I received the following from a Blog reader :
- While the Muslims are busy fighting who is more "Islamic"..While Malaysians are busy fighting who is more racist..
- Engineers and scientists at Peugeot-Citroen are going to put "Car That Runs On Air" on the road in 2016. And the price is expected to be cheaper than the present hybrid car!
- I think Proton should just stick to contract manufacturing. I don't want to look down on them (& Malaysians in general) BUT technologywise I don't think we will even be able to play catch up.
- For one thing, our future youth are going to be English deficient which will limit their scope in acquiring scientific knowledge.
- With religious mumbo jumbo at school gaining momentum coupled with "complaining - whinier - subsidy" environment at home. We are doomed!
- No way we are going to come up with the latest breakthrough technology in anything!
- Well.. maybe we can in "halal" food ;p
Enclosed was a link to a new report in the Mail Online (?) newspaper about Peugeot-Citroen's latest hybrid car technology that runs on a three cylinder engine and compressed air storage tanks. The car can give 117 miles per gallon. Here is the news and a video :
- Coming soon, the car that runs on air: Peugeot Citroen unveil new 117mpg hybrid (and it's £1,000 cheaper than a Prius)
- Peugeot Citroen invents technology for air car ready for the market by 2016
- 'Hybrid Air' engine system runs on petrol and air, instead of electricity
- Company predicts 'Hybrid Air' to achieve 117 miles per gallon by 2020
- If you have ever grimaced at your petrol bill and dreamed of a car that runs on fresh air, your prayers are about to be answered.
- French car giant PSA Peugeot Citroen believes it can put an air-powered vehicle on the road by 2016.
- it will knock 45 per cent off fuel bills for an average motorist.
- when driving in cities costs could be slashed by as much as 80 per cent
- car will be running on air for four-fifths of the time.
- The system works by using a normal internal combustion engine, special hydraulics and an adapted gearbox along with compressed air cylinders that store and release energy. This enables it to run on petrol or air, or a combination of the two.
- The air compression system can re-use all the energy normally lost when slowing down and braking.
- The revolutionary new ‘Hybrid Air’ engine system – the first to combine petrol with compressed air – is a breakthrough for hybrid cars because expensive batteries will no longer be needed.
- Peugeot, which unveiled its prototype yesterday, envisages introducing it in smaller models such as the 208 at first.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2266632/Peugeot-Citroen-Coming-soon-car-runs-air.html#ixzz2IrgoHsgV
Here is the video :
Here is the video :
My comments : Well this is very interesting. This was bound to happen. Here is another bit of car news :
- US Dealer offers electric car for $69 a month
- Mitsubishi's i-MiEV won't be mistaken for a race car, but it has a 113 mpg-e efficiency rating. O'Brien Mitsubishi, a dealership in Mitsubishi's U.S. base of Normal, Ill., appears all out to change that. As caught by Autoblog Green, O'Brien has advertised a $69 a month, two-year lease of an i-MiEV before about $2,100 in fees, or a $169-a-month deal with the fees rolled in. As with all electric car leases, the dealership keeps the $7,500 federal tax credit that goes to the vehicle's buyer.
Here is the even more interesting news. At 117 mpg the car will consume 45% less petrol. Then over in the US the Mitsubishi EV will run at 112 miles per gallon equivalent. Thats another 45% savings in fuel bills.
In the US about 47% of oil consumption is burnt as fuel for automobiles (ballpark figure).
If all cars start giving 117 mpg, that oil consumption figure in the US will drop by 26% to about 21%. If the same figures can be applied to the whole world, it can also mean that world oil consumpion will drop 26%. World oil prices will also drop like a stone, maybe also by 26%.
Not only Proton will go bust but our national treasure Petronas will also have to close shop. Please do not be complacent or think that I am being alarmist. The age of oil is coming to an end.
Technology is changing. If Peugeot can produce a 117 mpg car, how long do you think it will be before Toyota or GM or VW come out with their 120 mpg car? You think Toyota, VW and GM are going to hide behind their APs, duties and taxes? Please wake up.
And then the Chinese will probably cut in with their even cheaper technologies or copycat products and probably manufacture a car that can give 150 mpg. Watch out.
Folks, we cannot build a national industrial resilience around the automobile industry anymore. This is just not going to happen. The automobile industry is no more a plain steel cutting and metal forging industry. That was in the 1980s.
The industry has now become a very, very complicated, very high technology industry that encompasses metallurgy, materials engineering, carbon composites, light weight alloys, extreme use of computerisation, software, sensor technology and miniature electronics inside the car.
All this is driven by innovation, new technology, free thinking and the huge sales volumes that are required to generate the money to fund all these technologies.
