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Environmentally Friendly Race Cars, Military Vehicles
jackelfish writes "The non-profit organization IdéeVerte Compétition has created a 'space age' race car that runs on Liquefied Petroleum Gas (propane or butane) and is lubricated with sunflower oil. Sponsored by the European Space Agency, the car recently broke the 'LPG powered vehicle' speed record of 315 km/h. The car also utilizes space technologies such as a titanium fuel tank, heat shielding developed for the Ariane launch vehicles and an EGNOS satellite navigation system to determine the speed, acceleration and position of the car in real-time." And reader gkbarr writes "Is the DoD feeling the crunch of sky-high gasoline prices or are they being overrun by a bunch of Greens? Who cares, the latest Humvee looks to be a more capable and greener machine than its predecessors."
"Is the DoD feeling the crunch of sky-high gasoline prices or are they being overrun by a bunch of Greens? Who cares, the latest Humvee looks to be a more capable and greener machine than its predecessors."
I don't see any evidence of a shift at the DoD. Of course, increasing gasoline prices negatively impact anyone with vehicles - but if you want to save money due to gasoline prices, there are things you can do today.
For instance, government fleet vehicles could be hybrids. "But hybrids cost more, so the savings is negligable!". That's true... at TODAY'S fuel prices. But since fleet vehicles have a 3 year life (within the fleet), and since Wall Street says that gasoline prices will rise 40-50% within the next two years, a move to hybrids will cause the real cost of operating the fleet to fall dramatically.
Or, more fleet vehicles could go with LNG. The US has a lot of natural gas, and NG's price is a bit more stable than oil's price.
Right now, whenever you fill up your car with gas, remember that half the profits go directly to the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other terror-supporting states. In fact, they make enough money with these profits to do things like build nuclear weapons. In fact, Iran admits it is. Other countries haven't admitted it (Iraq, Saudi Arabia), but there is no reason to believe they aren't (or haven't) gone down that road covertly.
And for just that reason alone, LNG, with it's low and stable pricetag, is a compelling alternative to traditional gasoline.
Fleet vehicle operations cost the US taxpayer billions of dollars a year. Shouldn't these vehicles promote US policy and strive to reduce taxpayer costs?
We're not talking about taking away your car - we're talking about making some government beaurocrat's official vehicle much cheaper to run, and keeping US dollars here (and out of the middle east).
Is it just me or is 315km/h not very impressive?
I live in Poland (where car drives you) and people often modify their cars to use LPG instead of petrol (actually the car can run on both fuels).
The car loses some of its horsepower, but I've been driving at almost 200km/h on LPG myself, so I see no reason to employ space technology to go 50% faster.
There is research done in this direction (not by the DOD I would assume) - each piece of equipment has an "environmental backpack" which consists of the emissions generated and the resources used during it's research and development. Obviously, this is not exactly an easy thing to define clearly, or for that matter to measure. Also, the emissions generated during it's usage are typically considered more important simply due to the fact that the environmental backpack is a fixed cost (per item) while otherwise the emissions increase with usage. I guess (but don't know) the direct emissions of, say, a car are greater than the backpack emissions after a few months of average usage.
This all applies very much to computer parts, which have a relatively huge backpack compared to their direct emissions (ie. by power consumption): Recent research by the German-based Wuppertal Institute as part of a large-scale investigation of Digital Europe showed that a 200g handheld computer requires the equivalent of 58 kilograms of raw materials in its manufacture, a massive overhead that we rarely think about. (from an undated article)
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Haha, is there anything more harmful to it's environment than a military vehicle?
Several million soccer moms in Ford Explorers averaging 11-14mpg might qualify.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.