Mygreenwheels

It was a pleasant surprise to find this site acknowledged as an authority on BEVs by that iconic bastion of the world’s media, the Times of London. What an uplifting start to 2008 especially as this site has never been officially “launched”! Better still was the news that Bertrand Delanöe, the Mayor of Paris, announced his intention to unleash none other than 2000 BEVs onto the Paris road system in an attempt to reduce the chronic traffic congestion that one is familiar with in that city.

The choice of vehicle though highlights a problem that many city transport chiefs around the globe have. They know that many people prefer the privacy of a more personalised public transport form and so a self-drive BEV-PSV solution makes real sense. There’s a real problem however. Although the technology exists and the designs and smart control systems are out there, no manufacturer is currently offering these for sale today. Instead Bertrand Delanöe must specify work-around solutions like the one from Dassault Aviation mentioned in today’s piece in the Times.

This kind of interim solution is a step in the right direction but fuels the position of the “nay-sayers” who voted the Reva Electric 2 seater City-car, albeit a quadra-cycle, the Ugliest Duckling on London’s streets. These same individuals will recoil at the thought of tootling round Paris in a Renault Kangoo Van with an EV pack stuffed into a floor-pan designed for another age of engineering. The BEV solution can be so much more aesthetically attractive in terms of exterior design and interior form and we can give cities like Paris, London, New York and Rome sustainable electric vehicles as chic as the BMW Mini Cooper, or the new Fiat 500 retro re-issue that will be the chic ICE wheels for 2008.

The Renault Kangoo type interim equipment solution is there because of the huge sums of capital invested in conventional auto manufacturing facilities. The fact is that it is now archaic. These designs use conventional painted metals that take years to bio-degrade and heavy suspension systems, drive trains and wheels. All the transmission hardware, suspension and body components can be replaced by light, smart in-wheel motor solutions with digital control for wheel speed doing away with drive shafts, differential gears and with heavy and inefficient wiring looms replaced by multiplexing as in fly-by-wire aircraft. With 70% of the output of an engine often dissipated by carrying its own weight, why are we continuing to rely on these old design and engineering concepts? You and the shareholders of the existing auto giants already know the answer to this.

So what we need now is an automotive Apple to do in the world of cars and trucks and buses what i-phone and i-pod has done to Sony-Ericsson, Nokia et al in the world of mobiles and PDAs. The human perception of the self drive PSV electric city car equivalents of the Vélib bikes is an essential consideration in winning the hearts of the users in the first few cities which adopt this excellent solution. The negativity facing the Mayor of Paris will be repeated elsewhere, so as they say, “if you gonna do it, do it right!” and that means a brand new fit for purpose design. Get that right and the world’s cities will be queuing for the product. You know, I might just go do it myself!