We just dont have all this here in Malaysia. Proton is really barking up the wrong tree. The tree has changed completely. We are wasting huge amounts of our national resources by protecting a local car industry that is just not going to survive. After almost 30 years our car industry has not even been able to survive on its own. Now the world automobile technology is moving ahead at lightspeed.
Hybrid technology, electric vehicles, gas fired and compressed air hybrid and dont know what else is coming over the horizon. 112 mpg, 117 mpg and better are surely on the way. We will not be able to match all these developments. Instead of trying to remake a Japanese car with four tyres, four doors and two airbags why not we refocus our limited resources on other technology strategies.
Let us open our doors 100% to all car manufacturers from around the world. Our kids will have jobs.
13 comments:
Haha Proton ppl plse bite yr fingers. Simple window problem oso cannot solve. Good one Syed. You always make us laugh.
Thailand and Malaysia both participate in the automotive industry (supply chain) but very differently.
Thailand via OEM, Malaysia via production of their own brand = Proton.
For Proton to be successful it needs QUALITY and affordability.
I attended a forum where Syed Zainal was a speaker some time back and Syed Zainal said:
" For Proton it is very difficult to maintain high quality standards as our employees cannot emulate the Japanese. Also our suppliers factories employ foreign labour and they are unreliable and cannot be expected to have standards of the Japanese."
sigh...we probably need a generation to change. Provided we last that long..
Is it a matter of protecting proton or that we've addicted to the customs revenues levied on car imports ? It's RM8 billion a year worth of money which can go a long way to be used and abused. The thought process in Putrajaya is this - Do we hand back RM8 billion back to the ungrateful rakyat or do we keep it for our lembu projects ? I think the answer is quite straightforward.
Kadang dlm hidup ni kita kena terima & akui jln mana yg lebih bagus. Sistem pendidikan skrg mmg perlu diubah-sebgai jln tengah adakan kembali 2 aliran English & Bahasa Ibunda memasing. Klu dibiarkan bagai skrg, mmg pasti org kaya akan terus kaya & yg miskin utk keluar dari kitaran kemiskinan agak sukar krn yg kaya bebas mghantar ank mereka ke kolej swasta samada didlm atau luar negara yg pastinya mmpnyai bahasa pghantar bahasa inggeris yg lebih diterima pakai oleh pasaran. Klu sistem 2 aliran ini dilaksanakan, sudah pasti SJK lama kelamaan akan mati dgn sndirinya termasuklah golongan yg berkepentingan spt Dong Zong & yg sealiran dgn nya. Yg lebih penting tenaga kerja Msia akan lebih diterima dunia dr skrg. Keupayaan utk bersaing diperingkat global akan lebih mnyerlah. Minda akan lebih terbuka dan tidak jumud spt skrg. Sumber agama terbitan BM lebih mnjerumus kpd ketaksuban yg amat tidak baik utk kemajuan bangsa & agama. Lihat sj lah zaman mak bapa kita dulu- mereka lebih terbuka & PAS hanya lah spt melukut ditepi gantang. Moga adalah pemimpin dimasa dpn yg berani mengubah kembali demi kebaikan semua. Spore telah berjaya mmbunuh SJK mereka tnpa perlu memaksa krn lama kelamaan mereka yg mulanya mmbntah, demi masa dpn ank2 mereka akn dgn sndirinya mghntr ank2 kesekolah aliran english. Kita semua kena jujur pd diri sndiri
Tuan Syed,
On this point, I would agree with you and the French or Peugeot Citreon in particular have been brilliantly innovative in this regard.
In Malaysia, we talk a lot about "moving up the value chain" and tend to look towards "third-wave" ICT and biotechnology to get us to that "high-income" economy by 2020 but Peugeot Citreon just innovated upon "second-wave" mechanical and pneumatic technology.
There are many issues at stake here which would determine whether Malaysia, Thailand or any other country can move its technology and industry up the value chain.
1. Is quality. Even simple products such as electric jug kettles made by home-grown Malaysian manufacturers are cheap butbreak down after a year.
2. This lack of commitment to quality begins with the attitude of the management towards selling more on lower price versus higher on quality.
You can also see this attitude in many banana leaf and mamak coffee shops which hire foreign workers, don't train them properly, overwork them, all of which results in a low quality of service, while their Malaysian customers will gladly tolerate the low-quality service and continue to patronise them.
Not surprisingly, the younger generation who have much spending power, though not necessarily earning power, tend to patronise slightly more up market outlets such as Pappa Rich, Ipoh White Coffee, Starbucks, Strawberry Fields, Chatime and others.
3. Workers must also have a commitment to quality and a disciplined approach towards following a methodology and best practices but such an attitude is lacking among many Malaysian workers who tend to prefer to cut corners either due to laziness or whatever reason.
