What is the future technology for sustainability in cars and energy?

Question

I am doing a project about the future technology sustainability. And I am focusing on the car technology. or can be energy too. Please give me some hits or infomation or ideas. Thanks.

Answer 1

The world's cleanest car is worth checking out.  It should be on the market in 2008.  It runs on compressed air.  I think it will be cheaper than the hydrogen car.

Answer 2

a car, that will collect all the required energy directly from the sun, daily energy intake that will be enough to drive 30 - 50 miles, store enough energy so it could travel at least 200 miles, and possibly 500 miles before it's energy storage system emptied, would be the perfect car of the future, as it would need no fuel, as long as it is exposed to sufficient sunshine every day.

Such a car would require vastly improved technology to capture energy from light, at least twice more efficient than solar panels, much better energy storage systems, compared to the best rechargeable battery available, and more efficient power consumption, maybe 50% better than present automotive systems, it will have to be much lighter, and retain the same carrying capacity, it will also have to cost something equivalent, or slightly more than the price of available cars.

Answer 3

Sustainability in cars is a hard question.

Really it would be better if people didn't use cars half as much as they do, but realistically I don't suppose things are going to change any time soon.

Truly sustainable cars should be made from recyclable materials.  They are getting better but there is still quite a lot that is hard to recycle.

They should be simpler to maintain - the design is getting increasingly complicated and reliant on computers to run and manage the car.  Its more like a bunch of PCs on wheels than a method for getting from A to B.

Because of the complexity of the design, they need specialist maintenance and if something breaks, you have to replace it instead of repair it.  So a simpler car would be better.

The drive mechanism should use a renewable energy.  Electricity generated from solar seems like a good idea - if the car could derive enough from the environment (which at the moment is not quite possible).

Hydrogen is great in terms of performance with no polution, but expensive to produce - so not good yet.  If we could simply make Hydrogen from Solar power - this would be renewable and give us a car with similar performance to today's vehicles.

Compressed air engines might be good, but you need energy to power the compressor - currently not renewable.

Biofuels will help if we can make these cheaply and not harm the environment.