It will continue to trend upwards now as people are abandoning diesel for gasoline, and moving from hatchbacks to SUVs.

Either would do. Methanol can be made from H2 and CO2 so there may be some extra benefits CO2 wise, but both would be way cleaner than bunker fuel oil. IMO, methanol is a great possibility for fossil CO2 reduction, particularly in a HEV or PHEV or serial hybrid - no need to lug 60-100 KwH batteries around with you - get by with 6-12 KwH. (Or 1-3 in a HEV situation).

We still need fossil fuels, for more or less everything in the short term, and for aviation, shipping and long range trucking in the medium term. Anything that can go by rail, and short range road journeys can be electrified with current technology (and a lot of money). You'll also need a dispatchable electricity source to balance electricity generation, batteries are good for up to an hour or two, possibly overnight, but not much much more. Or just cut back on consumption - fewer transoceanic flights, less stuff from China. Better batteries could help with ground transport, and very short range aviation and shipping, but not long haul.

I imagine the trick is to estimate where your acceleration energy will be utilised, and if it will be unused, or wasted in imminent braking, don't accelerate, let the speed reduce naturally. You could achieve much of the same in urban driving by just reducing the maximum speed, but you'd drive other road users crazy.

@Thomas, Thanks, that makes more sense: 207 gms of co2 / kwH would be big news indeed.

Pity they don't give any figures for expected improvements or deployment dates.

"207 grams per kilowatt hour" is very good for "fossil" electricity in a small engine. The best the Irish grid can do is about 200 gms/KwH, when it is running 65% wind energy (the rest is mostly gas). If this was cheap enough to put into a Focus / Golf sized car, and could be produced in quantity, it would be impressive indeed. I am not sure how large a battery needs to be used with it - they call it a PHEV (which implies a medium sized battery), but this would push the cost up too much for a Golf / Focus.

Shared bikes and scooters sound like a good idea, but tend to get abused and flung everywhere, especially scooters. Scooters have a life "in the wild" of 3-6 weeks in some cities, and so aren't all that green either. Personally owned scooters (and bikes) won't have that problem. Alternately (or as well) make short range bus use very cheap.

Lower friction sounds like a good thing, as long as it is affordable and non-toxic.

You'll be using HCs for a while in aviation, and probably long range trucking. And probably shipping (which definitely needs to be cleaned up with lower sulphur fuel at least).

Sigourney Weaver has ordered one, I am informed.

Getting scared of China, are they ?

While all this is cool, IMO, it is better not to generate the CO2 in the first place (or just plant trees). Thus, the case were they were creating CNTs from CO2 and using it to reinforce concrete and steel is good, because you end up then needing less concrete / steel, and this is the big win.

@ASS, possibly because the original mini was a 2 door mini saloon, then the "new mini" was a 3 door hatch to keep with the image of the first one. What annoys me is that they claim that a car that does 16.8 – 14.8 kWh/100 km has zero emissions. It doesn't, as you have to include the CO2 generated when generating the electricity. This may be very low if you are in France or Sweden, or very high if you are in Poland (where they use a lot of coal to generate power), but it certainly isn't zero. The EU should calculate an EU wide co2/kwh figure and get companies to quote that. At the very least, they could calculate a figure per country (and update it yearly) and quote that per country (more confusing than a single figure). This should also be applied to PHEVs. You could also start on the embodied cost of the cars and batteries as well, but that's another day's work.

a: Sounds like an Aberfan at sea - 53 years after the said disaster. b; Sounds like they need some automatic disaster reporting on these ships so they don't just disappear without trace (solar, gps, radio, buoyancy). c: I wonder if they ventilated the cargo better could they get rid of excess moisture, or is a cargo of that size too "deep" to ventilate in any meaningful way.

I wonder how many of those drivers were on their phones ....

It makes a lot of sense to electrify city transport that has known and moderate range requirements. You get the benefits of electrification (mainly local pollution and low maintenance and fuel costs) without range worries. The Irish Post office is in the process of doing the same.

Good for Canada. It must be terrible for whales to have their senses constantly bombarded by ship engine noises (and occasional sonar). However, they need to get everyone else in the neighbourhood to do the same - some chance.

That is very cool. You create carbon nanotubes from waste co2 exhaust gases, and then use the CNTs to reinforce the concrete or steel, and as a result, need less of it in the first place. Sweet - (assuming it works and scales). (Or you could just make the CNTs to get the CO2 out of the exhaust stream) Is this not a very big deal ?

@BH, sure, but it is still lower co2/km (than equivalent gasoline engines), Once they stopped the NOx cheating, it should be in the clear again and makes sense for high mileage drivers.

The Germans are fighting like mad to keep diesel alive. And succeeding, technically; though the PR battle may be lost. Diesel is now down to 31% of sales in Europe (down from 55% in 2011) - which probably makes sense as it was oversold to people who had low mileage requirements. Anyone doing big mileage will probably benefit from this (whatever about their neighbours).

The car companies will be facing huge fines from the EU by the look of it as diesel is down, and SUVs are up. This will increase the average CO2 / km figure for the car fleet sold and incur fines. The extra EVs will help a little. Note that the Corolla hybrid outsells the top 4 BEVs.

It needs work. The wheels are too small, the deck is too narrow, it is too slow. On the other hand, it has lots of range, folds nicely and is probably well made. So: Mk II version: larger wheels, wider deck, faster and keep the rest.

The problem is that gas is so cheap in the USA that most people in the market for a new car don't care about it. If it was more expensive there would be more "organic" pressure for economical vehicles. So if few people care, the companies won't develop and deploy the lightweighting technology. Hence they are asking for a push from government - unlikely with the current government. or you could view this as pointing to areas where they need to decarbonise the electricity supply. - Anyone know where diesel cars would go on the graphs, I assume they are referring to petrol powered ones.

Maybe, but ammonia is rather dangerous. I wouldn't like to be in an ammonia fuelled car that crashed. (Or near it). It looks like if they could improve the CO2 capture, they could make methanol as cheaply. Perhaps if you started with wood, rather than atmospheric CO2, it could be done more cheaply, and you'd still be taking co2 out of the air. or am I missing something.