Green Tech

VW Jetta TDI gets on stage to accept its award.

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

LOS ANGELES--The Green Car Journal gave its 2009 Green Car of the Year award to the 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI at the 2008 Los Angeles Auto Show. This year's list of nominees included the BMW 335d, Ford Fusion Hybrid, Saturn Vue 2 Mode Hybrid, and Smart ForTwo. The Jetta TDI uses a 2-liter, turbocharged, diesel, four-cylinder engine to achieve an EPA-rated 41mpg highway fuel economy and 30mpg city. Volkswagen's new clean diesel technology makes the car legal in all 50 states, meeting California's stringent Air Resources Board requirements, under which is qualifies as a SULEV, or Super Ultra Low Emission Vehicle. The panel of judges included Jay Leno, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke, and legendary auto tuner Carroll Shelby.

The Ford Fusion Hybrid gets left out in the cold.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)

Green Car Journal opened itself up for criticism last year by naming the Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid as its 2008 Green Car of the Year. Diesel proponents will applaud the choice of the Jetta TDI for 2009, but the two hybrids on the list, with AT-PZEV (Advanced Technology-Partial Zero Emission Vehicle) emissions ratings, might seem more deserving. The Saturn Vue 2 Mode Hybrid probably didn't make it due to fuel economy hovering around 30mpg, but the Ford Fusion Hybrid has an estimated economy of 38mpg city and 35mpg highway, plus a very cool instrument cluster that coaches people to drive more economically. The judges were most likely swayed by the price, with the Jetta TDI coming in at below $22,000, while the Fusion Hybrid will most likely come in above $27,000.

See all coverage of the 2008 Los Angeles Auto Show.

Amyris Biotechnologies on Wednesday announced the opening of a pilot facility in Emeryville, Calif., that turns sugar cane into diesel fuel through genetically designed microbes.

The company is at the forefront of a commercial movement to use biotechnology to convert plants into fuels that resemble petroleum-based hydrocarbons.

Amyris' technique is to genetically engineer a yeast that can metabolize sugar into the desired molecules. Its first effort was to develop a malaria vaccine, which it continues to do, and it has since developed a focus on renewable fuels.

(Credit: Amyris Fuels)

"We're engineering the yeast, reprogramming it from making alcohols to making hydrocarbons," CEO John Melo said. "We started with E. coli (bacteria), which is what many other companies are doing, but we moved to yeast because we discovered that it was more scalable."

The company has also modified yeasts to produce chemicals; a sugar-derived jet fuel is planned for in about three years as well.

Through a partnership, Amyris plans are to produce biodiesel from sugar cane at commercial scale in Brazil by the middle of 2010. Brazil is one of the world's largest producers of ethanol, using sugar cane as a feedstock.

Amyris' biodiesel can be blended at up to 50 percent concentration with petroleum diesel, higher than most biodiesel today, which means that it can be pumped through existing pipelines. Environmentally, Amyris' "renewable diesel" has lower carbon emissions than petrodiesel and burns cleaner, Melo said.

Amyris has set up a distribution subsidiary and intends to sell its biodiesel to fleet operators, such as Wal-Mart Stores and FedEx.

Melo said the economic slowdown has forced the company to shelve its plans to go public next year.

It does expect to raise some form of capital in the next two years, either through venture funding or strategic partners, he said. The company expects revenue to increase rapidly next year, to more than $100 million, he added.

Tiny algae is ready for some long-haul trucking.

Solazyme, a South San Francisco, Calif.-based company that creates synthetic biological products, said Wednesday that its microalgae-derived fuel is the first renewable diesel to meet the American Society for Testing and Materials' D-975 specifications.

Here is algae being grown in dishes at Solazyme's labs. The oil produced by the algae can be used for fuels, chemical, or food oils.

(Credit: Solazyme)

The fuel is chemically the same as petroleum-derived diesel, Solazyme said, so it can be distributed using the existing infrastructure. But it burns cleaner than petroleum-derived diesel, with fewer particulates and sulfur levels.

A 100 percent blend of Solazyme's diesel has been road-tested in a 2005 Jeep Liberty with a diesel engine, the company said in a statement.

Solazyme's certification is a milestone in algae-based fuels, one of the hottest areas of biofuels.

Algae as a feedstock is more desirable than soy because it is not a food crop, yields more oil, and can grow on marginal land.

But, in general, the technology is still experimental and algae-based diesel has not been produced at commercial scale.

