Towards Sustainable Road Transport

Ronald M. Dell, Patrick T. Moseley, David A. J. Rand

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780124046160
• eBook ISBN: 9780124046917
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Automotive Transportation & Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Increasing pressure on global reserves of petroleum at a time of growing demand for personal transport in developing countries, together with concerns over atmospheric pollution and carbon dioxide emissions, are leading to a requirement for more sustainable forms of road transport. Major improvements in the efficiency of all types of road vehicles are called for, along with the use of fuels derived from alternative sources, or entirely new fuels. Towards Sustainable Road Transport first describes the evolution of vehicle designs and propulsion technologies over the past two centuries, before looking forward to possible new forms of energy to substitute for petroleum. The book also discusses the political and socio-economic drivers for change, investigates barriers to their broad implementation, and outlines the state-of-the-art of candidate power sources, advanced vehicle design, and associated infrastructure. The comprehensive technical informationsupplied by an expert author team ensures that Towards Sustainable Road Transport will provide readers with a clear understanding of the ongoing progress in this field and the challenges still to be faced.- Drivers of technological change in road transport and the infrastructure requirements- Discussion of alternative fuels for internal combustion engines and fuel conversion technologies- Detailed exploration of current and emerging options for vehicle propulsion, with emphasis on hybrid/battery electric traction, hydrogen, and fuel cells- Comparative analysis of vehicle design requirements, primary power source efficiency, and energy storagesystems

Chapter 1

The Evolution of Unsustainable Road Transport

Abstract

There is a consensus that the present status of road transport in the developed world is unsustainable for a variety of reasons – urban congestion, pollution, petroleum depletion and greenhouse gas emissions. Measures are being taken to combat this serious threat but, as yet, they are clearly inadequate. This introductory chapter outlines the emergence of the present precarious situation over the course of the 20th century and provides descriptions of the different types of vehicle and motive power source that have been progressively investigated and developed. The internal-combustion engine has proved to be the key technology that has allowed the production of the most successful forms of road transport but unfortunately its deployment appears to be unsustainable. The question now is: how will the designers of future road transport systems respond to the twin threats of global resource depletion and climate change vis-à-vis the aspirations of burgeoning populations to own the most attractive forms of personal transport?

Keywords

Bicycles; Electricity; Internal-combustion-engined vehicles; Personal transport aspirations; Roads; Steam; Sustainability

1.1. Bicycles and beyond

Until the early 19th century, transport had altered little for 2000 years. Then, quite suddenly, the whole situation changed with the discovery and development of the steam engine and the advent of railways. Not only were speeds far in excess of anything previously thought possible, but also long-distance travel was brought within the means of ordinary citizens. Nevertheless, the vast majority of people were still tied to areas within walking distance of their homes. The development of the bicycle alleviated this restriction – the machine could roughly treble the distance that workers could travel and therefore enabled them to seek jobs further afield. Bicycles, which were usually bought by instalments, also proved perfect for day trips to the countryside at weekends.

The earliest bicycles had no pedals or transmission and were driven by the rider’s feet pushing along the ground. The first verifiable claim to the invention of such a machine is attributed to Baron Karl von Drais in Germany (1817); an advertisement for his so-called draisienne is shown in Figure 1.1(a). Dennis Johnson, a coach maker of Long Acre in London, introduced this mode of transport into England in 1818 where it became known as the hobby horse or dandy horse; see Figure 1.1(b); the contrivance reached America in 1821. A year later, a modified version to suit ladies was produced – probably by Johnson, who exhibited it at his riding school. The machine, which weighed about 66 lb (30 kg), had a wooden dropped frame that somewhat resembled the present-day design of the ladies’ bicycle. The saddle was supported on an iron pillar fixed to the lower part of the frame. There is very little evidence that the ladies of the early 19th century took up the pastime of riding on two wheels, although Johnson’s advertisements assured them that such activity could be enjoyed without loss of decorum!

