• Prodrive abandons F1 plan
• Flybrid to launch KERS at AI show
• NASCAR race team owner jailed
• CCWS adds Spanish race
• Export boom drives UK damper company expansion
• Hybrids to feature in centenary Great Race
• European ETTAR project aims to break down barriers to greener freight transport technologies

According to a report on the website of the US magazine Autoweek the Banbury, UK based automotive and motorsport development company Prodrive has abandoned its planned entry into the FIA Formula One World Championship in 2008.

Prodrive had intended to use 2008 specification cars supplied by the Woking, UK based McLaren-Mercedes F1 team but threats of legal action by rival teams appear to have put paid to a plan by the FIA to allow teams to run so called ‘customer cars’ starting in 2008.

The Autoweek story also says that a Prodrive request to join the 2008 F1 championship in the middle of the season had been turned down by the FIA World Motor Sport Council.

Flybrid Systems LLP, the Silverstone, UK based company, which is developing a new high-speed flywheel-based energy storage and recovery system for use in Formula One and other forms of motorsport as well as road vehicle applications, will launch the initial version of the device at the Autosport Engineering exhibition which takes place on the first two days of the 2008 Autosport International Show.

Flybrid Systems partners Jon Hilton and Doug Cross believe their company is the first in the world to demonstrate a high-speed spinning flywheel that can survive a crash test of the severity used for F1 frontal impact testing.

Hilton said, “We are delighted to be launching our new kinetic energy recovery system at the Autosport Engineering Show. The device on display will be a racing car system and we expect this green technology to generate a lot of interest."

The Autosport International Show takes place at the UK’s National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham on January 10-13.

Gene Haas, the owner of the Haas CNC Racing NASCAR Nextel Cup US stockcar racing team has been jailed for two years after pleading guilty to defrauding the American government of more than $20 million in taxes.

The charges relate to Haas’s Haas Automation company based in Oxnard, California and accuse him of planning to claim $50 million in non-existent expense that were to be were to be written off as business costs that would save the company $20 million in taxes.

In addition to the prison term, which begins in January 2008, Haas has already paid a $5 million fine and more than $70 million dollars as part of a plea agreement, requiring him to pay all outstanding taxes, plus penalties and interest.

The organisers of the US based Champ Car World Series single-seater racing championship have unveiled a 14 race schedule for 2008 that includes a Spanish race for the first time.

The race will take place at the Jerez circuit, which was used a venue for FIA Formula One World Championship races until 1997, in June 2008 and will become the third European based round of the CCWS following on from the successful introduction of races at Zolder in Belgium and Assen in the Netherlands in 2007.

The race on a street course in the US city of Las Vegas, which opened the 2007 season, is absent from the 2008 calendar due to problems with the event’s original promoter but it is thought that it could return to the CCWS schedule in the future.

The Witney, UK based suspension damper company Nitron Racing Systems is moving to new premises that will allow it to expand its manufacturing operation to cope with increased export business.

Until 2005 Nitron was a respected company in the motorsport industry making high performance shock absorbers for cars and motorcycles but reliant mainly on UK sales with a modest export market. Its fortunes changed when managing director Guy Evans contacted the Oxfordhsire offices of Business Link seeking advice on how to develop the firm was told about a trade mission to Japan organised by Government body UK Trade and Investment which proved to be a major breakthrough almost doubling the company’s turnover.

Evans said, "I wanted to sell to Japan because of the size of the motorsport market there. Now, two years later, our product has the same amount of exposure as the market leader.

"Our current unit is now too small for the eight of us working here. Moving to new premises will allow us to employ more staff in the design room and in the assembly room, which is necessary as we launch a new range of products for 2008."

Entries for next years 100th anniversary re-run of the famous 1908 New York to Paris "Great Race" include a group of car enthusiasts who aim to promote hybrid cars by driving around the world on the least amount of fuel possible.