Solayzme's process differs from most algae farming in that the microalgae is grown without sunlight in a setting more akin to a brewery than an open pond.

In its fermentation process, the company puts large amounts of algae into a vat, mixes in sugar, and then controls the pressure and other environmental factors inside the vat to induce the algae to metabolize the sugar into oil.

The process can be used to make oils and chemicals from other forms of biomass, including wood chips, corn stover, and switchgrass.

Click here to read our Green car buying guide

If you think buying a "green" car is as easy as picking the paint color, we've got news for you--there are different types of green and many different car choices. Are you trying to reduce smog and its attendant health risks, or are greenhouse gases and global climate change your biggest concern? And those aren't exclusive concerns, either. Amongst the types of cars you can choose, there are hybrids, PZEVs, SULEVs, flex fuel vehicles, natural gas vehicles, and even diesels. We also take a look at future technologies that are in heavy development and could the be cars of the future.

Click here to read our Green car buying guide.

I'd like to thank licensed ship captain and editor of the gCaptain.com blog, John A. Conrad, for this one: a ship that floats on a curtain of bubbles.

Blowin' bubbles, Matey.

(Credit: NMRI)

The Bubbling Ship is a concept devised by Yoshiaki Kodama, director of the Advanced Maritime Transport Technology Department at Japan's National Maritime Research Institute in Tokyo. The ship would blow bubbles from slits near the bow of the ship. The bubbles would travel along the hull, reduce friction, and hence increase gas mileage.

Is it feasible now? No, but that's what research grants are for. Ships are one of the largest consumers of diesel fuel in the world.

In any event, Captain John has assembled a list of his top 10 green ship concepts. Among the ideas: putting a parachute-like sail on a ship, an idea being championed by KiteShip and SkySails. SkySails in fact recently completed a two-month voyage and found that the sail cut fuel consumption by 20 percent.

There's also a boat with a giant wind turbine, and the Solar Sailor from Australia.

Captain John's site also features an interesting collection of clips about nautical mishaps. Check it out, sailor.

The Mercedes-Benz ML320 BlueTEC was unveiled at the New York auto show.

(Credit: CNET Networks/Sarah Tew)

Mercedes-Benz showed off the BlueTEC ML320 SUV at the 2008 New York auto show. According to Mercedes-Benz, its AddBlue technology makes the ML320 the world's cleanest diesel. The ML320 BlueTEC uses a turbocharged diesel 3.2-liter V-6 engine, producing 210 horsepower and 398 foot-pounds of torque. That engine is mated to a seven speed automatic transmission, giving it wide range of gear ratios appropriate for city and freeway driving. The ML320 BlueTEC represents the first use of AddBlue technology in the U.S. AddBlue is a urea-based liquid that, when injected into the exhaust stream, converts 80 percent of the nitrogen oxide into ammonia. The ML320 has a 7 gallon tank for AddBlue that needs refilling every 10,000 miles. With AddBlue, the ML320 meets the emissions requirements of all 50 states. Mercedes-Benz will follow the ML320 BlueTEC with R-Class and GL-class BlueTEC models.

Click here for more 2008 New York auto show coverage.

Sail power is back.

The MV Beluga SkySails, a cargo ship rigged up with a billowing 160-meter sail from SkySails, used approximately 20 percent less fuel than it would have without the sail during a two-month voyage. Put another way, that's 2.5 tons of fuel, or $1,000 a day, in operating costs. Beluga Shipping ultimately hopes to save $2,000 a day with the technology.

The ship left Bremen, Germany, on the 22nd of January, sailed to Venezuela, and then headed toward the Norwegian port of Mo-I-Rana, docking on March 13. In all, the ship sailed 11,952 nautical miles. The sail was up, depending on the winds, from between 5 minutes and 8 hours a day.

Yo ho ho. Wind power at work.

(Credit: SkySails)

In the picture, look in the sky past the end of the ship. That's the sail up there. The sail is attached to a tether that runs 100 to 300 meters long. This is an actual shot from the ship--until now, the company has had to use artists' renderings.

The company says that the sail, by their calculation, could cut fuel consumption by 10 to 35 percent on ocean voyages, depending on the conditions, the size of the ship, and other factors. More testing will be conducted this year. SkySails will double the size of the sails and attach them to larger, heavier ships. A big question will be how well the economics--buying a sail versus using diesel--work.

