Introducing The 'Clever Car' at 108 MPG I want one!

[leftchick]

Too bad it is a decade away, we need it now! This is indeed Clever....



This handout file photo issued by the University of Bath shows a graphic of the Clever (Compact Low Emission Vehicle for Urban Transport) vehicle on Monday April 24, 2006. The vehicle's strengthened frame protects the driver in a crash. The car, designed for cities has been developed by a team of European scientists and is designed to combine the safety of a micro car, the maneuverability of a motorbike while being more fuel efficient and less polluting than other vehicles. The vehicle can run on conventional fuels or CNG (Compressed Natural Gas). (AP Photo/University of Bath, HO)

<snip>

BATH, England - It has two seats, three wheels and so far has cost $2.9 million. Students at the University of Bath in western England, who on Monday unveiled the prototype of the CLEVER (Compact Low Emission Vehicle for Urban Transport), hope that it represents a greener future for transport.

The prototype, a skeletal speedster which had safety netting in place of body panels, exhibited the general design and technology of the vehicle rather than its actual, finished appearance.

It has the compactness of a motorcycle but the safety of a car, and cornering is smoothed by a tilting technology developed by mechanical engineering students Matt Barker, 29, Ben Drew, 27 and their instructors.

Equipped to handle both city streets and long-distance highway driving, the vehicle runs on compressed natural gas, is capable of 80 mph speeds.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060426/ap_on_sc/britain_green_car_3

[mom cat]

1. Its a tricycle! I want one too!

[leftchick]

2. A very cute one too!

I obviously could not bring the kids and dog along though.

[mom cat]

15. It is the perfect car for an outing with your cat!

[Poiuyt]

29. Ah yes, Toonces

[Stand and Fight]

3. No...

Looks more like a big-wheel to me... lol

[mom cat]

16. Way too funny!

LOL! . LMAO!

[MazeRat7]

4. Cool, but it looks like one of those bugs destined for the windscreen.

I can almost hear the headline now... Motorized Tricycle crushed by GEO. :rofl:

MZr7

[MuseRider]

5. Hitch up a little red wagon

and you could take it to the store!

Cute, I love it.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

6. My choice if one becomes available and I have the required

euros....

[ianbruce]

20. Heikki Naulapää

It's a design by Heikki Naulapää for Aprilia. I don't think there are any plans to produce it. Sorry.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

22. I'll just have to make my own.... :) n/t

[Warpy]

7. They'd better rethink that door mount

It looks like a real pain in the ass to close that thing when you're sitting inside.

What were they thinking?

[Booster]

8. You're right. You'd have to shut the door before you got in. But

I still want one after they fix that little problem.

[ldf]

9. talk about

picking nits....

:-)

a little strap to grab hold and tug would do just fine.

[laheina]

10. How does one get the compressed natural gas?

If they made a hybrid, I would be all over it.

[Tesha]

26. From the small compressor in your garage, hooked up to the house gas.

(This piece of the technology is pretty-well understood,
and far better understood than the hydrogen blather.)

Tesha

[laheina]

39. Hey!

That sounds even *better* than a hybrid.

[Tesha]

40. Just FYI: "Fuel" and "hybrid or not" are separate concepts.

Just FYI: "Fuel" and "hybrid or not" are separate concepts.

"Hybrid" is just a way of recapturing the energy
you'd otherwise waste whenever the car slows down.
That's why hybrids are at their best in stop-and-go
city mileage and have no effect on highway mileage:
If you aren't slowing down a lot, you aren't wasting
any energy via the brakes anyway.

Choice of fuel is separate; an internal combustion
engine can be designed for any number of fuels;
we commonly see gasoline and fossil or bio diesel
oil as fuels but compressed natural gas (CNG) or
hydrogen are also possible. Right now, CNG is
pretty easy to do; as I pointed out, most people
have access to a supply of it. By comparison,
hydrogen is rare and must be manufactured using
some other source of energy like coal, oil, natural
gas, or nuclear.

