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."

Comments

Environment Friendly Military?!

[formal_entity]

Haha, is there anything more harmful to it's environment than a military vehicle? After all they are created to destroy and kill things.

Re:Environment Friendly Military?!

[imsabbel]

Think different!
More military->more wars->less humans-> better enviroment :)

Re:Environment Friendly Military?!

[zakezuke]

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.

Re:Environment Friendly Military?!

[SylvesterTheCat]

Is there anything more inaccurate than sweeping generalizations?

Re:Environment Friendly Military?!

[gwiner]

...And since when are humans less important than the environment? Screw the trend, the earth will adapt or die. Surely we can invent a technology that will allow us to breath CO2, and live underwater.

An observation

[daniil]

Whenever some vehicle is called "environmentally friendly," this title always seems to be referring to its fuel consumption. It's as if fuel exhaust gases were all there is to environment. What seems to be neglected in these cases is that building the vehicle (or any other machine) also takes up resources, pollutes, etc. Is there any research being done in these areas as well, or are they simply not deemed as important as reducing air pollution from exhaust fumes?

Re:An observation

[moonbender]

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)

Re:An observation

[kfg]

. . .are they simply not deemed as important as reducing air pollution from exhaust fumes?

It's always easier to get a warm, fuzzy feeling by focusing intently on one small parameter, doing something about that, and thinking you've solved the problem than it is to acknowledge the whole picture.

Ignorance, after all, is bliss.

When I pointed out to a friend that part of the cost of replacing older, less "enviromentally friendly" cars with new cars was the pollution inherent in dispossing of the old car prematurely and manufacturing the new one (not to mention the pollution inherent in earning the money to buy the new car, and the pollution inherent in. . .) he was stunned. He'd simply never thought of that issue. All he'd ever heard about were emmisions, so that's all he ever thought about.

It's almost always more 'friendly' in the long run to use existing systems until they naturally expire than it is to replace them with new systems before that time. After all, isn't that why many of us spend so much time maintaining existing code base?

Is there any research being done in these areas as well. . .

Oh sure. There are people, such as myself, who give a considerable amount of thought to the issue, and put a certain amount of work into it as well, but after doing it for a few decades you are inevitably faced with an issue:

Until the skies are all thick and brown, and the oil is all gone, nobody much is going to care. It always boils down to a dietary issue with shades of laziness on top("Yo, have we got enough money for a pizza?" Cool, have it delivered").

When that time comes there will be those of us standing around with solutions that might have been, although at that point largely irrelevant because, while they would have kept the air from becoming thick and brown, won't, in and of themselves, make the air any less thick.

There's an eternal cycle of creating your own problems, than patting yourself on the back for being clever enough to wangle your way out of them, and so far as I've ever been able to determine from observation, the purpose of man as machine seems to be to incessantly worry about the future while doing nothing practical about it, all the while regreting the past.

I don't understand it, but it seems to make people "happy."

KFG

Re:An observation

[Comatose51]

The point of the research really wasn't about being environmentally friendly. The title and snippet are misleading. The DoD's goal is to make a more efficient vehicle so that it can operate with less logistical support. Logistical support is a huge issue with the military. How far an army or navy can move or strike has always been limited by that. Even while the Germans were chasing the British across north Africa, they were limited by the lack of fuel. The problem still exists today. It is estimated that for every person on the ground fighting, there's another 4 people doing logistics to keep him supplied. A military as technologically advance as the US will have a huge logistics train. So a more efficient vehicle is always a very desirable thing. If the vehicle happens to be environmentally friendly, then all the better but that wasn't the point. So to answer your question, I really doubt that the DoD researched environmentally friendly manufacturing processes.

Re:An observation

[WIAKywbfatw]

Sorry, but I disagree. The adverts I've seen for environmentally-friendly vehicles don't just emphasise their fuel consumption, they also stress how recyclable the cars are.

Making anything takes time, resources and energy, and something like a car, however green it is, is going to require a fair amount of all three in its manufacture. The start of a car's life, when it's built, isn't going to be where the best non-fuel-related savings are going to be made: even the most efficient build process wouldn't be much improvement over the efficiency that car manufacturers already display.

