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Debate around reducing the environmental impact of modern vehicles generally leads to alternative sources of fuel, especially given recent increases in petrol price.
Debate around reducing the environmental impact of modern vehicles generally leads to alternative sources of fuel, especially given recent increases in petrol price.
But with so many options being touted and little clarity around the direction the market will take it would be easy to go down a dead end.
The big messages coming from Government are green, but the advice from me is don't rush into a green decision for the sake of it because you could be wasting your time and money, lets take LPG as an example.
Biofuel is being labelled by many as one of the leading contenders in alternative fuel, after all even now all petrol and diesel sold in the UK consists of at least 2.5% biofuels. There are already a few drivers happily running their cars on waste vegetable or cooking oils.
However, as you will know the use of biofuels, and the production of the raw material it is made from, continues to be surrounded by controversy.
There are fears that there will be negative environmental implications of large-scale biofuel production with the potential clearance of land to make way for biofuel crops. This is compounded by a growing debate around the likely switch from food production to energy crops which is already thought to be leading to increased food prices.
There is a buzz around hydrogen with research on fuel cells being taken so seriously by General Motors that they have more than 500 scientists and engineers working on it.
Although realistically, most carmakers believe hydrogen fuel-cell cars may be at least a decade from large scale commercial viability. In the interim hybrid vehicles are becoming more popular each year with the market led by the Toyota Prius, which has just topped 1 million worldwide sales.
At the moment one of the front runners of the new technologies is electric. In the past it failed to win consumers' acceptance because of cost, performance and driving range but things seem to be changing with some momentum building behind electric vehicles, to the extent that this year's British International Motor Show included an Electric Vehicle Village dedicated to the technology.
Several big name manufacturers are also making strides to develop electric cars using lithium-ion batteries, in principal similar to the ones that we use everyday in laptops or mobile phones - but powerful enough to help propel a large luxury car.
Electrification looks like the industry's simplest way to deliver the big increases in miles per gallon and reductions in carbon dioxide that regulators are demanding. However, in this industry things have a tendancy to change and the big thing to remember is, despite the noises they are making, ultimately it will be the market that works out the solution for itself, not the Government or environmental lobbyists.
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