It has been said that the Scotsman Kirkpatrick Macmillan produced, in 1839, a ‘powered’ hobby-horse propelled by pedals at the front that worked backwards and forwards to turn the rear wheel via connecting rods. The claim was made, however, by one of his relatives some 50 years after the alleged event and none of MacMillan’s supposed bicycles have survived. A counter suggestion that another Scotsman, Gavin Dalzell, built a rear-drive machine in 1845 is equally without strong foundation. The true breakthrough in the quest for a ‘mechanical horse’ has therefore been attributed to two events that took place in France.

In 1862, a baby carriage maker in Nancy called Pierre Lallement mounted a pedal on the front wheel of his bicycle; see Figure 1.1(c). He did not, however, pursue mass production of this prototype. About the same time and independently of Lallement, Pierre Michaux together with his son Ernest developed a design that had pedals attached to the hub of a larger front wheel; see Figure 1.1(d). They called their machines velocipèdes and within four years were manufacturing 400 a year. By 1869, bicycle racing was established on the roads of France. Both in England and in the USA, the velocipède earned the name of boneshaker because of its rigid frame and iron-banded wheels that resulted in a ‘bone-shaking’ experience for riders. The burgeoning interest in the USA had been initiated by Pierre Lallement, who had left Paris in July 1865, settled in Connecticut and patented the velocipede in 1866; see Figure 1.1(e).

FIGURE 1.1 Evolution of the bicycle: (a) the draisienne, 1817; (b) Johnson’s hobby horse specification, 1818, printed in 1857 by Eyre and Spottiswoode; (c) Ernest Lallement riding his invention; (d) Ernest Michaux on a velocipede, 1868; (e) Pierre Lallement’s original patent for the first pedal-driven bicycle, US Patent No. 59,915, 20 November 1866; (f) Starley’s Ordinary bicycle and origin of the penny-farthing nickname; (g) couple on quadricycle, 1886; (h) ladies Rover Safety bicycle, 1889; (i) John Boyd Dunlop (1840–1921) (All images sourced from Wikipedia and available under the Creative Commons License)

The boneshaker configuration not only required riders to twist their bodies when steering but also, because of the inherently low gearing, yielded relatively low speeds for the pedalling invested. The latter problem was ameliorated by greatly increasing the size of the front drive wheel. In 1870, James Kemp Starley of Coventry in England designed the Ordinary, better known now by its derisive penny-farthing nickname; see Figure 1.1(f). By 1874, the bicycle incorporated Starley’s enduring innovation of suspension wheels with wire spokes set at a tangent to the hub to resist the winding stresses of pedalling. It was a highly efficient machine that was capable of speeds of up to 20 mph (32 km h⁻¹), but there were the obvious difficulties of mounting and dismounting, as well as the likelihood of severe injuries emanating from the falls taken by riders on hitting an obstacle. The size of the large wheel was chosen to suit the inside leg measurement of the rider, rather like a pair of trousers, and varied from 1 to 1.5 m in diameter. As women, too, wanted to take to wheels, various types of tricycle and quadricycle became popular; see Figure 1.1(g). One of the added attractions of these models, for the young at least, was that they were for the most part ‘made for two’. In 1877, Starley invented the differential gear for his Coventry Salvo tricycle, which was the first fully successful example of a chain-driven machine.

The use of the Ordinary only by the relatively long-legged and audacious triggered a search for less hazardous solutions to the gearing problem. The answer was to use a chain to connect the pedals with the drive wheel, an arrangement that was adopted in the first ‘safety’ bicycles, such as Harry J. Lawson’s Bicyclette of 1879, and the highly successful Kangaroo of 1883 that had a front wheel of more reasonable size and chain-drives on either side of the fork.

In 1885, John K. Starley, nephew of James (v.s.), devised the configuration that effectively stabilized bicycle design – the Rover Safety bicycle; see Figure 1.1(h). This was a low-profile design with more or less equal-sized wheels and chain drive to the rear wheel. The first frames were curved, but the archetypal diamond-shaped frame was quickly established, as were sprung saddles. The geometry allowed the rider to adjust the height and position of both the seat and the handlebars. The machines, which were virtually modern bicycles, were immensely successful. They opened cycling up to a broad section of the public, since it really was possible for anyone to ride them.