The biggest savings are to be made at the other end, at the end of a car's usefulness, when it can be either scraped (as in the case with most cars nowadays) or recycled (as will be the case with newer, greener cars when they are retired).

But, let's face it, only a small percentage of car buyers think about anything before or beyond their use of their vehicle. To most people, a car's initial cost, fuel efficiency, maintenance and resale value are the only things that matter. Given that, it's natural that fuel efficiency becomes the environmental selling point, because it's about the money in your pocket now, which is a concept that most people grasp straight away.

Bottom line: people are looking at those areas that you mention, and they have done something about it but you don't sell a Toyota Prius over a Hummer on the basis of how easy it will be to junk in 10, 15 or 20 years' time.

Re:An observation

[mabhatter654]

But design & manufacture pollutants can be more easlily controlled at a central point and are one-time occurances. That's the true benifits of the focus on electric power for all sorts of stuff. Because it allows you to build one, well regulated, super-polluter...and have the local devices be extremely clean.

Things like lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and chainsaws are "simpler" devices, but pound-for-pound nearly 10x as bad as gas-guzzlers like the Hummer.

The real factor in the military's decision for fuel performance is the cost to get the fuel to the troops. Under the current numbers it takes 17 gallons of fuel to get 1 gallon in the tank of a front-line vehical. The army units getting whipped in Iraq right now are the ones that are part of hauling around those "17 Gallons" not intended to be fighting...if you can cut the number of PEOPLE hauling gas [and supplies for themselves!] around then you have fewer people in harms way. The other advantage is the movement/surprise factor. A more effiecent vehical can move further on a "turn" meaning the enemy must improve survailance over a wider area or risk security holes. You can drop fewer troops further from their targets, hit the targets earlier, and avoid "tipping your hand" by moving fewer support troops!

Re:An observation

[kfg]

However, if people did not go out and purchase these vehicles and new technologies then we would all still be driving around in Model T Fords.

The issue is not the purchase of new vehicles, the issue is the timing of the purchase and what is done with the old vehicle. As old vehicles wear out and are disposed of at the end of their natural life cycle they will, of course, be replaced by a new vehicle, preferably a "better" one than the old. The tide of technology can still move forward at a sustainable rate.

There are those, however, who advocate dispossing of (not reselling used, which is what happens to your old car when you buy a new hybrid; dispossing of) older, but still perfectly operational, vehicles and replacing them with new ones. In fact, many of them wish to mandate this.

I, for one, would not shed a tear if we got rid of 90% of all the cars, period, but I'm afraid I can only think of those people as ignorant twits. The ignorant part would be curable, if it weren't for the twit part.

I'm also likely willing to interpose my body as a living baricade between the crusher and the Bugatti T35, or even Ford Model T.

That said, perhaps we all should be driving the Model T. . .

I've driven a few, and it is still a perfectly viable automobile for the sort of driving most people do, most of the time, given a few modern improvements. The latest technology often goes far beyond what would be perfectly sufficient, but at least it often costs a lot more (there are, of course, cases where the newer technology costs a lot less).

Note that Henry F. once made a Model T prototype from locally grown soybean oil plastic, and powered it with locally produced corn alcohol. His vision was a local farm produced infrastructure, so maybe we should all be driving Model Ts.

John D. had another idea, however.

People are People and they like shiny new things.

Which is exactly why no special, government mandated, accelerated program to replace older cars is needed in the first place, and they can leave those few of us that prefer older, classic things the hell alone.

KFG

Re:An observation

[Peyna]

I know of at least one example of an assembly plant trying to lower it's resource consumption. Actually, after a quick google search, it appears there are at least four GM plants using landfill gas for energy.

Why do they do these things? Because in many cases, there actually is a cost savings in more "green" industrial methods.

