Green Technology and Its Impact in the Auto Industry: Green Technology Articles: Eco20/20

Green Technology and Its Impact in the Auto Industry

While vehicles with gasoline or diesel internal combustion engines are still the ones most purchased by consumers around the world, many car manufacturers are actively involved in the development of green technology that can be applied to their products. Green vehicles are going to set the standard in the in future when it comes to personal vehicles, but on which technologies will they rely?

* Electric Vehicles

Vehicles that use an electric motor instead of the conventional internal combustion engine. In addition, they also use a high capacity battery pack to generate the electricity needed to propel the vehicle. While they are not necessarily a new invention, they have become more used only in the last decade as buyers became encouraged by significant technology advances and tax reduction policies.

The batteries, which are usually Lithium-ion, are fully charged in less than 12 hours by plugging a cable into any standard electrical power source. Together with hybrid electric vehicles this type of vehicles also features a regenerative braking system which uses the kinetic energy generated when braking to replenish the batteries.

Smaller and lighter than conventional vehicles, electric cars produce no gas emissions at all. Generally they can run for up to 160 kilometers in a single charge and are excellent to drive in large cities with busy traffic.

* Hybrid Vehicles

Vehicles that combine two power sources, usually an internal combustion engine and an electric motor, to reduce gas emissions without compromising performance. A set of batteries power the electric motor which is used for low speed driving while the internal combustion engine is automatically turned on at greater speeds.

Quite a few manufacturers have introduced hybrid vehicles lately. The most successful model is Toyota Prius which has sold 2 million units to this day. The great advantage of hybrids over electric cars is that the internal combustion engine and the regenerative braking systems recharge the batteries, eliminating the need to regularly plug the car into a wall socket.

* Fuel Cells Vehicles

Represent all vehicles that use special devices that convert electrochemical energy to generate energy from an electro-chemical reaction. A technology still in development, fuel cells shows a great potential even if presently it is not used on a large scale.

A handful of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have been introduced to the market in recent years and many more are in development. One of the issues that trouble manufacturers the most is the production of hydrogen which is still far from being a cost-efficient process.

* Ethanol Vehicles

Refers to vehicles that use as a fuel ethanol produced from sugar cane. Engine efficient, ethanol is used all over the world as a reliable fuel. Brazil is the country where it is most popular, but the United States and some nations from Western Europe are increasingly using it. Bioethanol is a fuel derived from ethanol that can be considered entirely safe for the environment because the carbon dioxide emitted into the air by bioethanol cars is neutralized by the fuel crop which absorbs an equal quantity of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while it grows.

Green technology influences a lot the developments in the vehicle industry because almost everyone seems to believe that gasoline and diesel vehicles are simply to harmful to the environment to be considered reliable in the future.