Automotive Will Lead The "Green Tech" Revolution

Brussels April 29, 2008; Speaking today at an executive round-table session of the Cleantech Forum XVII in Brussels, Giles Hundleby, Ricardo UK Ltd project director for clean energy, set out the case that the automotive industry is uniquely placed to deliver the cross-industry technologies and skills in design, engineering, development and testing, which could enable the rapid adoption of clean-tech solutions across all industries and sectors.

The auto industry has long cleaned-up its act in terms of regulated exhaust emissions through the implementation of advanced electronics and control technologies, and the crucial systems engineering, design and integration skills that have been necessary to develop these into the type of products whose value and in-service reliability are beyond question. With the advent of hybridisation, the auto industry has added electrical energy management and storage to its core competences and its advanced engineering community is currently reaching out to the energy sector as it considers the potential of plug-in and range-extended hybrids as a means distributed power generation and energy buffering.

"The automotive industry has the engineering competence and consumer product design and integration skills to make a significant contribution to the green tech revolution", said Giles Hundleby. "The established engineering processes, quality systems and manufacturing technologies of the automotive sector are probably amongst the most robust of any industry and have a proven track record in the cost-effective delivery of high value products world-wide. As an independent design engineering organisation Ricardo has already helped with numerous automotive hybrid vehicle programmes ranging from stop-start systems to full and plug-in hybrids. In addition to our existing core automotive customers we are increasingly applying these same skills in the renewable energy sector and have already assisted in wind and tidal power projects."