Green Treasures – Racing goes environmentally friendly
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Posted by ecodistant on Tuesday, June 30, 2009 |
Racing doesn’t always have to be about the first car to reach the finish line. In an attempt to promote more green and fuel-efficient technologies, some auto races today prize those cars that have the best results in the “green” department. It means that more and more races will also be judged after the energy efficiency or greenhouse-gas emissions of the racing cars.
The Green Racing Initiave is a group that deals just with that: using the motor sport competitions (because of it’s rapid change in high-tech technologies using) to haste the development of more efficient and cleaner vehicles to latter be used in the public domain. First founded in 2006, they marked their first success at the American Le Mans Series, in October 2008.
Without making a separate race for this initiative, the teams joined the rally for the “greenest” car by entering the 1,000-mile Petit Le Mans sports car endurance race held annually at Road Atlanta in Braselton, Georgia, USA. At the end of the race, the cars got marks using a model called GREET which takes into account the greenhouse gas emissions, total energy consumption, fossil fuel consumption as well as petroleum-equivalent fuel cost among other criteria, such as vehicle mass and average velocity. The standings came a bit different as those from the ovarall race: a Chevrolet Corvette car that finished fourth in the overall ranking won first place in the class “Green Challenge’s Grand Touring”.
The success of the event was visible because, as of this year, the green races will be stretched to take part in the whole session of the the American Le Mans Series in a new performance called Michelin Green X Challenge. So at the end of each season, the team with the best results in the “environmentally friendly” category, will be crowned as the “greenest” car of the season.
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Categories: Environment, Green Treasures
Tags: american le mans, cleaner, emissions, energy, energy efficiency, environmentally-friendly, fossil fuel, fuel-efficient, green, green racing initiative, greenhouse, GREET, motor, racing, technologies
Interesting. So, whether the car wins the actual race or not, it may still get a ranking for being the most fuel efficient car in the race?
I could see some of the manufacturers adding a more efficient car to their team so they could get some bragging rights.