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

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.

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.

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).

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: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.