We’ve mocked up a revised vision of ‘the petrol station of the future’.

We’ve been discussing the charging of electric cars in previous posts and I’d suggested a vision of rows of charging posts and it taking 20 minutes or so to fill your car up while you surfed the net or otherwise chilled out. In a nutshell. (more…)

It’s been an interesting week in the world of renewable. As mentioned yesterday, the G published leaked details of the Government ‘Renewable Energy Strategy:

“Revealed: UK’s blueprint for a green revolution”

So - we may actually be entering into a second industrial revolution if the government gets stuck in with that £100 billion. They’re making all the right noises… (more…)

Thanks to Simon for your comments on Petrol Stations of the Future (and to Will and to Chris also). I started writing responses, but again this is quite a big topic so have turned it into a new post instead (for those who have just joined the thread - you can read the first post in the transport series here, the second which has a little video is here, the third here and the fourth here).

Simon - you make a couple of good points there. The idea of sitting around for 20 minutes while your car charges will be a bit of a challenge for some people, (more…)

Thanks to Chris Blount – whose views on “petrol stations” of the future I share.

With our wind powered car we’re throwing down the gauntlet to the big car companies, who aren’t doing nearly enough. They bleat about needing decades and £billions to perfect fuel cell technology – and with that comes the need for big new infrastructure – hydrogen infrastructure - that’ll take decades too.

You know what I think – they’re hooked on burning things, hooked on the internal combustion engine – it’s what they know and what they’ve built their business around. They don’t want to move to cars without engines. (more…)

Thanks to Peter and Simon for their posts last week.

Has Tesla really killed of the myth of rubbish electric cars as Simon says? And are we just trying to make another Tesla as Peter says? (more…)

I was in Norfolk yesterday meeting the team that are building the car for us. We’ve reached the end of the feasibility phase (the donor car is in absolute pieces). We shot some more film on the day and now have enough to make a short promo to tout to the TV companies, to see if any of them want to follow the project from here - the building and testing of the car. Here’s a short clip to give an idea of where we’re coming from. See this other blog post for more info on the project.

But I am a bit of a petrol head. I like fast things, mostly bikes. People ask how I can be both a petrol head and an environmentalist – fair question. Well nobody’s perfect, I’m certainly not. We all live in the real world, the one in which we make compromises and promises to do better, and occasionally do do the things we know in principle, it would be better if we didn’t. Life and the need to live a better (zero carbon) one is a journey, there’s no overnight solution and we shouldn’t beat ourselves up over things we can’t change right now. That said, by the way, I only did 3,000 miles in a car last year, I’m getting to grips with it. (more…)