Apr
2
A Green Confusion
April 2, 2008 |
James made a very interesting observation in one of his BusinessGreen Blog weekly discussion posts, namely: we are living in an age of confusion, green confusion?
I’m definitely sharing his frustration over the confusion we are suffering concerning green issues and particularly transport policy and the production of new auto technologies. I feel it is an unfortunate by-product of the information age we live in that there are literally thousands of individuals, garage inventors, start-ups and auto manufacturers out there - ALL trying to do green motoring better than the rest.
James notes the prevelance of combustion technology in auto production for over 50 years, and the minimal changes that have been made to the design of these engines which literally live to breathe co2. He is quite right in saying that after half a century of tinkering with the domestic engine it is close to ‘perfection’ in doing what it does - burning refined fossil fuel, which is unfortunately now what we (or at least some of us) don’t want.
What we have to remember though is that 50 years ago, even 20 years ago we simply did not have the tools we do now. We live in an age where you can find anything on the internet within 0.25 of a second, or where we can share ideas and start a project with someone half way round the world. We now have not only the expendable income for our projects, but the eco-conciousness to turn this motivation to trying to do something that in essence seems quite simple: making a car run greener.
It will undoubtedly take time for green-production to gain traction in the auto industry as any other. Yes this is frustrating and yes, we’ve been waiting for cohesive design and production of the new world-saving green car for what seems like a long, long time now. But has it really been that long? In real terms (and I’m talking mass production and multi-million $ budgets now) green technology has not been on the agenda for that long at all. In fact it seems like only yesterday that car manufacturers were ignoring alternative technologies altogether - now we are at the stage of mass producing semi-hybrids and stop gap motors for the green consumer. No, this is not an ideal situation, yes a lot of these models are simply to cash-in on a new market and yes we have a 100 miles to go.. but this has to be encouraging, no? I know all the people fighting for the little guys will be saying ‘no’ right now, but hear me out.
If we are to see an end to the confusion of hairbrained schemes and half finished uber-sustainable cars that never deliver then I’m sorry, but that push has to come from the top down where the money is and the support network is in place. Only yesterday I was writing about the OneCAT - just another neat little car and good design that could have died out and soon been forgotten. The designers have spent a good few years struggling to make it to the market without any widespread success. Now India’s car giants Tata suddenly wake up and decide to put their backing behind the project and what is the result? It looks set to go global within a year - just, like, that.
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