Interview of Dean Adams Curtis, co-editor of GreenFamilyCar with KFROG Radio News

2009 LA Auto Show Green Family Car Highlights:
Featuring, among other innovations, a diesel without emissions as the EPA finds greenhouse gas emissions are a danger to human health

Text and audio of interview by KFROG Radio News Director
Jeff Davis with Dean Adams Curtis on December 9th, 2009.

Hear the radio interview while you read along.

Q: I'm Jeff Davis, News Director of the KFROG stations. My guest for this segment is Dean Adams Curtis, he is co-editor of GreenFamilyCar.com and an instructor at the UCLA Global Sustainability Program. Thankyou for joining me Dean.

A: Hey, Jeff, it's my pleasure.

Q: Now Dean's going to tell us what he saw at the 2009 Los Angeles Auto Show which wraps up this weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Now first Dean, this past week the Environmental Protection Agency issued an endangerment finding that greenhouse gases are a danger to human health. And of course automobiles linked to greenhouse gases. So the EPA will be raising mileage requirements and creating toughing emission standards. How do the vehicles at the auto show stack up in terms of their mileage and emissions?

A: Most of the production vehicles at the LA auto show this year have had just small incremental changes. We’ve been seeing a slow but steady upward creep in mileage and slight reductions in emissions each year. Not much to brag about.

Ford’s compact Fiesta gets 40 miles per gallon in the city without even being a hybrid.

The Ford Fusion hybrid gets 41 miles per gallon.

The Honda Insight hybrid gets about the same mpg. The Insight is the recently redesigned version of the first hybrid on the market.

So these days the small and mid-sized sedan hybrids are racking up over 40 miles per gallon. But of course, the bigger the hybrid you buy, the lower will be your mileage.

Q: Did you like any hybrids in particular?

A: All the Lexus hybrids are wonderful. GreenFamilyCar has test driven them all, so I can personally attest to their quality.

People will enjoy checking out the Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid and the Fisker Karman plug-in hybrid sports car. Both of them have solar panels built into their roofs.

Q: What about electric vehicles?

A: The Tesla S is a great electric sports car if you have over a hundred grand to spend. It’s basically powered by a bunch of laptop computer batteries.

If you don’t have a family, you may be interested in BMW’s MINI-E. The E stands for electric. It’s a fun, two-seat all-electric plug-in vehicle that has been rolling around U.S. cities this year under a special MINI test drive program. It’s a two-seater because the batteries take up the back seat. In addition to the cars, MINI has been supplying charging stations for the people chosen to for the test drive program.

One of the great things about the era we’re moving into with the plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles is that because demand for electric power is cheaper overnight when you will often be recharging your vehicle's batteries, you will pay much less for the electrons that propel you than you currently do for fossil fuel.

If you have a newer home, or a home in which the electrical system has been recently upgraded, you’ll be all set to have a 220-240 volt charging station installed in your garage or car port.

Q: Did you get a sense that the auto industry was doing enough?

A: No, I was disappointed, as so many people have been for years, with the pace the industry is changing. Now that the EPA is adopting the aggressive guidelines that California had put into place, rather than fighting them, the automakers will be operating under a set of much stricter guidelines than in the past. The will be moving much quicker to innovate higher mileage and lower emission solutions in the very near future.

Q: I heard there was a Green Car of the Year Award. Who won?

A: Interestingly, the 2010 Green Car of the Year Award didn’t go to a hybrid, or to an electric vehicle. It went to the Audi A3 TDI.

TDI stands for Turbo Direct Injection. They call it a clean diesel because its ultra low emissions exceed anticipated U.S. and European emissions standards.

Hopefully Detroit and the EPA are looking at Audi’s 3D animated explanation of how they achieve such clean tailpipe emissions.

You can watch it at the show or you can watch it online. First they do some innovative things with the air-fuel intake and create multiple ignitions to burn the gas most effectively coming from the engine.

How Audi treats the exhaust coming from the engine left me hoping that we could do the same with the CO2 and greenhouse gases coming out of all tailpipes and smokestacks.

Q: What trends did you see happening at the LA auto show?

A: Affordability is one theme. Most automakers have a stripped down low end model that still has all the safety features and with front and side airbags, so you're safe even without added comforts and convenient accessories that are in higher end models.

Q: What are some of the new things we can expect if we by a new 2010 car?

A: Most have proximity detectors to help you back up and pull in to tight spaces, beeping faster as you get closer to an object.

Many higher end vehicles have four-by-six inch displays with global positioning system guided maps now being integrated with real-time traffic information displays and weather.

Rear backup video cameras with trajectory information overlaying the video are a very nice new feature. The trajectory appears as a pair of curved lines that indicate where you will go if you keep the steering wheel in the position you have it. The trajectory lines bend as you turn the steering wheel.

Q: Did you come away from the car show with any overall conclusions?

A: We have good reason for optimism. After the Copenhagen climate change conference in Denmark ends, governments around the globe will need to set consistent standards for their automakers and provide incentives to their consumers. , many of the technologies that will transform the world’s automobiles, offering dramatic reductions in fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, are already on display at the auto show.