{"id":29,"date":"2007-10-29T04:45:45","date_gmt":"2007-10-29T03:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/29"},"modified":"2008-03-27T10:54:20","modified_gmt":"2008-03-27T09:54:20","slug":"more-predictions-hybrid-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/29","title":{"rendered":"Hybrid Power Predictions (&#038; Why Biofuels Can&#8217;t Be The Answer)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Update:<\/strong> Hot on the heels of this post comes a report from the OECD, no less, entitled <em>&#8220;Biofuels: Could the Cure Be Worse Than the Disease?&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I hate to say I told you so&#8230; (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.renewableenergyaccess.com\/rea\/news\/reinsider\/story?id=50616\" target=\"_blank\">Full details here<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s time for another prediction about the future of light commercial vehicles (vans to you and me):<\/p>\n<p>Hybrids will be big for the next 10-20 years &#8211; and they deserve to be much bigger than biofuels.<\/p>\n<p>Hybrid-powered vehicles, in case you haven&#8217;t come across them yet, utilise both a diesel or petrol engine <strong>and<\/strong> an electric motor.<\/p>\n<p>At low speeds, the electric motor is driven by some beefy batteries and the main engine is off &#8211; meaning zero emissions and zero fuel consumption.<\/p>\n<p>Once speeds rise, the diesel or petrol engine automatically kicks in and starts providing extra power &#8211; for out-of-town driving speeds. The batteries for the electric motor also get charged by the main engine while it&#8217;s running.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>So that&#8217;s hybrids &#8211; back to my predictions&#8230; <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Hybrid setups provide two massive advantages:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A considerable reduction in urban emissions &#8211; where the electric setup is most at home<\/li>\n<li>A considerable improvement in fuel consumption &#8211; urban and stop\/start driving (think motorway queues) gives very poor fuel consumption<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Hybrid drivetrains are really starting to take off commercially now &#8211; both in the USA and in Europe. They are politically acceptable, increasingly technologically practical and seem to scale quite well, too.<\/p>\n<p>Hybrids have always been more expensive than non-hybrid setups, but that cost differential is gradually being eroded, too.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>So what&#8217;s this got to do with commercial vehicles?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>As well as well-known hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius, which are already in commercial production,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.roadtransport.com\/blogs\/big-lorry-blog\/2007\/09\/volvo-hybrid-fe-in-2009-biglor.html\" target=\"_blank\"> commercial vehicle manufacturers are increasingly experimenting with<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autobloggreen.com\/2007\/10\/24\/fedex-to-use-plug-in-electric-diesel-hybrid-vans\/\" target=\"_blank\">trialling hybrid drivetrains for their larger, more fuel-hungry vehicles.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I firmly believe that in the short-medium term, hybrids will triumph over most of the alternative fuels that are currently being hyped up &#8211; especially biofuels.<\/p>\n<p>Biofuels &#8211; (e.g. biodiesel) seem to me to be a poor compromise. They seem to cause as many problems as they might solve.<\/p>\n<p>They drive farmers to start farming for fuel production instead of food (driving food prices up). They will also inevitably cause less-developed countries to sacrifice even larger swathes of jungle and much-needed fertile farming land to start producing cheap oil for fuel use*.<\/p>\n<p>Simple economics make these consequences inevitable.<\/p>\n<p>On top of that, biofuels don&#8217;t address the consumption issue &#8211; a diesel vehicle&#8217;s fuel consumption doesn&#8217;t change just because it&#8217;s using biodiesel.<\/p>\n<p>To me, one of our targets should be to <strong>do <em>more<\/em> with <\/strong><em><strong>less<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Hybrid&#8217;s have the advantage of enabling us to do exactly that &#8211; and of making the most of existing technology, fuel supply chains and infrastructures. I&#8217;m convinced that hybrids will be one of the main bridging technologies that sees us through until the next revolution occurs &#8211; be it fuel cells or something else.<\/p>\n<p>What do you think?<\/p>\n<p><em>(*For example, see &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/story\/0,,2205948,00.html\" target=\"_blank\">The western appetite for biofuels is causing starvation in the poor world&#8221;<\/a>&#8211; The Guardian, 6th November 2007.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s time for another prediction about the future of light commercial vehicles (vans to you and me):<\/p>\n<p>Hybrids will be big for the next 10-20 years &#8211; bigger than alternative fuels.<\/p>\n<p>Hybrid drivetrains are really starting to take off commercially now &#8211; both in the USA and in Europe. They are politically acceptable, increasingly technologically practical and seem to scale quite well, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[139],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}