Tesha

[valerief]

11. Love it! It's the Anti-SUV! n/t

[Codeine]

12. Wait until an SUV hits it. nt

[valerief]

13. No one will be able to afford to fill the SUV tanks soon anyway.

It would be great if they all radiated the same magnetic charge so that they could never collide. The magnetic repulsion wouldn't allow it. Maybe that could stop cellphone drivers, too.

[Codeine]

18. LOL! We just dodge til they run outta gas! nt

[theHandpuppet]

24. Yeah, the SUV will roll over

And cost ten times as much to fix.

[Orsino]

14. "...Capable of 80mph speeds."

Still pandering to the buyers of phallic symbols.

[MadHound]

17. Nice concept car but,

You're never going to get the average American into one of those, at least not for awhile. And besides, natural gas is a heavy contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and is a disappearing, finite resource to boot.

Rather, let's start using an off the shelf technology now, one that is pretty clean burning, renewable, and can be a boon to our economy and society in many ways.

Biodiesel.

It has been shown that the US can produce enough biodiesel in this country, from hemp and algae, to fulfil all of the needs currently met by gasoline and dino diesel.<http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html>. Think about it, a fuel source made completely within the US, good jobs, domestic control, cleaner enviroment, and revitalizing both agri and aqua culture. And being off the shelf technology, with minimal change needed to the distribution infrastructure, we can implement this tomorrow if we wished.

Then, with our fuel needs met, let us use two more off the shelf technologies in order to provide a comprehensive energy strategy, wind and solar. There is enough wind in three states, Texas, North Dakota and Kansas, to fulfill all of our eletrical needs, including growth, through the year 2030. We have an electrical distribution system that can transfer electrical energy over a thousand miles. We can decentralize with solar and wind, which have no issues about pollution, and are renewable. More jobs, complete domestic energy sufficiency, and we can start implementing this energy strategy now.

Instead of chasing after concept cars and pie in the sky solutions like hydrogen, let's use what we have now before us, so that we can set our feet on a path to a wiser energy solution now. Every moment we delay, every minute we spend waiting for the miracle cure all is a moment wasted, because we have the solution here, now. Power from biodiesel, wind and solar are the magic bullets we have been waiting for, let's start putting them to good use now before it's too late.

[jsamuel]

21. you make good points, but biodiesel is not a solution

A. Most people don't already own diesel cars so the transition would be much harder than what you suggest.
B. Biodiesel, while less dirty than regular gas, is still not a clean energy. It is a slight improvement but would have little effect on helping the environment.

I agree that this car is not really an alternative though, but research is still good.

[MadHound]

23. Sure, there would have to be a period of transition

Any new technology has a transition period. But if we started today, putting only biodiesel into the supply chain, and mandating that all new vehicles only run on diesel engines, within ten years we could easily replace 85-90% of gas based autos with biodiesel powered ones within ten years.

And biodiesel is emits aprox. 90% less pollutants when burned than regular diesel, which is aprox 25% less polluting than gas. Sounds pretty clean to me. Oh, and in the manufacturing process, your waste products are water and glycerin, good for making soap.

Biodiesel is the solution for our fuel needs.

[jsamuel]

36. i disagree, 25% less polluting than gas is not a "solution"

improvement? yes, solution? no

[MadHound]

38. So what is your proposal? Time is a wastin'

While we soul search, and explore one technological dead end after another, our oil based economy is going down the tubes at a very rapid base. Meanwhile our oil based culture, and others like it around the world are spewing out ever greater quantities of pollutants at an ever increasing rate, especially as China and India increase their oil usage.

Rather than waiting around for perfection, let's use what we have now, biodiesel. It is less polluting that gas and dino-diesel. We can supply all of our fuel needs domestically with it, thus it's a boon to workers, jobs and our economy in general. The current infrastructure can, with a few minor tweaks, be used with biodiesel. No, it's not the perfect solution, but I doubt that we'll ever find one. Instead, this is an off the shelf technology that we can employ NOW.

