Commentary & Analysis - The Green Bonnet

In the battle between petrol-heads and environmentalists, is it possible to be on both sides? Petrol-heads are essentially people who love cars and environmentalists obviously believe in saving the environment. The dogma of these ideologies would seem to contradict each other, but with scientific advancement, will it ever be possible to unite these two groups? I would like to believe so.

Personally, I am a petrol-head first, and an environmentalist second. I believe not only in the practicality of cars, but in the beauty of them as well. If you have to travel from one place to another, you might as well do it in style and comfort. It is amazing how far we’ve come since the first petrol powered car, the Motorwagen created by Karl Benz in 1886. 

According to conceptcarz.com, this car had less than one horsepower, and had a top speed of eight miles per hour, laughable by today’s standards. Needless to say, a car like this was no gas guzzler. Fast forward to 2012 and things start to get more complicated. The supply of petrol will soon struggle to meet the demand, unless we can find an alternative. But not just any alternative, not something you settle for, but the right alternative.

Karl Benz (front) with Friedrich von Fischer on the Motorwagen courtesy of  www.autowallpaper.de

One option we have is the electric car, a car that works similar to a laptop. Charge its battery to its full power and move it around wherever you like until the battery runs out. No petrol is necessary. This may sound great in theory, but in practice, most fully electric cars are heavy, slow and inconvenient. When they run out of battery, they require long hours of charging, which can be rather annoying, especially in an emergency. Therefore, electricity powered cars are may not be the right alternative.

The Toyota Prius, taken from www.carrostunadosbrasil.com

Another option we have is the hybrid electric vehicle (HEV). The “Toyota Prius” is a great example of this. According to hybrid.co.uk, hybrids have two engines, one petrol and one electric. The electric engine is used for short, slow journeys, and the petrol engine kicks in for longer journeys and when travelling at higher speeds. They also use a clever system called regenerative braking, which charges the batteries with energy used when the car brakes, instead of wasting it, which is what non-hybrid cars do. However, though this method has great fuel efficiency, it still uses petrol, making this a good short-term solution, but not one that completely eradicates our dependency on petrol.

Another alternative is Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) cars. There is evidence of some usage of these cars in Singapore. The combustion of this gas, which is mostly methane, produce less pollutants, making it a ‘greener’ gas compared to petrol. However, the fuel storage poses a problem for car makers. CNG storage requires more storage space than petrol in a car, and therefore, cars have to be specially designed to as to incorporate the fuel tank, as well as provide sufficient space in the car boot. Another problem this poses is inconvenience. There are barely any CNG pumps in Singapore, making it inconvenient to fill up the fuel tank when necessary.

Last but not least, we have Hydrogen fuel. This fuel is the answer to all environmental concerns, the perfect green fuel. The only by-product of hydrogen fuel upon combustion is water, thereby causing no harm to the environment whatsoever. Being a fuel, cars powered by hydrogen would not require any charging. So why do we not use hydrogen? One simple yet paramount reason: money. The cost of manufacturing hydrogen as a fuel is very expensive, and therefore, not commercially viable. Yet.

Sources of Hydrogen, taken from hho-hydrogen-energy.com

So to all future scientists and engineers who may be reading this, I beseech you to find a commercially viable solution to produce hydrogen fuel. This solution satisfies both the petrol-heads and environmentalists concerns, making it the perfect alternative to petrol. In the meantime, we’ll just have to make do with the Prius.