Ecology and Environment


Hybrid and electric cars and the return to… the past

Electric Cars
We now have got used to reading about hybrid and electric cars. We also begin to know more about it, about the declared potential and also the real ones. We are told that the future of mobility is the electric car, the hybrid car is the transition and having doubts about this means being a retrograde polluter. Notwithstanding reading about hybrid and electric cars and their performance it really seems...

Covid 19. At the recovery, will the transport system be the same?

Corona virus
I don’t want to be one of those, too many, who pontificate how the Covid 19 will change the world. Allow me, however, to express a couple of considerations about how, at the end of this stage of restrictions, our behaviour and those around us will change. Let’s start from the car and its use. Until yesterday, the general policy of governments and local administrators was to discourage the...

Coronavirus and the three points of no return for the automotive

One of the fields, which will be more affected from the Coronavirus, is, with any doubt, the heavy industry and, among them, in Europe the automotive. The whole supply chain is suffering the consequences of a sudden collapse in the final demand; the recovery won’t be immediate at all simply because the EU market is a substitutional one and therefore the demand curve is very elastic to negative...

The world in electric is revolutionizing the nautical too

It seems there is no doubt, they way we’ll move in the future must be electric; convinced or not, everyone is going in this direction. Legislators, media, car dealers and marketing offices have started down a road, which seems with no return but, if you think it involves the automotive field only, you are wrong. It seems the yachting sector and the commercial shipping have made the same choice. Autonomy...

Self-driving even at sea

While the route of cars with self-driving proceeds towards trials, agreements and insurance and legislative formulations, nautical and commercial shipping fields move in the direction of Self-navigation. The boost, again, comes from the Northern Europe, in the specific from Norway, the same country which sees the market of electric cars goes up of 31% for registrations in 2018 (over 40% if we include...

What do I have to expect if I choose a hydrogen-powered car?

hydrogen-car
We have come to the end of my overview of alternative fuels, compared to the “classic” petrol and diesel, which we can currently find available in the lists of the main OEMs. Today I would like to talk about hydrogen as fuel, which has only recently hit the headlines as the most ecological fuel ever! You will find, at the end of this post, the links to the other posts concerning the other...

What do I have to expect if I choose an electric car?

evs
We have finally reached the third type of  “alternative” power source, currently offered by OEMs on the market. After the well known sources, that is LPG and CNG, I examined the various type of “hybrid power source“, in three specific posts whose links you will find at the end of this article. In this new post I tried to outline the characteristic elements of power supply in...

What do I have to expect if I choose a hybrid car? (Parallel/series)

The last post about cars with hybrid engine will focus on one of my projects, but never place on the market, when I worked at the Fiat planning department. The only vehicle with a parallel/series hybrid propulsion, produced and tested on the road, was the Fiat Multipla Hybrid. Produced in ten copies, and destined for the City of Naples in the context of the Atena Project (The Telematic Traffic Environment...

What do I have to expect if I choose a hybrid car? (Hybrid series)

supercapacitor
In this search for the perfect engine for our daily needs, we will now focus on the second type of hybrid; the hybrid series. Also in the hybrid series we have two motors, thermal and electric but, unlike the parallel, it is the electric motor that is always connected to the driving wheels; the thermal engine connected to a generator produces energy wich will go both to the electric traction motor...

What do I have to expect if I choose a hybrid car? (Parallel hybrid)

hybrid
After the posts about the CNG and LPG engines, let’s focus on the hybrid cars and their advantages. Hybrid vehicles use multiple traction energy generation systems (they normally combine a thermal and an electric power unit), combined with a system to recover energy during slowing down and braking. Hybrid cars can be classified into three types: PARALLEL HYBRID Thermal engine and electric motor...

What do I have to expect if I choose a LPG car?

The second post of the series that wants to clarify which fuels can respond more appropriately to the needs of each of us is focused on one of the most widespread fuel at the time, an alternative to the petrol and diesel. In the last 40 years its diffusion has given origin to an intense planning activity that has let some of our companies become world leaders of the transformation kits. LPG is a fuel,...

What do I have to expect if I choose a CNG car?

CNG
The OEM has commercialised dual-fuel models for about 20 years: petrol and methane or single-fuel that is only methane. At the beginning the production of these cars didn’t directly take place from the same car manufacturer, but the transformation was entrusted to external fitters, who installed the system on the car with the original petrol version. Basically they were solutions very similar...

When the perfume will become a standard for dealers?

parfum
The title of the post wants to be quite provocative, but in itself the question is when the sensory marketing will be fully applicable even to the dealers? According to Richard Axel and Linda Buck, Nobel Prizes in Medicine in 2004, our brain, our “memory” can remember over 10,000 smells, while only 200 different colours. This statement in itself should make us reflect on the proper planning...

LPG systems, layout and security

LPG
One of the most known indicator that gives us an immediate idea about the safety level provided by a vehicle is the number of stars rated during the Euro NCAP test. The stars are rated to the shock tests passed and to the presence of security – related contents. Thanks to the tightening up both of the tests and the calculation method, today we have on our vehicles an infinitive of electronic devices,...

Electric cars: ready for camping?

electric-cars
Do we have everything? Sleeping bag? Gas stove? Pile? Anti mosquitos? Fans? Suited clothes for winter and summer? In a few words everything you need for a basic camping, we should have and use it at home if we will buy an electric car. You may thing that the hot had got on top of me but no, my friends, the engineers Roberto Barbiero, Ivan Maio and me are ready to sustain what may seem a paradox. If...

