• US college launches Formula Hybrid
• Strong support for MIA Motorsport to Defence initiative
• Carlin Motorsport expands
• Barwell Motorsport at Goodwood Festival of Speed
• Ex-Ferrari technical director to speak at MIA dinner
• Carmakers will be the scapegoats for climate change – Lehman Brothers
• German government plans eco-labelling for cars
• U.S. raises renewable road transport fuels obligation

American engineering students from Dartmouth College, New Hampshire have launched Formula Hybrid, a collegiate racecar design competition that invites teams of college and university students to design, build, and race vehicles with gasoline-electric hybrid drive trains.

The first of what is planned to be an annual Formula Hybrid competition will be held on May 1-3 at the New Hampshire International Speedway race circuit in Loudon. In addition to Dartmouth’s own team, entries have also been registered from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University of Daytona Beach, Florida; Illinois Institute of Technology; Colorado State University; Florida Institute of Technology; Yale University; McGill University; and Drexel University.

Formula Hybrid had its beginnings in 2003 when Dartmouth students began researching their first hybrid racecar with the intention of entering it in that year's Formula SAE competition. However, the Formula SAE competition rules were changed that year to disallow hybrid entries, thus inspiring the Dartmouth students to develop their own hybrid competition. Both the SAE and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers are sponsors of the competition.

A requirement of the competition is that a Formula Hybrid vehicle must use at least 15 percent less gasoline than a comparable "regular" formula racecar operated under the same conditions, a goal many of the entries are expected to surpass. Another guideline involves recycling. Unlike the Formula SAE competition, Formula Hybrid teams are encouraged to incorporate used parts of other racecars rather than build everything from scratch.

The UK’s Motorsport Industry Association reports that its visits to the MOD establishment at Bovington in April and BAE Systems, Leicester in May, as part of its Motorsport to Defence initiative, are sold out.

The visits were arranged after the success of the first exploratory meeting of the motorsport and defence industries was organised by the MIA in January. MIA CEO Chris Aylett said, "The initial talks made it clear that there is huge scope for the motorsport industry to directly aid matters of national security: initially through an involvement in the much publicised FRES high speed lightweight armoured vehicle programme. The speed at which interest in this has taken off is very exciting and there is no telling where it may lead. As motorsport moves into a technologically-limiting era, this is a perfect platform for re-invigorating our industry’s unique knowledge and experience, and to discover new sources of income."

For further information e-mail

The UK based Carlin Motorsport organisation, which runs race teams in A1GP, British Formula Three, Renault World Series and Formula BMW, has a established a new Carlin Advanced Technologies division.

CAT is based in Chessington, Surrey at premises once housed the now defunct Brabham Formula One team when it was owned Bernie Ecclestone. The site was later operated as an independent motorsport development company called Activa.

Facilities at CAT include a one-third scale rolling road wind tunnel and composite manufacturing capability which are being made available to customers on a commercial basis.

The Great Bookham, UK based Barwell Motorsport GT racing team, which was the first organisation to sign up as an EEMS Campaiagn Partner, will be flying the flag for energy efficiency at the Goodwood Festival of Speed on June 22-24.

The Barwell Motorsport Aston Martin DBRS9 which is the first high performance sports car to run on bioethanol in the British GT championship, will compete in the famous Goodwood Festival of Speed hill climb and in doing so demonstrate the performance of vehicles running on this sustainable fuel to a wider audience. Barwell Motorsport and EEMS presence at the event also ties in with the 2007 Festival’s focus on the future of motoring and environmental issues.

The UK’s Motorsport Industry Association is holding a dinner it is calling an ‘‘Evening with Ross Brawn’ at Woburn Abbey on April 25.

At the event hosted by Carter & Carter plc, diners will be addressed by Brawn who was the technical director of the Ferrari Formula One team from 1996 -2006 and was previously with the Arrows, Benetton, FORCE and Williams teams.

According to a study by the US investment bank Lehman Brothers reported by Le Monde (but not on the bank’s own website) European car manufacturers may be the ‘first victims’ of climate change, since populist politicians and their electorates, more ecologically-minded customers than their U.S. and Japanese counterparts, and particularly severe emissions limits, will cast them as the chief scapegoats for the ill effects of climate change. The bank’s study suggests Renault will be at less risk in this respect than other European competitors, notably the German manufacturers of large-capacity cars.

The German transport minister Wolfgang Tiefensee told the ‘Bild’ newspaper last Saturday that he hoped to introduce environmental labelling for new cars this year which would provide more information than statutory absolute CO2 per km emissions, in the manner of white goods environmental impact labelling. The system envisaged would provide for red, amber and green labels, according to cars’ overall environmental impact measurements.

The policy was welcomed for its simplicity and transparency by the ADAC, Germany’s largest motoring organisation, while the VDA, which represents Germany’s automotive manufacturers, said it was more important to work, within a limited timescale, on pan-EU environmental information regulations than on national schemes.

The VDA also suggested, as reported by the ‘Autohaus’ trade magazine’s website, that any environmental grading scheme must taking into account the various uses for which vehicles may be intended, and include factors such as laden weight.

The U.S. Environment Protection Agency announced yesterday that it would raise the volume of alternative fuel to be available to 4.02% of total gasoline supplied this year, a 1% increase on 2006. The ruling effectively creates a market for 4.7 billion gallons of alternative fuels this year, a volume due to rise to 7.5 billion gallons a year by 2012.

Today’s Detroit News, reporting the story ahead of the EPA’s own website, noted that both the National Resources Defense Council and the National Environmental Trust greeted the fuel obligation as ineffective in global warming gas emissions terms, and the latter body’s president Philip E. Clapp said, "Vehicles powered by ethanol get 20-30% fewer miles per gallon than they do with gasoline, so in order to reduce spending at the pump any renewable fuels mandate must be coupled with significant improvements to auto fleet efficiency."

Announcing the new alternative fuel standards, the administrator of the EPA said that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling against the Agency’s refusal to regulate CO2 emissions from vehicles was “under review”, as is the EPA’s decision on whether to grant California a waiver from federal rules to introduce its own state legislation to require car manufacturers to improve average fuel economy by more than 25% - in the case of cars, to 43 mpg over the next decade. Ten states have thus far adopted California’s proposed rules, which are intended to come into force in 2009; bodies representing the automotive industry have filed three lawsuits seeking to block them, first in California, and this month, in Vermont.