4. Alternative technology

Billions are being spent by car makers to search for a cost-effective alternative to the traditional car engine. These include

• Electric vehicle
• Hybrid vehicle
• Fuel cell vehicle
• Hydrogen vehicle
• Flywheel vehicle
• Compressed air engine

This mini-web is not about the specific technologies, interesting as they are. But rather the ICT technologies needed to support them.

Electric cars

One of the key factors with electric vehicles is recharging (along with cost, range and battery longevity)

If electric cars are to go 'mainstream' then they must be charged safely, conveniently and at home. The most straightforward way is to attach the car to the mains using a plug and cable. But what about people living in flats? What about cables trailing across pavements?

One solution is to use inductive charging. The system works by having a charging plate buried in the ground, then the car drives over it and charging begins automatically. The onboard system will inform the charging system about the state of the battery. The downside is that it is not as efficient as straight cables and it involves digging up the road. But once in place it would be safe and convenient.

An alternative is for standardised charging points to be placed along roads in a similar manner to parking meters. Then the user pays for the electricity used.

Hybrid cars

With hybrid cars, the car has both an electric motor and a petrol/diesel engine. In one hybrid form, the diesel engine is simply there to keep the battery charged up - it is not connected to the wheels. This is called a 'series hybrid'. The advantage is that the engine can be specially designed to be extremely clean and efficient since it is either completely off or running at a specific constant speed.

An advanced computer controlled system needs to be in place to monitor the battery and control the engine.

Another form of hybrid car is where both the electric motor and the engine are connected to the wheels. This is called a 'parallel' hybrid'. There needs to be a very sophisticated computer control system in place to decide whether the engine, electric motor or both need to be driving the wheels at any point. When a car is braked, a lot of energy is used which usually just heats up the brake pads, but a computer controlled 'regenerative braking system' can recover some of this wasted energy and use it to help charge the battery.