Using Technology to Improve Fuel Efficiency in Vehicles
Today, electric cars and hybrid cars, which use a combination of electricity and gasoline, are becoming more common and are offered by most major automobile manufacturers. With Chevy, Toyota, Nissan, and Ford all offering more energy efficient vehicles, there are more options available today than ever before for someone looking to improve fuel efficiency.
Despite these changes, though, some researchers think it will be some time before the goals put forth by President Obama during his campaign, where he stated he wanted to have one million plug in cars on the road by 2015, are met.
In fact, if the market maintains its heading, it is thought that by 2015, only about 1.5% of all vehicles will powered using electricity. To reinforce these predictions, Chevy, the American Auto-Manufacturer who has been floundering as of late and narrowly avoided bankruptcy during 2009, is only expected to produce 10,000 Volts in 2011 and 60,000 the following year.
Even though the goals put forth by President Obama might not be attainable, this does not mean that we should not try to meet these goals or even that setting high expectations is necessarily a bad thing, as moving away from fossil fuels is important for the environment.
Technologies Used to Increase Fuel Efficiency
The push to develop more energy efficient cars is using some very interesting technology, which isn’t always in the form of a more efficient battery. Some of them actually might be a little surprising you.
- The Dashboard of Tomorrow, Today: Many of the popular Hybrid and electricity cars, like the Toyota Prius and Nissan Maxima Hybrid, include a real time digital display that shows the driver how they are using their power. This allows the driver to see how the way they drive affects their energy usage in real-time, as well as how changing their driving habits can improve efficiency. Reports have found that this helps to raise awareness about energy consumption and has been shown to improve energy efficiency by as much as ten percent.
- The Move Away from the Hybrid: Ford, Toyota, and Honda have all offered Hybrid Vehicles for some time, which use a combination of electric motors and gasoline motors. However, a number of manufacturers are experimenting with creating a 100% electric car that is both economical, but still very powerful. To this end, Telsa, who are named for the amazing inventor Nikola Telsa, is an up-and-coming manufacturer of some very fast all electric sports car. In the coming years, more of these types of cars are expected to be released.
- Tires and Energy Efficiency: President Obama caught a lot of flack during the election when he suggested that changing tire pressure would have a dramatic impact on the energy efficiency of vehicles, but he was in fact correct. More and more, auto-parts manufacturers are latching onto the essential role of tires in energy efficiency, most notably with the low rolling-resistant tires, which can improve fuel efficiency by almost 5%. This might not sound like a lot, but even if only half of our cars switched to these more efficient tires, we could save over a billion gallons of fuel each year. Some vehicles, like the Ford F-150 now come with more energy efficient tires.
- Loosing Weight is Not Just About Fitting into that Bathing Suit: Reducing the weight of vehicles is one of the most effective ways to improve fuel efficiency, with most manufacturers realizing the heavy steel cars are simply not efficient. To this end, most manufacturers are looking towards lighter-weight materials such as carbon Fiber and plastics, although Carbon Fiber is quite expensive.
About the Author
Tiger is a writer involved who often focuses on health issues, but also enjoys technology. Currently, he is a writer for Combibo Communications, which is a new revenue sharing website, where writers from all over the world can share their knowledge and experience. While in its Beta, enrollment at Combio is not open to the public, but you can submit a brief application in the contact us section, including a link to some of your published work, so you can take advantage of this excellent platform.
Comments
It would be interesting to see more electric cars on the road. Electric cars are fun to drive and are great for the environment. It’s a time to convert to electric for our sake and our environment’s sake!
I really like the dashboards of hybrid cars. I was recently driving a hybrid Toyota Camry and it showed me how much gas I was using per kilometer. It didn’t make me slow down much on that one drive, but seeing those numbers on a regular basis would change the way I drive.
Tires are probably the easiest way to make any vehicle more energy efficient though. Any vehicle that has under-inflated tires is simply using more energy than it should.
I remember when SUV’s were the in vehicles and all the celebrities had them and now that the green movement is becoming more popular we are starting to see more and more fuel efficient vehicles on the highways. They are now becoming more stylish and affordable as well.
It will be interesting to see the landscape of cars in the near future, I think overtime though the market will tell us which of the fuel efficiency solutions will eventually prevail. I am positive though that in the near future the MPG will certainly be vastly improved from what see today.
Till then,
Jean
I think we have some way to go regarding the safety of carbon fibre and plastic cars. Crumple zones are not as possible as in steel cars.
One way of saving weight is to look at what we carry about every day. If most people weighed all the things they don’t need in ther cars they would be amazed.
Good point using technology to improve fuel efficiency, it’s good for environment and people also.
I think that making electric cars genuinely desirable is the key to getting them into more widespread use.