New technologies to make road transportation more efficient
Rising fuel-economy standards, shifts in consumer behaviour and new technologies should make road transportation much more efficient, even as the total number of vehicles rises
Most of us who drive probably charge our phones via the cigarette lighter in our car. One day we might provide power to the neighbourhood, too. Vehicle-2-grid, an emerging technology, would connect cars to power stations, allowing the battery to charge for driving, before sending back the excess to the grid. Grid-integrated-vehicles being pioneered at the University of Delaware would charge and discharge at a rate of 19 kilowatts, equivalent to the power consumption of 12 US homes. Or think of smart-parking. Ad van Wijk, of the University of Delft in the Netherlands, sees multi-storey car parks as “future power plants”. Cars generate electricity more efficiently than conventional power stati
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