Re:An observation

[SnapShot]

You are absolutly right, but I would take it a step farther and say that it applies to every aspect of our industrial society. I wish more people would realize that being green is only a by-product of being more efficient. This isn't a war between the environmentalists and the industrialists, it is a war between efficiency and waste.

At the risk of oversimplifying, what is pollution? It's a layman's term for entropy. The conversion of a good from an ordered state into an unordered state. Every drop of industrial pollution is a reduction in shareholder value: heat, energy, and resources that could have been saved are lost. Every drop of consumer pollution is reflected in higher heating bills, lighting bills, and gasoline bills. The only reason it is cheaper to pollute than it is not to pollute is that we are rarely asked to pay for the real costs of what we consume.

that RST is very toyota!

[snellgrove2]

Combining a standard internal-combustion-engine with an electric generator, and motors (which can also be run in reverse, when coasting / braking, thus returning the kinetic energy back into electrical power) is exactly the same idea, as Toyota have come up with in their family car, the "Prius" which is called the "Hybrid Synergy Drive"

I have driven a prius about 4 times now, and have managed to average, at "99.9 miles per gallon" as it says on the display. albeit, ive only managed that to last about 10 minutes, when doing around 40mph, on relatively flat land, but still its pretty damn good fuel economy

Re:that RST is very toyota!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have driven a prius about 4 times now, and have managed to average, at "99.9 miles per gallon" as it says on the display. albeit, ive only managed that to last about 10 minutes, when doing around 40mph, on relatively flat land, but still its pretty damn good fuel economy

That's nothing. On my display in my 1966 Ford F-250 with a 5.7l engine and 50 gal fuel tanks I've managed to hit 100 mpg on my analog vacuum gauge. Imagine a 7,500 pound truck going down hill and you'll understand.

Re:that RST is very toyota!

[pchan-]

i can do better. when rolling down hill, i can push in the clutch, put the car into neutral, and shut off the engine. the car's guages don't seem to work too well when it's shut off, but by my rough calculations (since my car is accelerating down hill without using any gasoline), i am getting better than infinity miles per gallon. i tried to check if i had more gas in my tank when i reached the bottom of the hill than at the top, but unfortunately, this was not the case.

Re:that RST is very toyota!

[cymen]

If by impossible you mean requiring significantly more effort.

Don't panic

[halftrack]

But don't worry, a green-friendly Humvee is fairly low-priority on the DoD's list of innovations.

So relax, will ya... The DoD's not going to start respecting things. And with the Hummer you don't have to either.

Re:Ok, fine.

[Maljin Jolt]

Lithium polymer battery contains no acid. However, I would guess what "greener" actually means in military slang: using a darker color paint...

I remember those days...

[The Desert Palooka]

Running on Butane, all lubed up with Safflower oil...

DoD Research

[Registered Coward v2]

Actually, there's a lot of hybrid vehicle development going on at DoD - even for the current batch of HMMV's,

The militray is always interetsed in lower fuel consumption (as long as it doesn't degrade mission capabilities), because that means you have to haul less gas to the battlefield, lessening the logistical footprint. Fuel costs are a very small part of the equation - more of an added benefit than a driver, at least for combat and combat support vehicles.

In addition, hybrids can be more stealthy - less thermal signature, lower noise, etc. - which maes them better for many types of missions.

Size counts as wll - anything that helps load it (or more of them) into a C-130 or C-17 is a plus, especially since the US military is moving to lighter fast reaction forces that can be airlifted quickly to combat zones, rather than running massive convoys of ships that take days to get there.

Fix government waste first

[Anonymous Coward]

"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).

Interesting goals for the Humvee

[Myself]

The hybrid Humvee project I heard about was not so much to reduce fuel consumption, though that was a side benefit. The main goal was to generate lots of electricity without having to tow a generator trailer.

It was also done with a different engine, and didn't include so many differences from the regular chassis. The one described in this article is by far a more advanced concept, and it looks like it's almost production ready.

It's too bad the civilian Hummer is just a Suburban now. I'd like to see one of these bad boys on the dealer's lot! (I'd imagine the local Ham radio survivalist types could build a whole comm station into one.)