Other companies working on reducing emissions and fuel consumptions on ships include Solar Sailor, which has created sails with integrated solar panels. A ferry with the sails already prowls Sydney Harbor. San Francisco may get one in 2009.

January is diesel engine month, it seems.

Following announcements from EcoMotors and Transonic Combustion, San Diego's Achates Power has said on its Web site that it's creating a clean, light, fuel-efficient diesel engine.

The company has also received investments from Sequoia Capital, a relative newcomer to energy investments, Rockport Capital Partners and Interwest Partners. (VentureWire has a brief interview with Achates CEO James Lemke.)

Achates has not said how its engine will work, the company has three patent applications on file with the U.S. Patent Office. Two of the patents describe what's known as an opposed piston/opposed cylinder engine. In this type of engine, two pistons sit inside a single cylinder. That makes it different than most other motors where pistons have individual cylinders. (Some car makers have made engines with horizontal pistons, similar to an opposed piston engine, but they have their own cylinders.)

"The opposed-piston engine was invented by Hugo Junkers around the end of the nineteenth century," one of the patent applications states. "In 1936, the Junkers Jumo airplane engines, the most successful diesel engines to that date, were able to achieve a power density and fuel efficiency that have not been matched by any diesel engine since...Nevertheless, Junkers' basic design contains a number of deficiencies."

As a result of the deficiencies and costs, it never went mainstream. But who knows? It could now. EcoMotors, which has received investments from Khosla Ventures, is doing the same thing.

Transonic, meanwhile, has come up with a fuel injection system that increases the pressure inside of diesel engines. Putting Transonic's system into a diesel lets the engine run on regular gas (which is cleaner). Mileage also goes up to 100 miles per gallon. The system sounds similar to a technology called HCCI being tinkered on at Toyota and GM.

Achates, by the way, was in Roman mythology a close friend of Aeneas, the star of The Iliad.

It's sort of like an organ transplant for cars.

Transonic Combustion, which has been relatively secretive until now, has created a fuel injection system that will let diesel engines run on regular gasoline. Diesel engines get better mileage than regular gas engines, explained CEO Mike Cheiky in an interview. However, diesels typically emit more particulates. Gas is also far more readily available than diesel in the U.S. Insert Transonic's components into a diesel engine and you get the best of both worlds.

(Credit: Transonic Combustion)

Additionally, the company's fuel injection system dramatically increases the internal compression in an engine, which in turn increases efficiency and mileage, he said. A standard 2.3-liter diesel engine that gets 50 miles per gallon can get 100 miles per gallon when retrofitted with Transonic's components.

"This gives us a clean-burning engine at very high compression," he said.

The Camarillo, Calif.-based company has already retrofitted a couple of engines with its injection system and is currently building up a car around one of its engines to test how it works. The car tests, hopefully, can begin this summer.

The principles behind Transonic's technology can be traced back to Nicholas Leonard Sadi Carnot, an 18th-century French engineer, according to Cheiky. Carnot studied the output of heat engines and determined formulas for achieving maximum theoretical efficiency.

In a compression engine, efficiency is dominated by the compression ratio, or the ratio of the volume inside a cylinder when the piston is down and the volume when the piston is up.

"The higher compression ratio, the higher efficiency," said Cheiky. "That is fundamentally why diesels are more efficient than gas engines."

Ultimately, the company will approach car manufacturers about adopting its technology. First, however, Transonic wants to extensively test it. Car companies are notoriously conservative so there's no shortage of testing that can be accomplished.

Cheiky wouldn't say much more about the technology--there's a lot more that he's not disclosing--but that's more than in the past. Transonic popped up on the radar last May when Venrock Partners, Rustic Canyon Partners, and Khosla Ventures announced investments in the company. (At the time, Transonic has single cylinder prototypes.) Details were scarce. Later in 2007, Transonic said it had set a goal of making an engine that can get 100 miles per gallon. The company said the engine could run on any type of fuel but didn't get into specifics on how it worked. More details might come out in the second or third quarter, he added.

One vague clue Cheiky gave me was that some of the technology in Transonic's device can be traced in part to his work in fuel cells and batteries. Cheiky helped start battery company Zinc Matrix Power. (He has 45 patents to his name. Some are in the cellular industry.)

Transonic isn't the only company citing historical sources. EcoMotors, another Khosla company, is working on an opposed cylinder/opposed piston motor that it says could make 100 mpg cars real. The engine design was tried in the 1930s, but it never caught on because of manufacturing costs.