Group dreams up `green' van
As concern over the dangers of global warming grows, the auto industry has an opportunity to take a leading role in fighting it, a prominent environmental group said Thursday.
Instead of suing to block state-mandated reductions in carbon dioxide, a primary cause of climate warming, automakers could pull enough existing technology from their parts shelves to cut emissions of the so-called greenhouse gas by 40%, the Union of Concerned Scientists said.
To prove the point, the Washington-based group unveiled a blueprint for a climate-friendly minivan it calls the Vanguard.
It would run on a blend on 85% gasoline and 15% ethanol and could achieve 22 miles per gallon in combined city and highway driving. That's the equivalent of 28 mpg on conventional gasoline.
Technologies would include a turbocharged six-cylinder engine that would shut down two cylinders when cruising, a fuel-efficient six-speed automatic transmission and electric power steering.
Although those technologies are in use today, "they've never been all put together in one vehicle," said the group's Spencer Quong, an engineer in Berkeley who designed the Vanguard.
He estimated that in California alone, use of the Vanguard technologies would eliminate 73 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2030 -- an amount equal to taking 19.1 million of today's passenger vehicles off the road.
Chris Martin, a spokesman for Honda Motor Co.'s U.S. arm in Torrance, said that the vehicle the environmental group designed existed only as a computer model and questioned whether it could be easily and economically built.
"But we support all efforts to improve the environment, and we already have many of these technologies in use on our vehicles," Martin said.
Honda boasts the auto industry's best overall fuel economy and would be least affected by laws limiting greenhouse gases. The rules affect fuel economy because carbon dioxide is produced in proportion to the amount of fuel a vehicle burns.
Turning out vehicles based on the Vanguard model would take a concerted effort and would have to be phased in as various car and truck models were redesigned, said David Friedman, research director for the Union of Concerned Scientists' clean-vehicle program. But the additional features would add only about $300 to the average price, he said.