Speed record

[elh_inny]

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.

Re:Speed record

[imsabbel]

Well, you realize that 300km/h needs 2.25 times the power than 200km/h, 315 even more but i dont want to pick up a calculator. Kinetic energy and wind drag go with v^2, or else it wouldnt be hard to reach high speeds at all...

this one might be different..

[xot]

..but all other solar/electric/natural fuel powered vehicles crawl slower than snails.Usually never more than 80-100kmph.
For these cars to be be commercially viable for production, the speed has to be near 200 kmph.Thats more than enough for most people.I think speed is one of the reasons why these cars don't sell.

Re:this one might be different..

[horza]

I think hydrogen counts as a natural fuel, and BMW have non-commercial versions going 300 km/h. The fact is that when you say electric vehicles crawl slower than snails you only mean top-end speed. An electric vehicle will leave its petrol equivalent dead at the lights. I think the massive increase in acceleration will be a big seller.

Phillip.

Re:this one might be different..

[dselic]

Actually, it is. In Europe lots of people convert their cars to run on natural gas, mostly because it costs way less than gasoline. Although this usually entails a small reduction in performance, the benefits as measured in lower operating costs by far outweight the disadvantages, such as lower autonomy caused by slightly higher fuel consumption and the loss of some trunk space (which is where the extra tank goes).

I'm surprised this hasn't caught on in the US, especially with the recent increase in oil prices. Cars that run on natural gas can revert to gasoline by simply flipping a switch.

Electrical Loads

[Detritus]

Hybrids are also useful for vehicles with large electrical loads, which is the case for many military vehicles.

Re:I don't get it!

[rben]

Hydrogen isn't exactly a perfect fuel either. Hydrogen has to be generated, usually by splitting water, which requires electricity. That electricity is often generated by burning fossil fuels like oil or coal. (Yes, it can also be generated by other greener means, but most power production in the U.S. still involves fossil fuels. BTW, wind power is probably the best option since it actually takes energy out of the atmosphere directly.) Storage of Hydrogen safely is also problematic.

Right now, the best bet for the environment is probably the hybrid vehicle. I'm especially interested in the new Honda Accord which is coming out since I've been driving Accords all my life. These vehicles use the energy generated by burning gasoline much more sensibly. Regenerative braking and instant off/on for the engine help dramatically lower the fuel consumption without turning your car into a wimp. (Anyone driving in Boston or Chicago will appreciate the need for a little get up and go when dealing with crazy drivers.)

No matter how green the car is, you still have to get people to buy it. People are attracted to the Humvee because of it's military association. I hope the same magnetism influences them to buy hybrids based on the new design discussed in the article.

While we keep trying to ignore it, the problems with our climate are going to continue to increase. We've increased the carbon in our atmosphere by over one third in the last few decades. You can't change the global makeup of your atmosphere without expecting some pretty dramatic changes in how that atmosphere behaves. We should all be doing our part to lower the impact our daily lives have on our already stressed environment.

New Humvee looks like APC from Aliens

[Ingolfke]

The new Humvee looks similar to the APC from Aliens. Granted the picture of the new humvee is in its travel mode, but there are still some obvious similarities.

coupe or hatch?

[ForestGrump]

so its a 2 door coupe with a hatch? or a 3 door HB?

This is better: no normal drive train

[r00t]

This uses 4 electric motors in the wheels.
That means it doesn't need a sloppy differential
to let the wheels on the outside of a turn go
faster than the wheels on the inside of a turn.

The Prius, while nice, lacks this ability.
A Prius has a direct linkage from the engine to
the wheels; electric power is only an assist.

Re:This is better: no normal drive train

[Ba3r]

not to mention the benefits of all wheel drive, independant traction control, and sheer torque from having four wheel based motors. The only real drawback is the maximum speed.. which is limited to the max rpms of the motor. However, nobody except racers needs to have a car that goes 150 mph.. in fact for all intents and purposes a car that can burn up a quarter mile, but maxes out at 100 is probably the perfect solution for general society.