Ten teams driving hybrid electric cars will join the Innovation Class of next summer's Great Race from New York to Paris and attempt to complete the almost 22,000 mile (35,000 km) course by driving as efficiently as possible.

The participation in the “Great Race” will be the first in a series of MPG Challenges, created in partnership with Hybridfest Inc, the organisers of the USA’s largest hybrid car festival.

Bill Ewing, chief executive of event promoter Great Race Sports said, "Clearly the world has a big fuel problem. Dealing with global warming issues requires conservation as well as alternative fuels. The MPG Challenge brings attention to the importance of improving fuel economy by squeezing the most out of hybrids in a way that people relate to."

Eric Powers, president of Hybridfest said, "We are very excited about our involvement in creating the MPG Challenge. Some of the best hypermilers in the world have already expressed interest in participating and showing the world how to do something as mind boggling as driving around the world with as little fuel as possible."

A workshop in Gothenburg on 25-26 October, run by the EU-funded ETTAR (Environmental Technologies Training and Awareness Raising project) under the 6th EU Framework Programme, focused on the main barriers to companies buying and selling road, rail, sea and air freight transport adopting environmentally friendly technologies available.

The lead partner in the ETTAR project is Ecologic - the Berlin-based Institute for International and European Environmental Policy. Their key partners include Deutsche Bahn, Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Ireland’s Clean Technology Centre Cork, Prague-based consultancy Enviros, and University of Cambridge Programme for Industry.

For many expert speakers at the project’s first event, a major hurdle for greener transport technologies proved to be the apparent lack of a conventional business case for environmental investment in the logistics sector, although several opportunities are already available or under development.

The seminar sought to find out whether investments in the best available vehicle/engine or fuel technologies are being held up mainly for cost reasons, for lack of awareness of the options available, or lack of awareness of the potential long-term benefits of specific CO2-reducing technologies.

Different reasons for low environmental freight investment were cited by expert delegates from the logistics, transport procurement and academic fields representing road, rail, shipping and air freight. Among these reasons are insufficient policy instruments, a highly competitive, low-margin, short-term, cost-focused logistics market, energy prices and freight transport costs too low to force change, ignorance of environmental issues and solutions, rail infrastructure problems inhibiting modal shifts, and a lack of reliable information on the costs and impacts of alternative fuels and technologies.

During the two day event, working Group sessions examining the barriers and drivers for the up-take of environmental technologies took place, delivering inter alia the following results:

- Consumers of end products as part of the society are interested in climate change and sustainability. However, as customers they are not willing to pay higher transport prices for more environmentally adapted transport solutions nor are they often aware of the transport emissions linked to the production and distribution of goods.

- The responsibility of the supply chain members is to offer environmentally friendly choices and alternatives, from which customers can choose freely, and not to wait until customers demand certain solutions. Structural or personified bottlenecks in the companies impeding the adoption of environmental solutions have to be identified and neutralised.

- Mandatory performance targets for freight transport vehicles are needed and not an artificial rise in transport prices – here policy makers can support the industry. This would prevent freight companies from using very cheap and environmentally unfriendly technologies and thereby ruining any business case.

- Apart from environmental standards, individual solutions fostering environmental technologies are called for. These solutions need to be adapted to a company, the concrete transport mode and the specific regional circumstances.

Delegates expected the tipping point for fuel costs to serve as a catalyst for change to be high, since the logistics market shows little price elasticity, although comparative price advantages are crucial to suppliers’ survival.

Several technology solutions and best practice examples described in the workshop – encompassing alternative fuels and new technologies - illustrated barriers to rapid or widespread take-up, but also showed that real progress could be achieved by suppliers and customers committed to testing options among a wide choice of new fuels and technologies, often on an initially small or micro scale.

