Lifestyle  >  Green is for go

Oil addiction, global warming, increased fuel consumption… There's little doubt that some time in the future oil will be a thing of the past. Should we be worried? Maybe not for ourselves, but for our children and grandchildren. We know we should become more responsible for the remaining stocks of oil still buried beneath our feet, though it's easier said than done.

Even though prices at the pump are at a record high and are expected to rise even further, it still isn't deterring us from using our cars much as we always have done. It can be argued that cars are a lot more efficient with 60mpg becoming the norm. Even so, all they're doing is delaying the inevitable rather than solving the problem. If we want to continue to enjoy the luxury of personal transport, we need to find an alternative to the combustion engine and our dependency on fossil fuels.

Plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) seem the logical way forward, but they also come with their own set of problems. The first electric vehicle was invented as long ago as 1828 by the Hungarian, Anyos Jedlik, some 57 years before Karl Benz patented the first motor car. Admittedly, Jedlik only managed to make a small-scale model, yet it proved that electricity could be successfully used in this way. Since then, there have been a wide variety of electric cars that have tried to succeed where others have failed. But why have they not taken off?

For starters, the biggest hurdle all these cars have had to overcome is ‘range anxiety' – how far they can travel before it is necessary to recharge the batteries – and the time they then take to recharge. The other inherent problems EVs have always had are that they've looked not much different than a glorified fibreglass golf cart – the G-wiz being a good case in point – and have tended to be more expensive than their non-EV counterparts, too.

That said, the prices for plug-in cars are dropping as more people adopt them and they actually start to look like cars, with the 125mph Tesla Roadster and the Nissan Leaf expunging the theory that EVs are neither fun nor practical. I've just finished testing one of the new generation of production electric cars, the Renault Fluence ZE, and it's actually rather good and drives much like any other car. Even Rolls Royce has hopped aboard the EV bandwagon by introducing an all-electric version of their £250,000 Phantom.

And a solution to range anxiety may also be on the horizon. Not only are batteries becoming lighter, cheaper and slightly faster to recharge – thanks in no small part to the mobile phone industry – but Israeli company Better Place has pioneered a radical method using technology developed to change missiles on its fighter jets. The country now boasts an extensive network of stations that keep racks of fully charged batteries – cars simply pull in and swap them in less time than it takes to fill a tank with petrol. This is the sort of ‘disruptive' technology that could make EVs a real, viable option.

Turning the electric problem on its head, Toyota came up with the hybrid Prius. Fitted with both a 1.8-litre petrol engine and an electric motor, the principle is thus: at lower speeds (normally below 14mph) it runs solely on electricity, and then, through its clever engine management system, switches to the petrol engine when its needed, which also recharges the batteries at the same time. Nevertheless, for all its cleverness, the petrol engine emits 89g/km of CO2 gases, which sort of defeats the object of its eco-friendliness.

Irrespective of their lack of 100 per cent green credentials, however, hybrids are growing in popularity and it's now as easy to order a Porsche Cayenne with this type of technology buried under the bonnet as it is to buy a hybrid Renault or Smart Fortwo – which goes to show just how far the industry has come.

The US car maker Fiska and the mighty GM are approaching hybrids in a slightly different way. They still use a dual-engine combination, but instead of using the combustion engine to drive the wheels it acts as a small onboard generator to produce power for the electric motor, sipping only a thimbleful of fuel to do so. US broadcaster and self-proclaimed petrolhead Jay Leno has famously driven more than 11,000 miles in his Chevrolet Volt and has yet to refill it. Jaguar and Audi have declared their intentions to use similar methods, too.

Biofuel is another area the automobile industry is exploring. Between 2000 and 2005, ethanol production doubled and biodiesel production quadrupled. The aim of all biofuels is to be carbon neutral. They have the potential to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions when compared to conventional transport fuels, but whether they live up to this depends on the way they are produced and managed. In reality, biofuel isn't carbon neutral simply because it requires energy to grow the crops and convert them into fuel.

Way of the future?

Many experts agree the real future lies with hydrogen-cell cars. Right now Honda is the only mainstream car maker with a hydrogencell programme, and last year launched the production-ready FCX Clarity. On first appearance, it doesn't seem too different from any other mass-produced medium-sized car, and drives like one too, except it runs near silently, much like a pure plug-in EV.

The theory behind it makes sense: hydrogen is completely sustainable and 100 per cent eco friendly. It returns 67mpg and has a range of 270 miles, which should alleviate any anxiety, and refuelling takes a matter of minutes.The problem lies with the availability of the hydrogen itself. At the moment, there's just one hydrogen station in the UK, although Honda does have plans to build an infrastructure of stations using natural gas to produce hydrogen, with the hope that one day renewable energy will replace natural gas.

Somewhere between all these variants, one will ultimately set the standard that others will follow, and that day is fast approaching. Only !ve years ago you could count on one hand the manufacturers taking alternative fuels seriously. Perhaps the legacy we will leave our children will be that we saw the error of our ways and made the change before it was too late.