With the current automotive market trend, it is obvious and crucial for automakers to turn to environmental friendly cars with low emissions and high fuel efficiency outputs.
However, let's not mix up being environmentally friendly with high fuel efficiency. Burning fossil fuel, whether gasoline or diesel, are not being environmentally, no matter how low the emissions are, or how efficient it is, it is still burning an un-renewable source of energy, releasing particles and CO2 into the atmosphere will indefinitely add up to the greenhouse effect.
Being environmentally friendly however, is by applying renewable energy, coupled with low emissions, and with a total net net smaller footprint, be it environmentally, or sociologically. For example the graph shown above, promised to be the 'answer' to our previous frowns, Biomass, Bio-ethanol or any source of energy derived from the very food we rely on, had shown it's true colors with the recent extreme price hike of raw materials, with farmers selling their crops for making fuel rather than feeding people, prices for food had taken a toll, creating energy for the rich, while rsking famine for the poor.
Let's take a look at current available technologies, and how each at different points will serve to the ultimate goal of being free from fossil fuels.
Take Toyota's Prius for example, without considering the net net environmental footprint, it is a Eco friendly car, by burning less fossil fuel per vehicle, and using a 'so-called' renewable energy source by the name of electricity. In the Prius' case, the electricity generated is entirely done within the car, whereby when the car is slowing down, the inertia of the wheels will be turned into electricity, which is used to assist the petrol engine to cut down on fuel consumption.On net net basis, the battery pack required for the Prius to store energy, was created in a way that's extremely toxic to the environment, hence on the back end, it is environmentally unfriendly, whereas on the front end, it's burning less fuel, allowing lower emissions per vehicle, however on net net basis, from the entire creation of the Prius to the total emissions per vehicle counted, the Prius is more environmentally hazardous than a run-off-the-mill Range Rover 4.6 ltr V8.
Now onto Electric Vehicles, take the Tesla Roadster for example, a plug in electricity powered car, first it has a battery, which is already very toxicating for the environment, next it draws its power from your home's plug point. However as we all know, 70% of the world's electricity generation relies on the burning of fossil fuels, hence the Tesla Roadster might seem as another complete lie, but look further, such as countries like Holland and Germany, with large wind harvesting farms and solar energy farms, the Tesla could, theoretically run on renewable energy. If Tesla were to limit it's vehicle sales solely to countries with high ratio of renewable energy source, then it's truly environmentally friendly, however if it were to be sold to 3rd world countries such as China, and it will be otherwise.
Now lets come to Fuel Cell, like the Honda FCX which fuels on Hydrogen. Fuel Cells are equipped with catalysts that enables Hydrogen to merge with Oxygen, and in the process, it releases electricity, the electricity is then harvested to power the car, with pure water as the only thing it emits. Hydrogen is an renewable energy source, which is available simply by the electrolysis of water, of which the it can be done by sourcing power from wind farms, meaning the creation of Hydrogen, can be done entirely using renewable sources of energy, now this is a milestone compared to both stated above.Don't worry on whether the electrolysis done, would be using electricity generated by the burning of fossil fuels; for this is entirely not feasible and impossible, for the first law of thermodynamics states, the amount of energy used to create fuel, will be the same amount of energy the burning of the fuel releases - if the conversion is entirely 100% efficient, which is IMPOSSIBLE. To ease understanding, the burning of our petroleum and the energy it releases, is the same as the energy it absorbed from the sun through millions of years of chemical transition.
By looking at these scenarios, our transition of relying on fossil fuel or un-renewable energy relies on the slow phasing in of hybrid power trains, and then the slow adoption of renewable energy infrastructures such as wind farms and solar harvesting farms, and then ultimately, these farms will be used for the electrolysis process on water, needed to produce Hydrogen, our source of energy for many many years to come.
