In this article I hope to describe some efficient driving ‘tactics’ and hopefully also explain why they work.

To do this I start with a question… what, exactly, is energy?

Many people think scientists know this, but alas, they don’t. It is one of science’s great mysteries.

On the other hand, they do know an awful lot about how it flows (they call it thermodynamics which is science-jargon for “heat-flows”). And when energy flows, we also know how to harness it.

If we consider the car, we can think of a fuel tank as bottled energy. The engine then turns that bottled energy into motion. But the laws of physics say energy is never destroyed – in only flows. So where does it go after that?

Understanding the answer to this simple question will help us all to drive more efficiently.

Here are some of the outlets for the energy from your petrol tank:

1. Accelerating your car – energy is transferred into the mass of the car. They call this ‘kinetic’ energy – kinetic is just latin for ‘movement’.

Aside for nerds: It’s the kinetic energy in a car that makes it so dangerous – when a car crashes into a tree this energy flows at a speed comparable to a bomb-blast, bending the metal and hurting the people.

2. Going uphill – the energy is also put into the mass of the car. They call this ‘potential’ energy – we’ll see why in a minute.

3. Friction – the friction inside the engine, of the wind on the car – and last but not least the rubbing of your brake shoes on your brake disks – all turn your energy into heat

Too much energy ends up in the brakes...

4. Noise – some goes into people’s ears, but eventually it all just heats the environment.

And that’s it.

So the first thing to notice is that friction and noise are bad. It is not our aim to heat the world up.

So how do we avoid heat and noise? Firstly, keep your car in good nick. Keep your tyres properly inflated too.

Secondly, drive slowly. Air friction is much more significant the faster you go. Doubling your speed quadruples the frictional loss per km and multiplies the energy loss per second (power) by 8! Thus there is about 21% more energy loss to friction at 77mph than at 70mph, despite being only 10% faster. (and it requires 33% more engine power!)

My third tip is a little controversial. Try not to brake.

If you are approaching a stop, try to coast to a halt by taking your foot off the gas far in advance. If you do this, you will avoid heating your brakes and rather spend your energy on air friction, which was inevitable anyway. We will come back to braking in a minute.

Now can we do anything about the energy required to accelerate and go uphill?

Yes, we still ‘have’ this energy- so it can be recovered!

The mass in your car (including you yourself) become a store of energy when you are a) going fast, and are b) at the top of a hill.

Using potential energy...

The hill energy is called ‘potential’ energy because its got the ‘potential’ to be recovered. We generally recover it without even thinking – when we go back down the other side – gravity does much of the work.

However, we only get it all back if we don’t brake (or use engine compression) to slow ourselves. If failing to brake would lead you to exceed the speed limit, then that’s a pity, as I can’t condone breaking the speed limit, especially if my children are about.

What about the kinetic (going fast) energy? We usually also recover this – but only if we allow ourselves to coast to a stop. Again, if we use the brakes, we turn all that precious energy directly into heat, which is literally burning it.

We also tend to brake when we approach corners, again, it is more frugal to take your foot off the pedal far in advance of the corner such that you are already going slow enough to take it safely when you (eventually!) reach it.

All that might sound complicated, but it all translates to a simple rule of thumb: don’t use your brakes unless you have to. Of course this logic can be taken to its extreme (and occasionally unsafe) conclusion – take a look at the practices of the hypermiler community.

Anyway, that’s all you need to know to get a good 10-20% more miles from each tank.

That concludes this series of articles on greener motoring, I hope it has been of use. Please don’t hesitate to add your own tips in the comments section. Thanks!

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Series home…

For most people, fully electric cars are some way off. Most people still prefer to have a range of 300+ miles, and to fill up in a few minutes at one of several thousand filling stations.

So how bad is the car we know and love? Can it be made any better? In this article I look the most popular technologies and developments in this area.

The Internal Combustion Engine…

Until all-electric / fuel-cell / nuclear cars are fully realised – we will be stuck with the internal combustion engine. It is therefore well worth looking at how we can make the most of them.

The basics are simple – you heat up some gas, it expands and pushes a piston. In theory you should be able to get all of that heat and turn it into force.

The Internal Combustion Engine

Alas, there are details. We can’t extract all the energy because of the laws of thermodynamics – in fact the limit is about 37% given the temperature range in a typical petrol engine. Then you also have to spend some energy on sucking the gases in. You have to spend energy pumping the gases out. There is friction. There is the heat. The list goes on. Eventually we extract a pathetic 20-25%.