4. With such attitudes even in simple contract manufacturing environments, in service in common food outlets, in the management and maintenance of buildings as so on, Malaysia's home-grown ICT, bio-technology or other such high-tech industries will be infected by the same disease and will produce shoddy high-tech products and services, which will be unable to compete worldwide, and we can see that already in the preference among many Malaysians to host their websites overseas, especially the U.S., where it not only is cheaper but is more reliable.
-/ Contd
Contd /-
5. A much more difficult hurdle to overcome is the high cost of research & development to produce innovative products such as Peugeot Citroen's hybrid fuel-air car.
Development of such a product costs millions, if not billions and does any Malaysian company, let alone the Malaysian government have the kind of funds to support such a developemnt.
At the MSC Malaysia International Advisory Panel in November 2009, I asked the PM, Dato' Seri Najib Ton Razak whether we could afford such spending on R&D to move up the value chain and he said no, and that we would have to rely on public-private partnerships.
6. The development of such a products requires many well trained and competent scientists and engineers but do we have enough, especially when around 20% of our ICT graduates are deemed fit to hire by the local ICT industry, while the rest of the output from our private graduate factories are reject material fit to serve coffee in those upmarket chain cafes?
7. Besides Malaysia, other countries will be similarly affected by such problems, unless they can develop an disciplined, methodical, systematic industrial culture.
The Japanese, South Koreans and to an extent the Taiwanese have such disciplined industrial culture and commitment to quality, which is why their products are highly respected and in demand.
8. Something not often mentioned in management and national development considerations is that countries such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan had the benefit of being on the front line of the Cold War between the Western and the Communist blocs.
These front-line countries not only received generous war reparations but also technical and technological assistance to rebuild their industries and generous access to U.S. and European markets, all of which was to keep these countries from going over to the other side, even as capitalist allies, if not over to communism.
If that may seem incredible, look around and tell me which countries in any other part of Asia during the Cold War benefited from such largesse in terms of technology transfer, etc. Not even Australia, New Zealand or Singapore, though affluent, developed countries in of themselves, yet note has developed their own home-grown manufacturing or ICT industries to any significant extent.
When I visited Perth in 1988, my impression of Australia was that of a third-world country where white people lived.
Tutup sajalah syarikat Proton. Aku sampai sekarang serik pakai kereta Proton Pesona yang aku beli di Rawang 2011 dulu. Nak jual harga tinggal 50% saja. Enjin jerking sampai sekarang pun tak hilang walau dah berbelas kali masuk workshop.
Tetapi yang paling teruk sekali kereta Proton Savvy aku jenis automanual. Dahlah jerking teruk dan bila tukar gear auto bunyi macam nak meletop enjin. Setiap kali masuk workshop Proton maka diberitahu olih pakar/car specialist mereka bahawa ini adalah NORMAL for Savvy AutoManual. Kita betul2 kena tipu olih Proton yang mengunakan teknologi Peugot perancis yang hampir nak dibuang olih kilang Perancis 30 tahun dulu.
Sepatutnya kereta Proton Pesona ni dijual kepada rakyat Malaysia dengan harga RM30k saja dan bukannya dijual dengan harga RM45 - 55k! Naik penat aku sekarang ni kerana sentiasa menyokong barang buatan Malaysia. Dahlah poor quality dan expensive pulak!!!
Good points bro!
Given the general science ignorance that abounds, it is very *** misleading *** to talk of "cars running on air" or "45 per cent off fuel bills".
1.Petrol is the cheapest, most convenient and highest energy density fuel that we have.
2.The featured car does not "run on air". It runs on the energy stored in the air *** as a compressed gas ***. That stored energy is sourced from the electricity grid. Electricity is more expensive than petrol.
3.Cars running on air or on electricity are more costly in terms of energy.
4.The reason for the "energy savings" is they are much smaller and lighter. Probably with a significant lowering of features such as *** safety ***.
Granted, the French have come up with an innovation compared to electric vehicles - charging time to the consumer is vastly reduced. Though the gas compression process versus battery charging is probably more expensive globally.
let face it, we are not noted for technology innovation. Even we bought new technology(like lotus), we still cannot improve it.Human capital is one thing, funding, bureaucracy and scientific environment is another.
Technology changes very fast. Today modern, tomorrow obsolete.
Muslim countries in science forefront---what about the experiment with camel urine in Saudi???-cure cancer..can get Nobel price!!
Flan Brian, the car compresses its own air lah. From the engine and from converting braking power. Bodohnya Flan.
Anonymous Friday, January 25, 2013 1:30:00 PM said...
"Flan Brian, the car compresses its own air lah. From the engine and from converting braking power."
Using idle engine power/ braking power already exists in other vehicles.
Thanks for the info but still, the car is not using "magic" / "air for fuel" as most readers will assume.
Please use such a vehicle if you prefer saving a few dollars versus securing your family and passengers.
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