At the 2008 New York International auto show, Brian Cooley takes a look at the newly redesigned Mercedes M-Class. It not only got a refreshed design outside, but also the inside has been updated with a richer media interface and a new voice-control system.
Click here to see our photos.
At the 2008 Detroit Auto Show, diesel cars grabbed their share of the limelight, as manufacturers such as Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW prepare to import new diesel vehicles to the U.S. New diesel engines promise performance equivalent to gasoline cars but much better mileage, and new technology means cleaner emissions.
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DC Comics/Zuda Comics)
Despite a few hiccups on the big launch day, DC Comics' webcomics initiative Zuda Comics went live before the end of business Tuesday on the Left Coast. The first webcomics push by a corporate comic book publisher, Zuda is attracting a lot of attention as the webcomic-o-sphere tries to figure out what it all means.
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Oasis electric-cooled truck
(Credit: Global Refrigeration Systems)Refrigerator trucks may not be sexy, but they play a vital role in our day-to-day lives by carrying food and supplies from one part of the country to another. However, they also contribute a significant amount of pollution on our roads.
Aura Systems, a company based in El Segundo, Calif., on Wednesday introduced a mobile-power system that keeps produce cold by using electricity instead of diesel fuel.
Traditional refrigeration trucks use a separate diesel engine to drive the compressor that keeps the inside of the truck cold. The extra engine not only emits more pollutants, but is also extremely expensive to operate.
The first vehicle with the new system, the Oasis, is a midsize Isuzu refrigeration truck. The truck's cooling compressor is jump-started by a large power surge (the system can handle between 5 kilowatts and 8.5 kilowatts of power), and it is kept running by the truck's main engine. And although the system still relies on diesel to keep it going, Aura reps say the elimination of the second motor saves, on average, about $250 in fuel costs per month, per truck.
The Oasis is set be on display at the Worldwide Food Expo October 24 through 27 at McCormick Place in Chicago.
For more information, visit the sites of Global Refrigeration Systems and Aura Systems.
FedEx's diesel-electric hybrid van.
(Credit: FedEx)FedEx Europe subsidiary FedEx Express plans to add 10 diesel-electric hybrid vans to its fleet, the company announced Monday.
The vehicles, made by Fiat Group company Iveco, will be used in routes around Turin, Italy, where the company has a manufacturing plant.
"FedEx is making smart strategic investments in projects that will help drive the commercial development of new technologies for industry. We expect these hybrid-electric vehicles to perform with increased fuel efficiency and decreased emissions, making them ideal for city and urban environments," Robert W. Elliott, president of FedEx Express, said in a statement.
A sample van and the hardware used to make the diesel-electric hybrid possible will be on display at the European Road Transport Show in Amsterdam October 25 through November 3.
FedEx already has 95 hybrid-electric vehicles worldwide that have traveled more than 1 million miles, according to a company statement. The vehicles are operated in the United States, Canada and Japan. Italy's addition brings the hybrid fleet to more than 100.
Transonic is coming clean with its ambitions: it is working on a fuel injection system that will let liquid fuel cars get 100 miles a gallon.
And an engine equipped with Transonic's technology will be able to run on gas, ethanol or other types of fuel without help from batteries. In other words, a car with a Transonic-assisted engine would get as good or better mileage than a plug-in hybrid (mileage on plug-ins drops on freeways) but still have the punch of a gas car. More mileage leads directly to lower emissions, and also less dependence on foreign oil.
Put in a fuel like biodiesel and the car with the technology would, in theory, emit nearly zero emissions from the tailpipe.
The somewhat secretive start-up, based in Southern California, has received investments from both Venrock (the firm that grew out of the Rockefeller fortune) and Khosla Ventures. Until recently, the company has been relatively vague about its plans and still shows only details of its technology under nondisclosure agreements. I was given some details a few months ago but was sworn to secrecy--and, because I promised, I still can't talk about that. But vague details have begun to emerge.
The company has created a new type of fuel injector for high-compression engines that greatly improves energy efficiency, according to its Web site. Waste heat is minimized by the efficient use of energy, but efficiency can also be boosted by more advanced thermal management technologies and sophisticated combustion chamber designs.
Meanwhile, major car makers are trying to eke out efficiencies in their engines. General Motors and Toyota have been researching Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI), which increases mileage by varying the pressure and temperature inside an engine, for the past few years. HCCI promises to boost fuel economy by 20 percent or more. Honda has a diesel Accord coming in 2010 that gets 62 miles per gallon.
The company's president is Mike Cheiky, who also help start battery start-up Zinc Matrix Power. Cheiky, who has 45 patents and pending patent applications to his name, also has invented technology for the cellular industry. He invented some early prototypes around the ideas behind Transonic in 2005 and formed the company in 2006.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, Venrock partner Ray Rothrock wrote a bit about the company in a column on VentureBeat.
