In this weekend's Daily Telegraph Andrew English reviews three new variants of the Smart fortwo that are even more economical that the standard Smart car. The petrol version of the Smart fortwo, the 2 seater car produced by the Mercedes Benz subsidiary, has long been one of the World's most frugal. It managed 60.1 mpg whilst emitting just 112 grammes of carbon dioxide on the EU combined cycle. The figures for the same model from the United States Environmental Protection Agency are 33 mpg in the city and 41 mpg on the highway.

Smart have recently announced that a new diesel engine will be available in the UK from January 2009. Smart claim the 799cc three-cylinder engine is the world's smallest direct-injection diesel. They say a fortwo fitted with the new engine achieves a staggering 85.6 mpg and 88 g/km on the EU Combined cycle, the lowest carbon dioxide emissions of any production car.

The Telegraph also takes a look at Smart's new "micro hybrid drive". This will be fitted as standard on petrol models from October, but bears no resemblance to most people's idea of a hybrid. Rather than having both petrol and electric power the Smart only has a petrol engine. The new system actually employs a "stop/start" mechanism, and merely turns the engine off when you brake to below 5 mph, allowing the car to coast to a stop. Once you release the brake the engine starts again. Mercedes say this results in an 8% improvement on fuel consumption on the EU Combined cycle, rising to as much as 19% in city driving. Essentially the car is doing some EcoDriving for you!

Andrew waxes lyrical about the potential effect of this technology on the inner city environment, and I can't resist repeating his quotation from William Wordsworth's poem "Upon Westminster Bridge":

This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air

Finally the Telegraph gives details of the trial currently under way in the UK of around 100 electric Smart cars. These are actually built by Zytec in Staffordshire and use a high-temperature, natrium-nickel-chloride battery unit made by MES-DEA of Switzerland. The top speed of the electric Smart is 75 mph, and the typical range in everyday use is about 50 miles. This can be extended to around 70 miles using EcoDriving techniques. If your organisation would like to test drive an electric Smart you can apply to Mercedes-Benz in Milton Keynes. Leasing costs are currently £380 per month, which includes the electricity used to charge the car.

EcoDriving is a new trend that has been getting some publicity recently. It’s the art of using a variety of driving techniques and careful maintenance to squeeze every last drop of fuel economy out of your car.

With petrol prices at an all time high of over $4 a gallon in the US and £5 a gallon in the UK more and more people worldwide are looking into it as a way of making their household budget go a bit further. Apart from saving money using less petrol means your car also puts out fewer greenhouse gasses and other emissions.

In the US, where the technique is called Hypermiling, there has been quite a lot of negative publicity recently about EcoDrivers who go to extreme lengths on their quest to increase their miles per gallon to new highs. However you don't need to do anything dangerous or illegal to make big savings. In fact the United States government encourages ordinary drivers to use "EcoDriving" methods to save petrol.

Haulage companies have been teaching their drivers these methods for a very long time, and for a very good reason. If you run a haulage business then petrol or diesel is your single biggest cost, and servicing your trucks is not cheap either. The money saved in fuel and maintenance costs through skilled driving can make all the difference between showing a profit at the end of the year instead of a loss.

To keep tabs on how their lorries are performing, and to let their drivers know how much fuel they are burning, many companies fit "in cab computers" to their lorries. You can now easily and cheaply do the same thing in your own car. Many cars already have a miles per gallon meter, and you can also fit a computer that measures cost per mile and a whole load of other stuff too.

Whether you use electronic gadgets to help, or just learn a few tips and tricks about how to drive and service your car, you too can reduce the cost of running your vehicle, and even do something to help save the planet at the same time.

Become an EcoDriver.  You know it makes sense!

The latest edition of New Scientist magazine just landed on my desk. The cover shows a barrel of oil morphed into a bomb and proclaims "Oil Shock – You ain't seen nothing yet". This issue includes three articles about peak oil.

The subhead in the print edition of the editorial is

We can no longer kid ourselves that our addiction to oil is sustainable

The conclusion of the editor is that:

We are presented with a choice: use the incentive created by high oil prices to push our transport systems towards low-carbon technologies, or remain at the mercy of speculators, saboteurs and the economic uncertainty that comes with high energy prices

Tailpipe CO₂ accounts for some 17 per cent of the world's energy-related emissions and is set to nearly double by 2050, but we're doing little to reduce it. We know from opinion polls that people want cleaner cars. We also know that many countries, especially the US, are concerned about their over-reliance on imported oil.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has suggested a windfall tax on oil companies, but perhaps a more constructive approach would be to compel the companies to invest this money in clean technologies. “Oil companies are investing in green technologies but, like the car companies, they may need an extra push”.

Such measures may seem extraordinary, but we live in an extraordinary time. Preparing for a world without oil is a colossal task, for which we will need a commitment to change and to take bold action.

Elsewhere in the issue Matthew R. Simmons, one of the world's leading experts on peak oil and author of the book “Twilight in the Desert", concludes that pumping more oil won't get us out of our current mess.

On 1 February 2006, the day after his state of the union address, President George W. Bush was discussing his 2006 agenda with the press when he made one of the most far-reaching statements of his presidency. "America," he declared, "must end its dependence on oil. When you're hooked on oil from the Middle East, it means you've got an economic security issue and a national security issue."