It is therefore not surprising that the piston-driven engine is still being improved despite nigh-on 300 years passing since the earliest versions.  There are still redesigns of the inlet manifold, of the valves, of the crankshaft – all designed to lessen the waste.

To pick one example, we can look at the Atkinson Cycle. One of the many great minds to apply itself to engine efficiency was James Atkinson. He realised that if the power and exhaust strokes were designed to be longer than the intake and compression strokes (see a good animation here), you could let the hot gases expand to a greater volume then they previously occupied – and thus be cooler – so your exhaust gases carry away less embodied energy.

It really works – but is not used. Why? Well mainly because we are too committed to the current design and too much money has been spent in its evolution (which was driven by the need for power, not efficiency); to go back the drawing board has simply been too much hassle. Of course, times they are a-changing…

Another technology waiting for its time in the sun is the “VCR” engine, which stands for Variable Compression Ratio. This is a system in which the volume of the combustion chamber may be adjusted depending on whether you are accelerating, coasting or pulling a caravan up the Col du Tourmalet. It promises to constantly optimise the energy extraction. If its developers can convince major car manufacturers to trust the rather complex crank arrangement it may well be a viable alternative in as soon as 5 years from now. Watch this space.

The Transmission

Enough about the engine – what about the clutch and gearbox? That’s the “tranny” to my American friends, which means something totally different here in the UK.

The transmission’s job is to allow the car to vary speed from 0 to over 100 mph whilst the engine only varies only from around 800 – 6000 rpm, which is a much smaller range. With only 4 or 5 gears you need to use a fair range of engine revs to drive, however, the engine is not equally efficient at all speeds.

Principle of the pulley-based CVT, with thanks to the brilliant HowStuffWorks.com

The idea has therefore been brewing for a device that can allow complete freedom for the engine to run at its most efficient speed, regardless of the car’s speed.

Its called the ‘continuously variable transmission’ or CVT. The most practical design is the pulley-type (see image), though others are also being developed.

In addition to allowing the engine to run at its most efficient speed,  there is also  no disruption of power flow due to gear changes. All of this will add a few vital % to your overall efficiency.

Aside: The CVT is also a vital part of an electric car using regenerative braking, as the gearing can be used to control the braking effect created by the motor/generator.

The fuel…

While hydrogen produced from renewable electricity (say hydroelectric) is one route to reduced carbon emissions, another is the idea of renewable versions of liquid fuels, the so-called bio-fuels.

While bio-fuels do not have as many issues to overcome as hydrogen, they are still far from a clear-cut solution.

Bio-fuels are simply flammable liquids made from plants (nature’s solar panels) – not only is it a renewable energy source (i.e will not run out), but the growing plants also suck CO2 from the air, so could indeed evolve less net CO2 than sources like coal-derived electricity (or hydrogen made from coal-derived electricity). On the other hand, the balance only works well if the bio-fuel is farmed in an energy (and carbon) efficient way.

The idea is fundamentally good, but as with almost all of the other ideas I have discussed, there is a flip-side.

For the first time, there is a risk of direct competition between poor farmers in remote tropical zones, and the big, fat westerner in his or her gas-guzzler. The latter wants something in their fuel tank and the former wants something in their stomach.

There was much speculation last year that the trend towards bio-fuels was responsible for the crisis in commodity food prices. This may or may not have been the cause – it may well have been the result of irresponsible speculation by commodity traders because few bio-fuel crops have directly displaced food crops. However, the question remains: will the drive for bio-fuels interfere with food supply in the future?

There is also the question of whether rain-forests may be razed to make way for the required crops (there are many choices depending on the rainfall and sunshine levels – cane, corn, beet, sorghum, rapeseed, sunflowers or palms to name a few). If an existing forest is razed it not only destroys biodiversity, but usually also results is a massive belch of CO2 into the atmosphere that will takes many years to offset.

However, bio-fuels are still too promising to let alone.

In Europe most diesel already contains a certain percentage of bio-fuel and the EU has targets for bio-fuel use in transport (5.75% by 2010). Even though the target is unlikely to be met, the trends are strong.

The technical barriers are not too serious – most diesel cars can take bio-diesel blends and can usually be made to take pure bio-diesel with minor adjustments. Bio-ethanol can equally be blended with petrol, and at 10%, many modern cars would in fact run better. However, higher levels are still the reserve of so-called “flex-fuel vehicles’ (FFV’s). These are very popular in Brazil, the world’s leading producer or sugar-based bio-ethanol. The US (especially California) is also leading in this initiative. Although to be fair, this too is not a new idea: the Model-T Ford was a FFV!

In the next article I will looking at the driving techniques that can get 20% more miles out of each tank.

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