"It minimizes the volume of carbon emissions by developing a way to reduce the amount of gasoline or other liquid fuels needed to go the same distance as engines today," he said. "This injector can be supplemented by advanced thermal management, EGR, electronic valves, and advanced combustion chamber geometries for even better utilization of a unit of fuel."
The Volvo C30 Efficiency is expected to get about 52 mpg.
(Credit: Volvo Car Corporation)Looks like the 2008 C30 from Volvo will offer more to entice young consumers than just an impressive sound system, a hatchback with room for Ikea packages and a wonderfully quirky Web site.
Volvo announced Monday that an "Efficiency" version of the 2008 C30 with a 1.6-liter turbo diesel engine will get about 4.5 liters/100 km (52 mpg).
Additionally, Volvo said that its Volvo C30, S40 and V50 with the 2-liter turbo diesel engine will have a new "Powershift" gearbox that will reduce overall fuel consumption by about 8 percent.
The Volvo C30 was originally announced at the 2006 Paris Auto Show and is anticipated to be a rival for young consumers against Audi's A3 and BMW's Mini, Mini Cooper Clubman and 1-series models.
PALO ALTO, Calif.--This is sort of like the "two, two, two mints in one" solution for the clean-tech set.
Australia's Terra Fuel Technologies has come up with a device that, when added to a diesel car, bus or truck, lets the vehicle also run partly on ethanol. You need to add a second gas tank on the vehicle to hold ethanol, but in the end, it's an ethanol-diesel car. The device, a black box, controls the flow of ethanol into the engine.
The company has tested it and will start selling it in the United States.
Who in their right mind would want this? Adding ethanol to a diesel engine actually improves performance of the vehicle by about 10 percent while reducing emissions, said Alexander Daniel, vice president of Business Strategies International, which is trying to help Terra Fuel get traction in the States.
Running a diesel engine on vegetable oil, a clean alternative, can degrade performance a little, even according to biodiesel fans.
Diesel drivers, of course, can reduce emissions by running their cars on a mix of regular diesel and biodiesel. But biodiesel is made from oil, Alexander and others at BSI noted, and a lot of countries don't have a lot of spare vegetable oil. Australia, for instance, grows sugarcane, which can be turned into ethanol.
So who knows?
The company presented its objectives at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit here Wednesday.
Audi TT
(Credit: Candace Lombardi/CNET Networks)We know Audi has the fastest diesel engine in the world, but does it also have the cleanest one?
Many car companies have been touting diesel engine technology as the short-term solution to fuel prices and environmental concerns. Others are making hybrids or concentrating on improving the efficiency of gas engines.
Audi may have something that will blow them all away.
The company plans to incorporate the TDI (turbocharged direct injection) technology that was used in its Le Mans-winning R10 TDI sports car into its existing line of consumer cars. That's not surprising.
Here's the kicker.
The company claimed in its announcement that it will be selling cars with "the cleanest diesel technology in the world" by mid-2008.
It's a pretty bold statement considering Honda showcased a diesel Accord that gets 62 miles per gallon.
Of course, that Honda won't be out until 2010 and Audi said "cleanest," not most fuel-efficient, so maybe there's some wiggle room there.
The new extra-efficient versions of existing Audi models will be designated with an "e." Some of them will be diesel and some more fuel-efficient gas engine cars, with hybrids also in the works.
Audi said in a statement that its "e" cars will beat "the most stringent emissions limits that are to be applied in the future in Europe as soon as production starts." I think Audi is aiming to beat out the Mercedes-Benz E320 BlueTec, which won the next World Green Car Award, in addition to winning over consumers.
I guess winning World Car Design of the Year and World Car Performance for 2007 just wasn't good enough.
The Mercedes E320 Bluetec is one of several clean diesel cars coming to America
(Credit: CNET Networks)Barely a week after it was announced that a California man is suing Honda for the worse-than-advertised fuel economy of his Civic Hybrid, an independent study has found that he is not alone in his disillusionment.
Results from this week's J.D. Power and Associates' second annual Alternative Powertrain Study show that the number of customers considering buying a hybrid has declined over the past year, partly due to a realization of the actual mileage that hybrid cars are likely to achieve. Of the 4,000 participants surveyed, 50 percent said they were considering a hybrid compared with 57 percent in 2006. J.D. Power also attributes the drop in hybrid interest to an increase in the number of clean diesel vehicles; the study found that the number of new car buyers considering a diesel had nearly doubled over the past year.
With fleets of new diesel cars bound for the U.S. over the next few years and the demise of some hybrid models, is this the beginning of a gear-change in the alternative-fuel economy?