The remaining key innovation of the 19th century was the pneumatic tyre, which was re-invented in 1888 by John Dunlop, a Scottish veterinary surgeon; see Figure 1.1(i). Though Robert William Thomson had patented the idea in 1845, the vulcanized rubber tyres produced by Dunlop were the first to enter the market; he formed the Dunlop Rubber Company in 1889. When such tyres were applied to bicycles in the early 1890s, they soon ousted the solid rubber versions that had been fitted to wheels from about 1868. Not only did they greatly increase the comfort of the bicycle, they also significantly increased its speed. Although there were later developments in gears, which made riding easier in hilly country, and in braking (whether the back-pedal type or the shoe type invented by Sir Harold Bowden), bicycle design was now fundamentally established.

In all parts of the world, as standards of living and individual wealth have risen, so also have the aspirations for the preferred mode of private personal transport. Communities that have been content with pedal power, as long as affordability has been the deciding factor, inevitably seek for something better as soon as their income allows. During the 20th century, the populations of developed countries ‘graduated’ from horse riding, horse-drawn carriages and bicycles to motorcars. This change marked a paradigm shift from a system that made virtually no use of hydrocarbon fuels, and thus produced only tiny amounts of carbon dioxide, to an alternative that began to consume the global resources of oil and to bring about the sharpest change in the composition of the planet’s atmosphere in centuries. Although bicycles are still used in niche circumstances, such as in city centres and for leisure/exercise activities, private personal transport is now ruled by the motorcar in Western nations and the populations of other parts of the world have launched plans to hasten their vehicle fleets to the same level of development. In China, for example, the first step has been to advance from pedal-driven bicycles to e-bikes (see Section 5.3.3.3, Chapter 5), but now the further move to widespread car ownership is gathering pace. In the remainder of this chapter, the evolution and dominance of unsustainable forms of road transport (i.e. those that consume hydrocarbon fuels and produce undesirable emissions) are charted.

1.2. Steam takes to the road

1.2.1. Early pioneers: 1765−1840

As the bicycle had become a convenient and less-expensive alternative to the horse for the individual rider, it is scarcely surprising that the industrial revolution should spawn thoughts about the replacement of the horse as the motive power for carts and carriages also. The only viable alternative power source at the time was steam.

The first practical steam engine was developed in England in the early 18th century by Thomas Newcomen (1663–1729). This was a static ‘atmospheric’ engine, so called because it engaged the weight of the atmosphere to produce the working action. The machine was both massive in size and very slow in operation, with one piston stroke every minute or two. Between strokes, the cylinder that housed the piston had to be externally cooled, to condense the steam, and then reheated. The Newcomen engine was used predominantly to pump water out of mines. Many years later, James Watt (1736–1819), who was unimpressed by the slow speed of operation and poor efficiency of the ‘atmospheric’ engine, devised an improved version which had a separate condenser so that the cylinder could remain hot the whole time and thus the engine would be far less wasteful in its use of heat and fuel. Watt was therefore not the inventor of the steam engine but of the separate condenser, which was a spectacularly successful modification and was patented in January 1769. James Watt is, however, recognized as the ‘father’ of the steam engine, thanks to the many new features he introduced, such as the use of a flywheel and a ‘governor’ to control and maintain a constant speed. The start of the Industrial Revolution can be largely credited to ...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• The Open Road
• Preface
• Biographical Notes
• Acknowledgements
• Acronyms, Initialisms, Symbols and Units used in this book
• Chapter 1. The Evolution of Unsustainable Road Transport
• Chapter 2. Drivers for Change
• Chapter 3. Unconventional Fuels
• Chapter 4. Development of Road Vehicles with Internal-Combustion Engines
• Chapter 5. Progressive Electrification of Road Vehicles
• Chapter 6. Mains Electricity Supply for Charging Vehicle Batteries
• Chapter 7. Batteries and Supercapacitors for Use in Road Vehicles
• Chapter 8. Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and Fuel Cell Vehicles
• Chapter 9. The Shape of Things to Come
• Glossary of Terms
• Index