The electric car and the CO2 emission

The electric car and the CO2 emission
More and more the “world wide” politics promotes the development and production of electric cars, shown as a possibility, at least for the mobility, to reduce the pollution. Consequently, car manufacturers are working hard to offer electric vehicles, but I wonder: What certainties have we that electric cars really affect the overall CO2 reduction and what doubts have we still to solve? It is true...

The tsunami autonomous car is drawing near the automotive

autonomous cars
Getting into a car, which is able to drive autonomously, will become a habit? Probably yes and one day cities will become similar to the minority Report metropolis. These evocative and suggestive images, however, are only the visible part of an iceberg that, although not as dangerous as the one which sink the Titanic, will be able to overturn the whole automotive industry. Insurances, for instance,...

9th survey by AS. EV car registrations are still very low, why?

electric vehicles
EV car registrations are still very low, why? 91 votes: Is the Automotive Professional tired because of the warm? A topic that has been already dealt with … or is it uninteresting? Who knows! But the fact remains that the votes, deliberately collected among a large set of selections in order to have opinions and ideas from different points of view, finally can be categorized only in 3 thematic...

Pure electric vehicles and the heat/electric hybrid ones

auto elettriche
More and more frequently we attend the launch of new pure and hybrid electric cars or heat/electric ones, so it comes naturally to wonder: what is the differences of the product they offer and for what types of use? To better understand the products offered and their characteristics, I asked a friend and true expert on the subject for help, Ing. Roberto Barbiero, a career dedicated to car design with...

The China gives up the electrics and the Europe just watches

EVs
Two months ago I published one post dealing with selling data and the evolution, over the last years, of the electric cars in Europe. To avoid of causing useless wars, I limited to reporting market data (ACEA) and to suggesting how to read them analytically and how to contextualize them. But in private, someone wanted to charge me with provincialism, saying for instance: “…Pietro, but the...

Total Ecology: Am I dreaming or am I serious?

Arcona 380 Z
Shipyards, which manufacture super fast and super motorized boats, advertise ecological solutions and environmental protection often unlikely. As it happens in the Automotive sector, also in yachting it is hard to find real alternatives in terms of consumptions and pollution and often the solutions adopted – see the electric motor – for now remain debatable because of efficacy and confined to marginal...

Pirelli and Pininfarina: an unavoidable epilogue

Pirelli
Another company in the automotive sector of our Europe moved in the court of the giant Asian ChemChina. Pirelli, the fifth tire manufacturer on the world, has been acquired by means of sovereign funds of nationalized China. An operation financially complex which opens the debate to a series of assessments on the health conditions of our badly off capitalism, especially if you consider that the company...

The electric cars in EU in 2014: it was established their failure

Electric Cars
This “European” post is originated from some considerations after more years of incentives and more millions of euro thrown away because of the electric. Here, for ex., are the italian data (this blog was born in Italy): 1,104 sales of EV cars, in 2014, of which 246 sold to private (UNRAE data). Essentially in Italy the 0,08% of the auto market, in 2014, represents electric cars, while if you...

Interview with Prof. Ivan Maio (Politecnico di Torino – Italy)

Ivan A. Maio
Date of interview: September, 26 2014 Professional profile: Ivan Maio is Professor of Electrical Engineering at the department of Electronics and telecommunications at the Polytechnic of Turin. He conducts research in the areas of circuit theory, signal integrity and electromagnetic compatibility. Always passionate about sports cars. The international scenario about the car fleet foresees an exponential...

Peugeot and Citroen: It’s nice to win easy!

Aulnay
By at least one semester Peugeot and Citroen started a radical transformation of production, managerial, commercial and communication. Talk about the last aspect: the Communication! Money are invested if there is something to communicate and when there are budgets to bind on. Budgets are allocated if there are invoices. Data about Italy and Europe show that there’s turmoil… to put it mildly. From...

The sustainable mobility goes through inter-modality

Mobilità sostenibile
Listening to different observation about the automotive future, and in general about means of transport, I remembered of some notes taken during the lesson of “Economy of Transport” by professor Ennio Forte (UNINA- Federico II University of Neaples – Italy -) some decades ago. In the last years, there were been progresses but, as declared by the White Book of Transport 2011 (EC), the next...

What future for the V2V- the communication among vehicles?

v2v
What diffusion will the vehicles communication have? How will the V2V evolve? Will it be a sort of Big Brother or a helpful service? The truth, as always happens, lies in the middle and also the V2V case follows the rule. What about it? V2V stand for Vehicle-to-Vehicle and it is simply to understand that this technology tries to establish a temporary communication among vehicles in short-range standing...

Hybrid-Air PSA, the other face of the hybrid car

hybrid-air-sezione
It won’t be the compressed air car but it is the closer step to the utopia that it’s possible today. We used to think about hybrid as the union between heat engine and the electrical one but in the following years “not so far according to the road map written by PSA” we could extend the concept, replacing the electrical component with the air. Avoiding any mistakes, we talk...

If managers fail the (electric) aims, will they pay?

Renault ZOE
This is a (general) question that a lot of people asked especially in the last few years. For instance they wonder it about the old managing of Alitalia but also about Italian railways company. But here we’re talking about automotive so I don’’t want to digress on it! We have dwelt upon electric car, and upon tales told, a lot both on this blog and on Linkedin. The funny aspect is that nobody...

Leaf, the electric car that recharges your office and not only

Nissan Leaf
What? Electric cars don’t exclusively use energy? Obviously yes, but they swap energy as well, improving, for instance, office consumptions: that’s the experimentation by Nissan in Atsugi (Japan) based on the well-known reversibility properties about electric “machines”. Electric motors, which work as power unit as well, allow the energy recovery whereby electric cars – as Leaf- improve...