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Dr. Norbert Reithofer, the Chairman
of BMW, showing off the BMW Vision EfficientDynamics concept car to
German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The car was the run-away star of
the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show for its splendid design and fuel efficiency. |
"Green is the new black": or so the witticism goes. Ever since the issues of climate change and the environment hit the mainstream psyche three years ago with the release of the film An Inconvenient Truth, many industries have begun gearing their processes towards becoming more environmentally friendly. Sustainability has thus become the buzzword of industries, and unsurprisingly the automotive industry has jumped on the bandwagon. After all, cars - and other vehicles - account for one of the major contributors of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, with studies showing that every 1 million gallons of petrol burned is responsible for the release of 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Considering that the United States - the world's largest user of automobiles in terms of volume - uses 420 million gallons of petroleum each day, the conclusion is staggering. And we have yet to take into consideration the accumulated amount released by other countries around the world.
But cars and other motorised forms of transportation are here to stay. While we can acknowledge the damage they cause to the environment and to the depletion of our natural resources, it would be near impossible to and quite ridiculous to expect people to give them |