And as is ever the case with the march of technological progress, we can come back to biodiesel vehicles, fit them with filters, convertors, what have you in order to lessen their pollution even further. This is what we've done with gasoline, in my lifetime. We can do the same for biodiesel, which is after all, less polluting than the energy source we're currently using, right out of the box. Besides, biodiesel itself is non-toxic and biodegradable. And the waste products from making biodiesel are similarly non-polluting, being that they're water and glycerin, which can be recycled back into soap.

Our society, both nationaly and globaly, is sinking quickly under the weight of our dependence on oil. We don't have time to wait around for the perfect magic bullet solution. Biodiesel isn't perfect, but it's a damn sight better than anything else we can use off the shelf right now, so I say let's go for it. Then when that magical perfect solution comes along, we can switch to that. But if we wait for the perfect magic bullet solution, we may very well die waiting.

[Tesha]

27. Greenhouse gas-wise, methane is a muche better fuel than diesel.

> And besides, natural gas is a heavy contributor to
> greenhouse gas emissions, and is a disappearing,
> finite resource to boot.

You're confusing the greenhouse effects of the unburned
fuel with the greenhouse effects of the burnt fuel.

Methane, properly burned, produces less CO2 per unit
of heat than *ANY* diesel. It's a simple matter of the
methane having about twice as many hydrogen atoms as
the diesel, and burning hydrogen, as you know, produces
nothing but water vapor.

Tesha

[MadHound]

28. ??????!

Methane, in and of itself is a bigtime greenhouse gas. Burning natural gas also releases methane and CO2, whereas burning biodiesel(or diesel for that matter) only releases CO2 and NO2.

Here are a couple of links for more information
<http://www.epa.gov/methane/>
<http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/cars/biodiesel/emissions.html>

And note that using biodiesel release significantly less greenhouse gases than both regular diesel and gasoline. Sounds good to me.

[Tesha]

30. But when you *BURN* the methane, it stops *BEING* methane.

Burning natural gas (methane) *DOESN'T* "release methane",
it releases the combustion products of methane (which are
water vapor and carbon dioxide).

Burning *ANY* hydrocarbon release water vapor and carbon
dioxide (plus traces of other things based on whatever
contaminants are in the hydrocarbon).

Methane has proportionally more hydrogen than does diesel
so burning methane produces, proportionally, more water
vapor and less carbon dioxide . It's also easier to burn
the methane completely, without the production of the soot
(unburned carbon) that so often accompanies the burning
of diesel oil. That's why so many city transportation
agencies are switching to CNG to fuel their buses.

Methane and biodiesel both have their places, but please
don't argue biodiesel's superiority on the basis of green-
house gas emissions, Considering just the fuel, you'd be
wrong and even if you consider the entire carbon cycle
(including the fuel burned to extract/produce the fuel
sold as the end product), you might still very well be
wrong.

There is also the problem that there isn't nearly enough
biomass in *ALL THE WORLD* to make enough biodiesel to
fill our needs. I have seen numbers that say that we'd
need as many as 400 Earths to produce the biofuels we
would need to replace today's fossil fuels. That is,
*EVERY YEAR*, we burn 400 years worth of the Earth's
total biological productivity!

(And even if that number were off by two *ORDERS OF
MAGNITUDE*, it would still reveal the impossibility
of biofuels completely replacing fossile fuels.)

Tesha

[MadHound]

33. First off, get your science and your terms straight

Natural gas doesn't equal methane. Natural gas is composed of methane, in fact methane is one of its primary components. But natural gas also contains other ingredients that make it seperate and distinct from methane, OK.

In addition, please go read my links. The one to the EPA mentions that methane traps 20 times more heat than CO2. Not good, not good at all. Here is another EPA link, stating that methane escapse into the atmosphere during the extraction, transportation, storage and distribution of natural gas. Just think how much more methane would escape if started using it for transportation fuel. What about the wrecks where the tank would burst, etc. A huge problem.<http://www.epa.gov/methane/sources.html>

In addition, with natural gas we would have to set us an entirely new distribution system for it, while with biodiesel we can use the already existing distribution ingrastructure that we have. And guess what, if there is a biodiesel spill, it's all good, because biodiesel is both non-toxic(hell, I've drank some) and biodegradable. Have a CNG leak, and there's huge problems.

