The Greener Truth » Green Driver – WAVE Scale

ELECTRIX

Aaron Midgett — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:36:05 +0000

It has been too long since my last post. I have no good excuse other than having a crazy few weeks. On my way to work today, I get a little incentive when I had the pleasure of driving behind a Tesla Roadster with the liscense plate ELECTRIX. I was surprised by two things. First, how small and sporty it looks and second, the acceleration it had. The lucky guy doing the driving was in his 60s and was by no means a spead deamon when driving, but we stoppped next to eachother at a stop light and when it turned green, he blew me away. You hear that this car can do 0-60 in 3.7 seconds, but you don’t realize how fast that really is until you are sitting next to one as it takes off. Now I see why everyone wants to drive one. The best part about this car, is that not only is it one of the sportiest cars to drive, it is also one of the greenest . This just shows that going greener does not always have to mean sacrificing quality or comfort. I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford the $110 price tag, but if I did have an extra hundred grand to throw around, I would seriously consider it. Maybe the $32K Nissan Leaf or the newly announced $41K Chevy Volt will be a little closer to my price range. Too bad it doesn’t look as fun to drive as the Roadster.

More Information about the Tesla Roadster and Electric Cars

-Nissan

-Tesla

-Hybrid Cars

-Wikipedia:Tesla Roadster

-Wikipedia:Electric Car

Lance Leads the Leaf Electric Car Charge

Aaron Midgett — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:38:41 +0000

Lance Armstrong may be 17 minutes behind the leaders in the Tour de France this summer, but that is ok with me, because he is stepping up to lead the charge for the Nissan Leaf. Not long ago, Lance was named the official spokesperson for the electric car, and now he stars in their new commercial about the clean design of the car.

While this may just be another paycheck for the cycling superstar, he is also set to be the first recipient of a Leaf and genuinly seems dedicated to the cause. More celebrities are standing up for causes they care about, and in a culture that is always trying to find the best deal, this is one way that alternative forms of transportation and renewable energy are going to take hold. Next time you see you see Matt Damon or Brad Pitt driving around in a sporty Tesla Roadster, don’t think about the $100K that they dropped to get the car, but the service they are doing to promote a cleaner driving experience for us all.

More Information about the Nissan Leaf and Electric Cars

-Wikipedia:Electric Car

Most Honest Ad for Oil Ever!

Aaron Midgett — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:10:07 +0000

With all of the greenwashed adds for oil companies like BP, it is nice for a change to look at and add that really speaks the truth. This ad by Humble Oil (now part of Exxon) from 1962 is possibly the most honest straight forward add I have ever seen.

Maybe BP needs to take lesson from Humble and start putting out a little more honest ads too instead of hogwash like this.

Peddle Powered Porsche

Aaron Midgett — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:01:24 +0000

Thanks to Johannes Ferdinand

Check out this awesome new Porsche. And why, you ask are we at the greener truth interested in a sports car? The Ferdinand GT3 RS is not just another sporty 911, it is the slowest and most efficient Porsche on the road. It also happens to be peddle powered with a body made out of cardboard and foil. By the way, it is completely off the WAVE scale as far as efficiency goes. When you watch the video, make sure that you check out the velcro emergency brake when he gets in the car to drive away. That is German engineering at it’s finest. The video is in German, but Johannes Ferdinand makes to totally worth while with his deadpan face and fantastic mustache.

Here is a picture of the construction, but for more on how this was built, here is Ferdinand’s website (Be warned it is in German though).

Cost of Transportation

Aaron Midgett — Thu, 20 May 2010 23:06:21 +0000

When we talk about forms of transportation, we are often interested in fuel economy because that is what we are used to, but what really matters is the amount of energy it takes to move a certain amount of weight a certain distance. We have tried to represent this in the WAVE scale in our automotive section, but here is an old graphic that I found that explain this idea a little better. You can tell how old it is by the fact that it was scanned from a journal article in order to digitize it. You can see the obvious diagonal where most of the methods fall. Lighter and smaller animals use more energy to move one gram a kilometer as would be expected, but it is the outliers in this plot that are the most interesting. If we look at a helicopter for example, its cost of transport is similar to that of a hummingbird and obviously wastes a large amount of energy. Salmon and humans on a bicycle on the other hand, are far more efficient than other forms of transportation . The salmon is a particularly interesting case, because it actually uses the flow of current downstream to help it swim upstream, similar to the way that a sailboat can sail into the wind.

More information on Fuel Economy and the WAVE scale

-The Wave Scale

-Weight Friend or Foe

-FuelEconomy.gov

-EPA

-Wikipedia

No Idle Ad Campaign: Turn off the Car

Aaron Midgett — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:45:37 +0000

This video made me laugh. It may be a bit over the top, but I think that the idea is entertaining and gets the point across quite well. Maybe it takes something as memorable as this to help promote change

Here is a quote from the makers of this video about the negative impacts of idling.

The negative health and environmental impacts of idling have been known for over a decade. Yet, all over the city of Calgary we are leaving our cars running while not in use for an average of 5-10 minutes per car per day. Idling is unnecessary. It wastes fuel, produces more harmful emissions than normal driving, damages engines, and contributes to climate change.

