In the last few years, all major car manufacturers have introduced models with substantially improved fuel economy and consequent reductions in CO2 emissions. In some companies these have been branded as an 'eco' variant range (e.g. Ford's ECOnetic, Volkswagen's BlueMotion and Skoda's GreenLine among others). Note that fuel economy and CO2 emissions go hand in hand: since, in petrol and diesel vehicles, CO2 emissions are a function of the fuel used, better fuel economy technologies for petrol and diesel cars also improve CO2 emissions. (The alternative approach of switching cars to fuels with a lower carbon content will be considered in Section 5.2 and later in this free course.)
Key technologies include the following:
Cars incorporating these technologies achieve test CO2 emissions for a family hatchback car in the range 80–100 g km−1. As noted previously, actual CO2 emissions and fuel consumption are 20–40% worse than such test figures; as Activity A.5 revealed, a 2050 sustainability target of 20 g km−1 for test CO2 emissions is needed.
Video 1 is a three-minute clip from the motoring programme Fifth Gear that provides an accessible and practical review of this type of car.
If you are reading this course as an ebook, you can access this video here: Fifth Gear Web TV - Ford Focus Econetic Video Diary
OpenLearn - Transport and sustainability Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.