- Anders Röj of Volvo Technology AB expected heavy trucks' fuel consumption to come down also in future at roughly an historical pace, which would mean by 15% between 2005 and 2020. By 2030, the EU's biofuels advisory council (BIOFRAC) projects that biofuels could account for 25% of EU road fuel consumption. Mr Röj said that while EU policy was not yet looking at the well-to-wheels emissions, overall energy-efficiency and land resources for biofuels in an integrated way, the European Commission is due to publish biofuels sustainability criteria later this month.

- For Uta Maria Pfeiffer of Siemens Transportation, trains are better than trucks and thus a modal shift would be the best solution, according to energy and emission calculations of different routes. The prospects of a marked increase in modal shift from long-haul trucks to rail were still held up by 30-year rolling stock investment cycles, and the lack of rapid EU-wide investments in standardised rail gauges and train control systems.

- Intra-EU rail freight speeds are just 18 kph which could be largely improved by the EU levelling national barriers. However, the potential for new rolling stock to facilitate a shift from trunk road freight to rail was described by Per Stribek of FlexiWaggon AB, a Swedish start-up currently building a prototype onto which drivers can load trucks from either side of the rail track without an expensive terminal.

- Hulda Winnes of Chalmers University of Technology suggested raising shipping customers' awareness that the emissions-lowering potential of slower-speed voyages could be crucial. Although fuel oil could represent half of a ship's total costs, a current lack of global shipping capacity makes speed more important to operators than fuel cost.

- Helge Hafstad, environmental manager for SAS Norway, told delegates that new turbofan engines likely to be available from 2015-2020 could cut plane CO2 emissions by around 30%, but warned: “There will be no single solution, but many small solutions” to reducing aviation’s climate impact.

- Dr Magnus Blinge of the Swedish agency for innovation systems – Vinnova reviewed advances in biofuels technologies, and said for the EU-15 to become self-sufficient in 1st-generation biofuels would require an eight-fold increase in existing land use. However, second generation fuels from Fischer-Tropsch plants for biodiesel or Dimethyl ether (DME) fuel could soon achieve a 70% CO2 reduction over fossil fuel refining. With this technology Europe could be up to 20 % self-sufficient clean fuels for the transport sector.

- Sven Wolf, managing director of the Hydrogen Sweden public-private partnership noted a need for more renewable energy for hydrogen production. His organisation is through the Scandinavian Hydrogen Highway Partnership targeting 15 refuelling stations across Scandinavia, sufficient to fuel 500 cars and 100 buses by 2015.

- A new, energy-saving truck refrigeration system using waste CO2 from industrial installations, capable of running independently of the truck’s powertrain, hence able to deliver to zero-emissions zones, was outlined by Rüdiger Jehle of Thermo King.

Solutions that can surmount obstacles to best environmental freight transport practice vary between road, rail, air and sea, and may also depend on exposure to end-consumer opinion. Each solution also has different implications for fuel and technology suppliers; availability of supply of environmental fuel options has to be assessed beforehand.

All delegates at the Gothenburg ETTAR workshop agreed that the barriers to carbon reduction in goods trade would never come down if individuals in the logistics business continued to wait for others inside and beyond their own companies to come up with ‘silver bullet’ solutions or new regulations: Small-scale projects could and should be implemented with willing partners, with the potential of contributing to large-scale change.

Workshop moderator Frank Sprenger, of the Munich-based consultancy Sustainability, summed up: “We need to break down the psychological barriers around each of us, overcome the inertia of daily commercial pressures, and dare to make mistakes. We must pursue a variety of possibilities, in the knowledge that they won’t all be right to have good answers to the nagging questions future generations will definitely ask us. Technologies and alternative fuels are obviously not the bottleneck.”

ETTAR was established to identify and assess training needs, methods and activities for the wider use of environmental technologies in the transportation sector. ETTAR focuses on activities that assist the sector to make its contribution to reductions not just of greenhouse gases but also of other pollutants that have significant environmental impacts.

ETTAR runs from April 2007 to September 2008.

(www.ettar.eu, www.ecologic.eu)