Your car uses about a mile’s worth of gas in two minutes of idling. That is a ton of unnecessary emissions and makes a solid argument for supporting the implementation of no idling laws and more round’a’bouts than stop lights or stop signs… let’s keep those cars truckin! Also, air pollution is not the only problem with idling your car. In a neighborhood, noise pollution can be pretty bad too, especially if you have a souped-up car with a giant muffler. I for one, love it that my neighbor has stopped idling (and rev-ing) his race car at 5am for half an hour, so next time you leave your engine running at the post office (or in your driveway at 5am), think about this video, laugh, and then turn off the car.

More information on Idling your car

-EPA

-Consumer Energy Center

-The Hinkle Charitable Foundation

-Natural Resources Canada

Nissan’s new Journey to Zero Emissions

Aaron Midgett — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:16:20 +0000

Usually, I am all about exposing companies for greenwashing, and when I saw this add today, my hackles initially stood on end. However, after checking it out, I have to say, the claims are true, and the ad is entertaining. Nissan’s new all electric car, the Leaf, will produce more emissions than a dinning room chair, but considering the crash test rating of dining room chairs, I think it’s worth the emissions. After all, the average electric car will consume about the same amount of energy in a year as a refrigerator or air-conditioner would, so that is a huge step up from gas vehicles and way off the WAVE scale. Eventually, once the grid is powered with renewable energy, electric vehicles will truly be zero emissions, but for now we will just have to go on the take these small steps, or drive around our kitchen chairs. This looks super fun, and I particularly love the turn signals.

The Leaf (Leading, Environmentally Friendly, Affordable, Family Car) is set to be released in the US later this year and will sell for $33,000. While this is not cheap, the fuel saving will be considerable and there are some great tax credits available. When taking all of the federal and state tax credits (CA, GA, OR) into account, the best situation would be paying about 22K for the car and home charging station. The car will have a range of 100miles and can be fully recharged at home in 8hr, but can be 80% charged in as little as 30min at a charging station. While, this may not be the solution for everyone, I know that this would be the perfect car for many commuters like me.

More Information about the Nissan Leaf and Electric Cars

-Nissan

-Hybrid Cars

-Wikipedia:Leaf

-Wikipedia:Electric Car

-Tax Credits

-Tesla Motors

Horse Drawn Hummer Carriage

Aaron Midgett — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 20:51:07 +0000

Here is the best use of a Hummer that I have ever seen. If you haven’t already guessed, we here at The Greener Truth have a real problem with giant SUVs, and the Hummer symbolizes that category of wastefulness. We were going to call the WAVE scale the Hummer Bummer scale, but thought that would be a little unfair since they are already out of business. Instead, we rated vehicles against the worst vehicle for the planet that is still in production. That prize is held by the Mercedes SL 65 AMG. This may seem strange since this is a sporty roadster, but because of all the power under the hood and the fact that it can only cary 2 people makes it quite a waste at an average of 14 MPG. However, the H2 Hummer blows it out of the water with a staggering 115.9 on the Weight Adjusted Vehicle Equivalency scale (the WAVE scale currently only goes to 100).

But here is a fantastic use for this behemoth. Jeremy Dean has converted a Hummer H2 into a horse drawn carriage. Both to highlight the instability and waste in the auto industry and to show that there are alternate ways of transportation to the gas guzzlers that we drive today.

So next time that you are shopping for a car, think about not only the gas mialage, but also the weight of the car, because the heavier that a car is, the worse it is for the environment. While this is not a readily apparent consequence, you have to remember that the heavier the car, the harder it is to drive and therefore requires more breaking and acceleration. So, while the gas milage may be comparable in a test drive, the normal way of driving the car will lead to burning more fuel in a heavier car.

More information on Fuel Economy and the WAVE scale

-The Wave Scale

-Weight Friend or Foe

-FuelEconomy.gov

-EPA

-Wikipedia

Transonic Combustion – 50% Increase in Fuel Economy

magic greenie — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:22:22 +0000

Here’s something new from a small start up with big claims. Transonic Combustion has a new fuel injection system for cars that increases fuel efficiency 50-75%. My first thought was it’s got to be a hoax like tablets you place in your gas tank but on reviewing the technology and their claims, it seems valid enough. They say they are in testing with several OEM manufacturers and are targeting a 2012 release for production.

Transonics claims the system is no more expensive to produce than current fuel injection systems and that their method of putting fuel into a supercritical state on entry into the combustion chamber has numerous environmental benefits beyond the increased fuel mileage. In particular, emission are lower and less heat is lost to the radiator and the exhaust which also helps explains the increase in efficiency.

One other interesting feature is that the supercritical state is compatible with a long list of fuel types including diesel, gasoline, biofuel and more… And they are claiming the the fuels are interchangeable. If their claims are accurate, you would be able to burn biodeisel one day and pump gas on another.

Watch the Video

I’d keep an eye out for more information on Transonic Combustion in the coming years.