Valencia, 07/06/2002 (Agence Europe) - The Valencia conference (see EUROPE 6 June page 17) has been emphasising the amount of action needed to develop cleaner road vehicles.
The economist, Rémi Prud'homme (Université Paris XII), has expressed serious doubts on the efficiency and re-orientation of different kinds of transport away from roads. He explained that this would impact on public finances and consumers would be unlikely to want to foot the bill. Arve Thorvik, Director of the Sustainable Mobility Project at the World Council that brings together 160 large companies from the car, oil and tyre industry, echoed the observation of the White Paper on Transport, " Changes in life-style and mobility must take place". Phenomena, such as urbanisation (population growth in the large cities) and under-urbanisation (urban sprawl - towns spreading, creating a fall in population density per square kilometre) accompanied by increased car use (this has doubled over the last 25 years) and buses (54% increase over the same period). 40,000 deaths occur on the roads every year, which are also responsible for a significant amount of polluting emissions (CO2, notably).
Research is continuing to promote different kinds of vehicles, which are cleaner and more efficient. Project development by different "clusters" foresee over the next 30-50 years the development of a propulsion system based on the internal combustion engine (ICE) for both diesel and petrol. The major benefit would be to get near to the goal of zero polluting emissions by reducing fuel consumption. EUDIESEL (European diesel cars, project structured around Daimler-Chrysler) aims to produce direct diesel injection cars that will be as clean as petrol powered cars but with fewer CO2 emissions, due to the high and very high pressure injection modifications, until 2005 (conforming to auto-rail legislation). Although the diesel engine produces fewer CO2 emissions it produces more nitrogen oxide particles, whereas the petrol engine will have to reduce its CO2 emissions. GET (a partnership centred on Renault) aims to solve these problems by reducing the size of the petrol engine from 1.6 to approximately 1.8 litres per turbo. Hybrid vehicles (combustion and electricity) are always confronted with the problem of power storage. The SUVA (Surplus Value Hybrid Car), an Forschungsgeselschaft Kraftfahrwesehn initiative, from Aachen, plans to test, in 2003, a system based on the ICE combined with an electric motor enabling alternative or combined use of these energy sources and an automatic or manual gear box. Other solutions exist but vehicle and hydrogen costs, for example, are often too high. There are, however, specific demands to meet. One example is the innovative transport model, baptised the "Phileas". It is lightweight (15 tons) for a scale of 18-24 meters in length, with a passenger capacity of up to 180. The engine uses a joint combustible source (LPG) and electric batteries, which makes it less polluting with an energy saving of 25% compared to the conventional LPG. The Dutch city of Eidnhoven will have several prototypes on the road by February 2003.
Against the background of the conference, a constituent meeting of the Road Transport Research Advisory Committee - RTRAC) was held. This brought together experts from the car and oil industry, as well as research institutes. It seeks to advise the European Commission in road transport research matter during implementation of its sixth framework programme.