The longest trip yet in my bio-ethanol car

February 13, 2008 By 4 Comments

Yesterday was a real test for the bio-ethanol car – I drove to a meeting in Cologne and back.

This may not sound like anything special, but with Cologne being about 200km away and the car showing 409km remaining on a full tank I was a bit worried as it would be the first time that I had had to fill up anywhere else and, of course, mix the contents of the tank.

In the end though – I didn’t have to. The journey turned out to be about 370km, and even though there was a hold up on the motorway on the way home the on-board computer still calculated that I had enough fuel for 100km when I arrived home.

Of course, this is all down to the lower fuel consumption on the motorway compared to driving around the local towns. The computer worked out that I used 11.6 litres per 100km for the trip – about 2.5 less than normal and hence the extra distance available.

Another interesting fact was that Cologne now has an environmental zone in place – your car needs to display a green “fine particle disc” in order to enter the city. I didn’t see anyone actually check mine, but I did have it on display. More about that another day.

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Filling up with petrol – a robot’s job?

February 7, 2008 By 6 Comments

I’m sure that many readers will remember the days when petrol stations had attendants that put the petrol into the tank for you – before the days when “self service” became the modern way of filling up.

Well, perhaps we are going to return to that kind of service. I’ve been fascinated today by a video of a petrol station in the Netherlands, that uses a robot arm to fill up the cars.

The robot knows from the type of car how to open the petrol cap, and presumably whether or not to put diesel in. I wonder how it copes with bio-ethanol?

It looked rather slow at the moment, so I guess the queues at the petrol station near here would just get longer. I also didn’t see anywhere to pay for the petrol – does the robot arm swipe your credit card as well?

As fascinating as it is, I’m still not too sure what to make of it all. It may be nice not to have to get out of your car, but it doesn’t help the unemployment figures!

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London’s “low emission” zone

February 5, 2008 By 4 Comments

Tonight I read about London’s new “low emission” zone on the BBC News website.

Germany has been talking about such schemes for a while now, indeed they started issuing the discs last year and I have a green one in my bio-ethanol car. But until now it has been up to the individual towns and cities to decide to implement the scheme. At the start of this year, some of them did – causing discussion amongst the population of the affected cities.

I myself will be travelling to one of these soon (Cologne), so I shall see for myself it it has had an impact.

But back to London – the scheme seems to be more controlled than the German ones, but covers less vehicles.

For a start, cars are exempt to the London scheme – they are not in Germany. In fact, even foreign cars have to get their discs before entering the zones.

On the other hand, the London scheme is being policed by CCTV cameras – something that German cities do not have in such numbers, and even those that do have them cannot, as far as I know, use them to this particular cause.

Critics of the scheme will no doubt sight the cost of upgrading vehicles, something that has been discussed in Germany as well.  Whilst this is definitely a valid point, and Germany has made a number of exceptions for residents to avoid the issue, it’s got to be a good way to start reducing the emissions on our roads, hasn’t it?

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