I am just waiting for the day that i get my four wheel-motored pickup with 400+ hp.. and 35mpg.

It's mostly the wheel hubs

[No Such Agency]

The wheels look *very* similar. Also the low, compact, angular chassis with no protrusions - the "Aliens" APC was a design which would actually make sense for air transport to a combat zone (which of course was its role in the movie).

Glaring Errors

[Dun Malg]

TFA is ill researched crap. First, this Shadow hybid vehicle is not suitable as a 1:1 replacement for the HMMWV except in a very small number of roles; it's a light attack vehicle with no cargo capacity. The hummer is 1 1/4 ton truck. Then there's this choice bit of irrelevancy:

A typical Humvee guzzles over 1,000 pounds of fuel per mission, and the civilian equivalent (the Hummer H2) was ranked among the "12 Most Environmentally Unfriendly Vehicles of 2004."

The Hummer H2 is not the civilian equivalent of the HMMWV, the H1 is. The H2 is a totally unrelated vehicle based on the Chevy Tahoe SUV. The military is obviously interested in reducing fuel consumption, as driving tankers of diesel around is a logistical nightmare, but really that's about the end of it. And at the end there's this glaring error:

the Shadow RST-V is slated to replace the M151 A2 fast attack vehicle currently used by the Marine Corps for Special Forces (SF)support. After test and evaluation and rigorous trials, the RST-Vs superior mobility, deployability and fuel economy are welcome advantages over the Humvee's loud, gas guzzling ways.

OK, so the Shadow isn't replacing the "gas guzzling" Hummer, it's replacing the M151A2! The M151 is the good old fashioned jeep, with a tiny 4 cylinder gasoline engine. Hardly a gas guzzler. The author clearly wanted to put a "green" spin on the story, but didn't bother to research a number of his assumptions, the stupidest of which was assuming the M151A2 was the Hummer!

Re:Naming Issues

[CmdrGravy]

I agree it makes sense when you see where it has come from I just can't help thinking it also makes perfect sense to your average 9year old thinking of a name for his new super duper weapon with which he will smite the armies of his friends and rival gangs.

Also I wonder where they might go from here:

Super Wicked Space Robostallion
Super Fire Breathing Sea Kraken Of Law
Mad Water Monster What Can Fly
Ultimate Storm Stallion

Green Industry and Globalization

[Shihar]

I can only speak for American companies so other parts of the world are probably different, but I can say that over the past 10 years, American companies have started to become more fanatical about being 'green', at least with companies that deal with chemicals. 30 years ago in your average American corporate engineering lab they used all manner of horrible chemicals and it generally was not a big deal. They built things using terrible side products.

Over the past few years though, I have noticed a pretty dramatic change. All of the companies I have ended up working for (3) have been fanatically dedicated to 'greening up' and have put major amounts of money into changing processes over so that they use more green materials. In fact, a good way to get your project killed is to request the use of something hazardous when it isn't absolutely necessary.

The major reason this change, from my understanding as an engineer and not a policy marker in a company, is that companies are becoming more and more global. The Internet revolution made global companies much more viable and much more efficient. Even small companies are becoming very global. I worked at a company that had 500 people under it, but was located in something like 20 nations. The Internet and advances in IT has really made this sort of set up not only possible, but very effective. The net result is that whenever a company needs to make a product, they need to meet standards of every nations that they intend to sell it in. So, whoever has the lowest standards really IS the standard.

For instance, I was working with a company that was making power supplies. They used to make the batteries out of lead and some other ugly chemicals. They spent a massive pile of money trying to work the lead and other harmful chemicals out of it to meet an EU law. Another company that I worked for that did capacitor work did something similar when they put a pile of R&D money into meeting a Japanese law. I even was working in a project to meet a Chinese standard once - not that China is the most environmentally friendly nation in the world, but they do have some tough laws that they hold foreign businesses to but not their own domestic industries.

Whatever the case, people boo-hoo globalization for environmental reasons, but I can say that in the chemical industry in the US, globalization can take more credit then anything for the greening of the industry.