not what you cycle, that's 40miles/16kWh = 2.5 miles, twice as less for the GM Volt compared to the Aptera. That said, if the Aptera cycles nearly 100% of it's battery, then I share your amazement at the inefficiency of the car. And it will cost more in the end, because if you cycle the battery completely, you will have to replace it sooner.

Henrik, Your 1000W*0.358*5sqm isn't quite right. You forgot to multiply by the sinus of the angle the sunrays have with the panels. Plus, if you have sun on the right side of the car, the panels on the left side produce next to nothing. So it's even less economical than you said. That said, I do agree that people could buy it just because it's cool ant not because it's dollar-efficient.

To further understand how they get so good mileage figures, you have to remember that these figures are obtained by a test on a predefined cycle. This cycle was defined in the 60s (even if they say New European Driving Cycle, the New only refers to the fact that before 1990, they started measurements at 40s instead of 0s now) and it doesn't have any steep accelerations. With a Porsche, you tend to put your foot down a little more so you get much higher consumption figures in real life. Just for the anecdote, on the American cycles (defined in 1969 for the FTP and at the beginning of the 70s for the HWFET), steep accelerations were erased because the roll benches couldn't handle these kind of accelerations. web.mit.edu/sloan-auto-lab/.../files/IreneBerry_Thesis_February2010.pdf

It's no suicide at all. As long as it's not more expensive. Reducing CO2 means reducing consumption and execs like that. Plus, it can be part of the greenwashing effort that all firms are doing at the moment: "We use only eco2 range vehicles! We are clean!" After all, it's just a label. It would be a shame NOT to launch this initiative, considering it costs nothing for Renault, nothing more for businesses (maybe less with less fuel consumption). I agree other pollutants are more important, but not in the general public's minds yet.

I understand your impatience, but imagine the vans aren't fit for their mission (for a reason other than technical, since as you have pointed out, that should be settled), then the person who ordered at once so many electric vans with no trials gets hanged. Since nobody wants to get hanged, they do trials all the time. I guess most companies will do trials before switching, as I guess most did before switching from horse to ICE.

The problem with wind farms is that the 7.2 GW figure is a maximum: when all turbines are giving maximum possible output. That nearly never happens. But it's still very good. Even if it only gives 3 GW power on average, that's still about 7% the average UK consumption today (thanks clett for the figure). And 7% is a good start to go up to 20%.

@ejj There are loads of MultiAir engines running already and there aren't any quality problems related specifically to that technology. Cars are becoming more complex every year but they still break down increasingly less, so I think you can "like it" even though I have to bow down to the inherent logic of "More moving parts = higher chance of something breaking"

@3PeaceSweet You need much less energy supercharging electrically your engine than boosting it directly. Figures are about: 8 kJ for a 3 second VTES boost 30 kJ for a 3 second direct boost via the ISG That's why they do it that way. Of course, the advantage of boosting directly is that you save fuel, whereas electrically supercharging only achieves fuel economy through possible downsizing of the ICE.

People from Florida wouldn't be that bad: they could buy their new land. It's all the people from Bangladesh Greenlanders should be worried about....

@Treehugger HG can't stop talking of his ZEBRA and EFFPOWER batteries. They are all over his posts. A little reference about ZEBRAs: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/06/the-absolute-hy.html And HE (Mrs? Henry is a male first name, isn't it?) didn't say the lead-acid batteries could be used as range extenders, he wants to use them as energy storage WITH a range extender. This precision made, I have doubts about using a lead-acid battery that needs to be heated all the time...

@Engineer-Poet "even Hyundai" isn't something you can say anymore. They are the 6th biggest car manufacturer worldwide (if you count in Kia), way in front of PSA, Fiat, Chrysler and many others. They have shown now that they can make quality cars and sell them. They want to become the third largest maker, behind VW and Toyota and up to now, they have done what they have said they would do (see kelly's post)

Harvey is still right: It is already something relevant to read "Terming climate change “an objective fact” ". (see, Goracle? Even communists who see us as corrupt capitalists agree with AGW) Plus, nobody wants to be seen as revolutionary in this kind of country. Talking about the fact of climate change and talking about its cost is as far as any "normal" citizen can go. The big shots will then do or not do something worthwhile to fight climate change, but I think they will, because they want to stay diplomatically relevant and it's losing diplomatic capital stupidly not to agree on a plan (especially now Obama said he would come)

Is this the right approach? I fear that concentrating on LRR tyres will inevitably lead to tyres with less grip. This will lead to more accidents and that will be more expensive than GHG. There should be three ratings: -rolling resistance -grip -durability and the rating that is shown to the consumer is the worst of the three (the consumer could look at the details if he/she is interested) This way, you encourage manufacturers to propose really better tyres, not just harder ones that get A but don't keep you on the road.

Is this the right approach? I fear that concentrating on LRR tyres will inevitably lead to tyres with less grip. This will lead to more accidents and that will be more expensive than GHG. There should be three ratings: -rolling resistance -grip -durability and the rating that is shown to the consumer is the worst of the three (the consumer could look at the details if he/she is interested) This way, you encourage manufacturers to propose really better tyres, not just harder ones that get A but don't keep you on the road.

@arnold DI has a problem, it produces particulates. That's why they don't put it on all engines. @The Goracle "Make it a diesel and get 60 mpg". And get NOx and particulates...

What does "premature" death mean? I agree that reducing atmospheric pollution can only be good for health, and that it can have nothing to do with GHG, but "premature" can mean anything. What I want to know is: Does this pollution take away a month or 20 years of my expected lifetime?

@ai vin To be exact, one should note that what you describe isn't communism but dictatorship or, to be really completely exact, totalitarianism. You could (theoritically) have a democratic communist regime in which a government couldn't impose anything on its people. But that's the theory. In practice, people everywhere in the world have tried, and it always ends in a totalitarian regime, or stops being communist. How come people continue trying?

They talk about an energy storage system and they give no energy capacity, no charge and discharge max power, no max number of cycles, nothing! Not even an order of magnitude. They only tell us their target price. What kind of release is this?

read: "too expensive"

So they can do things with Xenon And then they tell us Xenon is too heavy and expensive Which means they can't do anything useful for the applications shown with Xenon Which means they could have just not said anything, it would have been the same.

"amusing" of course only referred to the fact that people who commited suicide and died could still be sentenced to death.

@ arnold As an amusing piece of information, I inform you that suicide was considered a crime in several countries and sometimes was punished by death (no kidding). Look at this link: http://law.jrank.org/pages/2180/Suicide-Legal-Aspects.html

The question now (in addition to all the other questions already asked in these comments), if this is adopted, is: Is there enough fissile material for everyone? I saw EDF's then CEO (Pierre Gadonneix) say that fissile material as it is needed in current generators ( most of the time U235 ) is already in scarce supply. If nuclear energy was to be used increasingly, there wouldn't be enough of it. But he also said that work was being done on 3rd generation reactors (in terms of fuel) that could use U238 and not U235 as fuel. He seemed confident they would be up and running in 2035, but how confident can one be for research in 3 decades?