Based on the best data on country-by-country oil production, the chances are high that, in practical terms, sustainable global oil output did indeed peak in 2005.

The bottom line is that the US must now wean itself off oil and also help to teach the rest of the world how to successfully and rapidly retreat from its addiction to the stuff. How well the world does in beating a hasty and forced retreat from oil consumption will very likely determine whether the remainder of the 21st century will be relatively peaceful. The stakes could not be any higher.

As if all this isn't gloomy enough for you a long article by Ian Sample, science correspondent for The Guardion newspaper, tells us that:

Bankers Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have both suggested that the crude oil price could rise from the high of $139 a barrel to $200 or more, while the financial speculator George Soros predicts that rising oil prices could send the US economy into recession.

According to Cutler Cleveland, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Boston University:

Finding a replacement fuel for transport is the biggest challenge. So far all the alternatives have hit the skids. For example, hydrogen, which could potentially replace oil as a green fuel if made using renewable sources of energy, has storage and distribution problems. While biofuels, which could be an easier replacement for fossil fuels, require feedstocks that compete with food crops for water and agricultural land. "To get these alternatives close to what oil can do, you have to invest a lot of money", something most governments and energy companies have done reluctantly, and at pathetically low levels. "These aren't insurmountable problems, but they suggest the transition has some formidable challenges"

So there you have it. Get used to high fuel prices at best, and a recession at worst if George Soros' fears are realised

P.S. The online version of New Scientist only allows subscribers to see the full version of most articles. The links above will only show the first couple of paragraphs if you're not a paid subscriber.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a quick trip to Saudi Arabia over the weekend. He was the only western leader to make the trip. According to The Times Mr. Brown:

Told oil-exporting nations they had a responsibility to increase production to avoid “uncertainty and unpredictability for years ahead”.

However apparently the members of OPEC didn't agree. Chakib Khelil, head of OPEC and also Algerian Oil Minister, insisted that increased production was unnecessary and that oil demand was decreasing:

“We believe that the market is in equilibrium. The price is disconnected from fundamentals. It is not a problem of supply,” Mr Khelil said he “didn’t hear anything” to suggest that OPEC members other than Saudi Arabia were planning to increase supply.

Back in the United States Barack Obama seemed to agree with OPEC that speculators are to blame for the current high fuel prices, rather than supply failing to keep up with demand. According to the New York Times Mr. Obama favours imposing tighter controls on oil speculators:

Mr. Obama proposed closing the so-called Enron loophole, a legal provision requested by that company in 2000 that exempts crucial energy commodities from government oversight. He also proposed preventing traders of American crude oil from routing transactions through offshore markets to evade American limits and working with other countries to better regulate oil-futures markets, and he called on the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice to investigate market manipulation and oil futures.

Both presidential candidates commented today on the current high fuel prices, although for some strange reason neither of them suggested EcoDriving as part of the solution to the problem!

According to a New York Times report on a meeting in Detroit at which Al Gore formally endorsed Barack Obama for the first time Mr. Obama said:

Al Gore has done more to educate the world about this problem than anyone. But I have to say, as extraordinary as Al Gore’s work has been, there’s nothing like $4 a gallon gas to get your attention.

The same report also mentions that at his campaign headquarters today John McCain:

Called for lifting the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling for states that want to permit it. He said the impact of high fuel prices was hitting Americans not only at the pump but also in the form of rising food costs and threats of inflation, so he favored giving states incentives to allow exploration as well.

“We must embark on a national mission to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse gases through the development of alternate energy sources,” adding that he still supported a summer gasoline tax holiday.

Commenting on this statement Daniel J. Weiss, a global warming expert from the Center for American Progress said:

Mr. McCain’s call to lift the moratorium was a “partial capitulation” to the oil industry in that states that did not want to drill offshore would not have to.

“McCain is handing America’s coasts on a platter to the big oil companies the day before he goes to talk to them in Houston,”

Unfortunately I can't embed it in this blog post but CNN have recorded a HyperMiling Video that shows Wayne Gerdes, reputedly the original hypermiler, getting double the expected miles per gallon from his Honda Accord using some classic hypermiling techniques. It seems Wayne doesn't care much for SUVs. He calls then "Fuel Sucking Pigs"!

Over here in Europe we don't much care for the word hypermiler, come to that.  We much prefer to use the term EcoDriver.

On January 4th we drove to Putsborough Beach on the Atlantic Coast of North Devon to check out what the forecasts suggested would be some excellent surf.  We also took along our Sony Handycam to see how it performed when trying to film moving targets.  You can see the results in the video below.

We also happened to catch on film Ralph Freeman, bassist with local band The Universe Inspectors, arriving and then catching a short ride.  Nothing unusual about this you may think, but Ralph is no ordinary surfer.  He is not generally to be found sharing a modest beach break with my kids and I,  along with several dozen other hardy souls.  More often he can be seen being towed into giant waves such as Oysters off Downend Point at Croyde, which had been working nicely earlier that same day.

The other unusual thing is that the summer before last Ralph broke his neck whilst surfing Croyde at low tide, and was initially paralysed.  It's great to see that a local legend has apparently made a full recovery from his injuries.