Progress is unstoppable – but also affordable?
von Heinz Gupta
Recently, at “Tire Technology“, a Japanese tyre manufacturer was awarded the “Environmental Achievement Award“ for it‘s intention to make a tyre without any mineral oil based raw materials by 2013. So now you can already get a prize for an intention without knowing whether the intention can be fulfilled.
One could already have a tyre that contains only 3 % of mineral oil based raw materials. The rest would be natural rubber, vegetable oil, steel cord and cellulose fibres.
The 3 % it still contains would be antioxidant. In addition, it was claimed that the rolling resistance would be better. Fantastic if it were true.
It was not mentioned here that energy, possibly coming from crude oil, is needed for the manufacture of steel cord, cellulose fibres, vegetable oils and even natural rubber.
And – this was only mentioned in a separate paragraph – the tyre will be 30 % dearer than a normal tyre!!
That leads me to the question: has a total energy balance ever been worked out for the new cars that are presented as so ecological, whether they are hybrids or electric cars?
It is not unfair to question this, if we consider how much energy is needed to produce the new components such as batteries or electric motors, for example.
Or, if we consider for a moment how many motors, servos and electronic parts can be found in a modern vehicle, which all have to be expensively and energy intensively produced Perhaps the German Federal Environment Ministry should calculate the total energy balance, to prevent this becoming a complete flop in the future, as happened with the carbon particle filters, which were approved by the ministry, but which do not work.
Your Heinz Gupta