Green Cars & Bus Systems

Wednesday, 10 March 2010

by Simon Gear

Every car manufacturer worth their salt these days is building a green car. Walking around the International Motor show in Geneva earlier this month you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting half a dozen hydrogen-, electric- or hybrid powered vehicles. Even Ferrari had a green painted car on their stand in a vague attempt to get in on the act.
Prime among these, of course, was South Africa’s own Joule, proudly unveiled by the CEO of Optimal Energy, Mr Kobus Meiring. The Joule is a plug in electric car, with a range comfortably exceeding most urban commutes and with design and comfort aimed at challenging the Prius for the title of icon of the suburban green warrior.

Apart from the obvious low carbon emissions and huge savings in fuel costs, there are two features of these cars that bring a song to my heart. The first is that they are absolutely silent. So much so that we may have to think of adding some sort of warning for dozy pedestrians. The second, while completely obvious, never fails to grab me with its novelty. Because the car boasts zero emissions, there is, of course, no exhaust pipe.

Once you’ve seen an electric car glide quietly past with nary a whiff of smoke, going back to the idea of an internal combustion engine seems positively grotesque. What on earth were we thinking, hauling tons and tons of black gunk out of the ground so that we could power smelly, noisy (and highly flammable) vehicles? There is little doubt that if we were inventing the passenger car for the first time today, the petrol engine wouldn’t even get a look in as a potential technology.

But for me, there remains a degree of concern about the route that we are taking. Smoke and CO2 and noise aside, what the current obsession with car ownership actually costs us is space. Even if we converted everyone onto perfect little electric engines tomorrow, the ugliness that cars have wrought on our cities remains. Try cycling in to work. Or even just walking from one office tower to another in Sandton. It is abundantly clear that Gauteng long ago sold its soul to the vehicle.

It’s sadly amusing that in amongst the huge success that are the 2010 football stadiums, the one area of planning that still causes concern is our ability to transport punters between world cup venues. I don’t know what the mental block is against public transport in South Africa but we seem to be willing to spend money on just about anything, submarines, commissions of enquiry, fact finding missions, anything, rather than just getting our bus system sorted out. And when we do give it a bash, our leaders cower so abjectly at the feet of the taxi associations that they may as well not have bothered.

I love the Joule. I am excited that such a pretty and clean little car is going to spring forth from our country. But it is just one rather small cog in a much bigger wheel that needs turning. Let’s give it a proper go.