Big news in the diesel market from Green Car Congress as the promises made last year are starting to come to fruition. For example, check out the new Audi Q7 V12 monster based on the diesel race car that crushed the non-diesel competition at the Le Mans:

…Audi has applied a 6.0-liter, Euro-5 compliant 12-cylinder diesel TDI engine—the first V12 passenger car engine—in a concept version of the Audi Q7. The Audi Q7 V12 TDI study delivers 368 kW (493 hp) and a massive 1,000 Nm (737 lb-ft) of torque.

The power of the turbocharged V12 TDI takes the SUV from 0 to 100 kph in 5.5 seconds, with fuel consumption of 11.9 liters/100km (20 mpg US).

Excessive, yes, but these technologies do make their way eventually to the more common models. 20 mpg is depressing, until you look at the giant pig of a body sitting on top of the powerplant. If they put that engine into something more reasonably efficient, the mpg would probably jump by double. Of course, you’d still have to convince people that they don’t need the baggage (pun intended).

Similarly, Mercedes has a big bulky design scheduled for import at the end of this year:

The Vision GL 420 BLUETEC is a full-size SUV featuring a V8 diesel engine, which develops 290 hp (216 kW) and 700 Nm (515 lb-ft) of torque, while delivering fuel consumption of 9.8 liters/100 km (24 mpg US).

For a vehicle the size of the GL 420, Mercedes uses a continuous urea-based Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) system with a conversion efficiency of up to 80%. The GL 420 is targeted to go on sale in the US in 2008.

Hello, do we really need 500-700 lb-ft of torque in luxury vehicles? I’d be happy with a more common 260 lb-ft found in vehicles like the Ford F-150 workhorse of a truck, and a big boost in mpg instead. Don’t tell me…marketing research says people who are meant to buy the Q7 don’t give a hoot about the efficiency?

Speaking of efficiency, this must be a shocker of a title for Americans to read:

Aluminum Use in new European Cars up 2.6x since 1990; Weight Reduction Yields Fuel Savings of 1 Billion Liters

They’re not yet talking about the savings in road wear or other externalities, but this really stands in contrast to the infamous American tax rules that actually encouraged people to buy vehicles that weigh over 3 tons. Oh, the security externalities…

Thankfully VW is coming through with their clean Jetta TDI, as well as a new mini-SUV (Tiguan) design.

Thanks Green Car Congress!

The risks of off-road vehicle (ORV) use have become an increasingly serious issue for public land management. The U.S. Forest Service is now undertaking a motorized vehicle route designation process to regulate use on National Forest lands and minimize impact. Alternatively, I suppose, the vehicle owners/manufacturers could work to self-regulate and significantly reduce the impact of ORV so their routes would not have to be so limited. The hurdles to this latter approach appear to be at least twofold:

1. Innovation in ORV has not been geared towards reducing impact. The converse, actually, it has been pressure from outside regulation that has led the manufacturers and consumers to become more aware of the externalities of ORV use. Innovation in the market regarding conservation thus has come as a result of regulation.
2. Self-regulation by highly independent groups would still beg the question of how to prevent irresponsible use, which would likely end up becoming an argument for an independent/third-party enforcement agency, which just prolongs acknowledgment of the need for U.S. Forest Service involvement rather than providing a realistic alternative. There could be innovation here as well, such as using satellite tracking to ensure compliance, but this again raises questions of privacy, etc. that are historically best handled through a body of common law.

The groups impacted by ORV externalities include a wide variety of perspectives (bikers, hikers, campers, equestrians, hunters, fishers, conservationists, etc.) with a common goal of finding an ecologically sustainable, manageable, and enforceable ORV route. California has some interesting details available on their National Forest site that explains what has been happening:

The U.S. Forest Service ORV route designation entails a Five Step Process:

1. Compile an inventory of existing roads, trails, and routes used by wheeled vehicles;
2. Issue a Temporary Forest Order that prohibits wheeled vehicle use off of mapped/existing routes or open areas;
3. Develop site-specific proposals for changes to the National Forest System roads, trails and areas;
4. Conduct National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analyses of roads, trails, and areas for public motor vehicle use; and
5. Issue a Motor Vehicle Use Map showing National Forest System roads, trials, and areas authorized for public motor vehicle use.

“Wheeled” vehicles? Seems to bounce back and forth with “motor vehicle”. Wonder where the official definition of these terms might be.

After reading about the recent decision on the Exxon Valdez disaster, I started to get curious about how the Chugach recovered. Somewhere in all the legal and political shuffling a series of quiet settlements were reached, and the group re-emerged from their bankruptcy caused by the spill. But if their way of life was so negatively altered by the spill, which is still affecting the habitat and economy around them, what do they do now?

According to the Washington Monthly, they were given an opportunity to join the military-industrial-congress complex and, as they say, the rest is history:

These same villagers are the unlikely owners of a giant multinational company: the Chugach Alaska Corporation. Chugach Corp.’s annual revenues now top $700 million, nearly all of which comes from federal contracting. The company does more business with the U.S. government than do IBM, AT&T, or Motorola. Chugach and its partners run military bases from Nevada to Iraq. They monitor seismic activity from a base in Korea in support of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. And on another end of the earth, Chugach operates the Reagan Test Site, a coral reef leased from the Marshall Islands, where engineers give ballistic missiles a workout and may some day run the planned Star Wars program. The contract for that one is worth $2.5 billion.

How do the villagers, most of whom would much rather hunt seals and stalk caribou herds than go anywhere near a corporate boardroom, manage these projects? The truth is, they don’t. Village chief Gary Kompkoff is vice chairman of the corporation, but no other villagers and only a handful of Eskimos are even employed on these projects. The projects are managed instead by Chugach’s subsidiary companies–run by white contracting executives from offices in downtown Anchorage or in the Lower 48 states–or by Chugach’s corporate partners–huge firms such as Lockheed Martin and Bechtel.

These natives are being used essentially as fronts, what the Heritage Foundation’s Ronald Utt calls “corporate shells,” because of certain privileges that only Alaskan tribal corporations enjoy. Chief among them is the unlimited right, given to Alaskan native-owned corporations by Congress at the behest of Alaska’s senior senator, Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), to bid for “sole-source” federal contracts (those not put up for competitive bid). As a result, these companies and their giant corporate partners can win federal contracts without necessarily having to offer the government the lowest possible price.

So the result of Exxon and BP externalities in Alaska apparently is the transfer of lucrative military-industrial contracts to people most impacted. While this is clearly good for industry and short-term gains, it is not clear how it helps build awareness or fair representation of the devastating risks from industrial externalities (like oil spills). Maybe the Chugach will reinvest their new money into rehabilitating and preserving their environment, or maybe their hands are tied.

Tom Toles had a funny cartoon to this effect.