Another "Green" F1 Story

Whilst it was never our intention to give so much attention to Formula 1 (despite the coincidental domain name with Honda F1's "positive marketing" campaign) we couldn't pass up the opportunity to report on the latest piece of green waffle from the motor sport governing body the FIA.

With a new season starting in Australia last weekend (incidentally the highest greenhouse emitting nation per capita in the world) the FIA issued a release in which the F1 drivers pledged their support to the "Make Cars Green" campaign.

The aims of the campaign are laudable, to quote the press release

Make Cars Green is a global campaign, aimed at helping to reduce the impact of motoring on the environment.

We can't really argue with that. We won't end mankind's love affair with the automobile, and it's not what Earth Dream is about to argue that we should. And as we commented last week the big brains in the F1 teams have a rich history of pioneering technologies that have made it into modern road cars.

Where we do take a slight issue is the method by which they are doing it. You see F1 engine development is now frozen for a number of years, despite the thirsty nature of the current power units, and additional power can only be delivered by hybrid "Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems", or as the FIA release puts it

The Make Cars Green campaign forms part of the FIA’s ongoing commitment to work with policy makers, industry and motoring consumers to encourage greener motoring. The FIA Formula One World Championship will take a lead in this when in 2009 hybrid devices called KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems) will be introduced. These devices can store energy under braking and re-use that energy for acceleration. It is the first in a number of initiatives set to make the sport more road relevant and environmentally sustainable.

All well and good, but why have they shackled the F1 designers? These are incredibly intelligent and inventive engineers. These people don't need to be given the "solution" to investigate by the governing body. By telling them "KERS is the way to make cars greener now go and do it" you miss the possibility that they might be able to concoct better more efficient technologies by being given a wider brief.

What the FIA has done is effectively bet the farm on KERS becoming the hybrid technology of choice, and with the resources F1 teams can put into it and the strong links to many major auto manufacturers the FIA is effectively forcing their pet technology to the fore.

Surely if F1 was serious about "going green" a better approach would be to tell the teams that they were going to limit the amount of fossil fuel available to them over subsequent seasons. If teams were told that their fuel allowance would be progressively lower until in 5 years time they would need to complete the race with a 1 gallon fuel tank and no refuelling stops you would see some radical solutions to the problem of "Green Motoring". With the average F1 race clocking in at around 200 miles and some road cars (such as VW's Blue Motion) claiming 70+ mpg already this must be a realistic target.

Imagine what the boffins could come up with if incentivised like that!

Sadly "Mad Max" has bottled it. Which is bizarre as compared to some of his suggestions over the last few years such as making drivers swap cars for each race it would seem a pretty sensible approach.

Still the headline "Make Cars Green" is nice marketing spin for the most environmentally unfriendly of sports and let's them make comments like this

The Make Cars Green campaign seeks to reduce the impact of motoring on the environment in a number of ways. These include: the promotion of more environmentally friendly and fuel efficient driver behaviour; the introduction of new technologies to help motorists monitor their environmental impact; the improvement of tyre design to help save energy; and by encouraging the global use of unleaded and sulphur free fuels.

For further reading the FIA's press release can be found here and the FIA related Make Cars Green website can be found here which features a 10 points for greener motoring section which bears some remarkable similarities to the motoring part of Earth Dreams own Five Things... article.