In addition, if you will look at my link above<http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html> you will see that we CAN meet all of our fuel needs with biodiesel, and suprise, not use one acre of land needed for food crops. WOW, what a concept.

I'm getting sick and tired of people who are shooting for pie-in-the-sky, absolutely perfect solutions for our energy needs when a pretty damn good alternative exists in the here and now. Using CNG is going to require decades before the infrastucture is in place, the vehicles are perfected, and the public is willing to use it. Biodiesel exists in the here and now, and is ready to start fueling our society NOW. No, it's not perfect, it does emit more particulate matter than CNG, but hey, it's a hell of a lot less polluting than both gasoline and dino diesel.

Instead of trying to reach perfection, and meanwhile wasting fuel and furthering more pollution while waiting for perfection, let's go with what we've got now. That way we can break the grip that oil has over our society, improve our economy, and decrease both greenhouse gases and other pollution. Then, when perfection(whatever that might be:eyes:) is ready to go online, we can then make the switch. But until then, let's go with this off the shelf technology that is ready to fulfill all of our fuel needs, economically and relatively cleanly.

[Tesha]

42. (I'm not ignoring you...)

(I'm not ignoring you, but I want to crunch some numbers
based on the UNH article you linked to.)

Meanwhile, I'll note that:

> Natural gas doesn't equal methane. Natural gas is
> composed of methane, in fact methane is one of its
> primary components. But natural gas also contains
> other ingredients that make it seperate and distinct
> from methane, OK.

If, what you mean by this is that it also contains
some heavier gases (ethane, propane, and butane), I'll
concede the point. But if you mean by this that it
contains contaminants such as CO2 and sulphur compounds,
then I'll point out that while this may be true at the
well-head, it is not true for the gas that reaches the
consumer; these contaminants are usually processed-out,
especially if the gas has been stored or shipped as LNG.

Tesha

[ianbruce]

19. Wait until 2008

First quarter. We'll have a better version available.

[paparush]

25. Dude..How are you gonna pull the bass boat? Where's the grill gonna go?

Howya gonna stuff all 4 kids and the Rottweiler in that thing? What about the 18 pieces of luggage, three coolers, and the foam pool noodle thingies? Can you mount a bike rack? Can it tow a Jeep Grand Cherokee? Can you put monster tires on it? I just don't see collapsable lawn chairs bungied onto the back of that thing. Does it include 3 onboard DVD players and individual climate control zones? I think not.

I mean, c'mon, we're AMERICANS... we love our STUFF. George Carlin knows this. Stuff is MUCH more important fuel economy or being so-called 'energy independent'. LUXURY BABY!! We work 'hard'. We 'deserve' to be pampered. To drive in style. We wage slaves want to spend our 2 weeks vacation wallowing in all our stuff, not crammed into this egg carton of shame. Most Americans (and their children) litterally will not fit (obesity) inside that thing.

[spinbaby]

31. The safety of a car?

There is NO WAY I would take that thing onto an interstate. That's strictly a city car.

[BiggJawn]

32. Everything old is new again...

Vee-Dub and Helga have something in a 4-wheeler....


"Cherman Ingeneuring, enn das HAUS, Ja!"

[rpgamerd00d]

34. Two words: Death. Trap. ......... no thanks.

[Tesha]

41. When the choice becomes this car or walk, you may think...

When the choice becomes this car or walk, you may think
differently. Also, by that time, all of the old hulking
SUVs that currently make it more dangerous to drive small
cars will long-ago have been turned into flower planters,
houses for the poor, etc.

Tesha

[KansDem]

35. Great!!! Let me know when the Hummer version comes out!

just kidding...}(

[stubtoe]

37. We saw "Smart Cars" in Europe that are a little bigger but not much.

I loved 'em - easy to drive and easy to park. But if I took one on I5 I'd get blown off the highway by the next semi truck!