Leasedrive Velo Blog

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

Today is a significant day. Why? Because the UK’s first hydrogen fuel station has just opened at Birmingham University.

The university is running five fuel cell Microcabs in a two-year field trial. The vehicles have a maximum speed of 40mph and a range of about 100 miles.

Big deal, you may cry, one little fuel station, and on a university campus to boot. Okay, compared to 9400 refuelling stations serving 31 million cars it’s a drop in the ocean. But, mark my words, it is a landmark event.

Three more hydrogen stations are planned for London, and Transport for London is planning to introduce a fleet of 70 hydrogen-powered cars next year. By 2010, it is projected that there will be a dozen refuelling stations. Again, big deal, for now!

Alright, little urban Microcabs doing 40mph are not going to set the world alight but the automotive industry is committed to the development of fuel cell technology as the potential long-term solution to emission-free motoring.

Only last month at the ICFM Annual Members’ Conference we heard a very interesting presentation from Honda. According to its UK environment manager, John Kingston, the Japanese manufacturer considers hybrid vehicles the best short to medium-term solution but fuel cell technology the best long-term solution.

Kingston announced that a hydrogen-powered Honda FLX Clarity would be launched this summer in California, USA and it certainly looked the business. He stated that such vehicles should become a practical alternative by 2020 and I know many other manufacturers share Honda’s views.

As always, once the vehicle technology has been perfected, the stumbling block will be to put in place a nationwide infrastructure of refuelling points.

Naturally, the oil companies have a vested interest in us remaining dependent on unleaded petrol and diesel. That is clear from the failure to establish enough fuel pumps for biofuel vehicles. With few refuelling stations outside of Norfolk or Somerset, the death of 85% biofuel E85 seems imminent, much to the chagrin of Ford and Saab E85 green drivers.

Infrastructure is therefore key to the future success of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and the campus at Birmingham University is the start.

As an 18th Century American lawyer and writer wrote: “Tall oaks from little acorns grow.”

The university campus in Edgbaston could have its place in history.

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

The claim by UK Porsche MD, Andy Goss that “we always knew the environmental impact of this unfair tax would be minimal, now we know it will make matters worse”, beggar’s belief.

His comments in support of his formal judicial review request on the proposed £25 charge for cars emitting more than 225g/km of carbon dioxide just don’t stand up. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out that a car emitting 120g/km of CO2 is going to add less to the capital’s pollution than one of his high performance sports cars or Chelsea tractors!

As uncle Ken declares, “Porsche has a clear vested interest” in attempting to block initiatives to improve the capital’s air quality. I’m glad to see that Transport for London (TfL) has won the backing of the Campaign for Better Transport. Its campaigner, Richard Bourn declared: “Porsche is trying to justify the unjustifiable by acting for unrestrained use of gas guzzling cars in London.”

Taking away the emotive talk, TfL has stated the intent behind the charge is as much to do with reducing congestion. Apparently 17% of cars travelling in the congestion zone are in band G compared to just 2% in Bands A or B.

Latest round in the debate sees Porsche seize on a King’s College report indicating that while CO2 emissions will fall within the zone they could increase overall across the capital due to increased mileage outside the zone. It has since come to light that the report needs to be refined due to ambiguity in assumptions made. It was never used for the TfL decision.

Meanwhile, most of those living in London are all for measures to reduce emissions, including the proposed £25 charge.

As I’ve stated in an earlier blog, Porsche would do better by trying to make its model line-up more environmentally-friendly. It has probably more engineering know-how at its R&D facility at Weissach than anywhere else in the world.

Why doesn’t it put it to worthwhile use rather than bitching about a charge that any Porsche owner could afford anyway? Perhaps the cynical side of me thinks the whole matter has more to do with sliding Porsche sales in the UK.

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

Black holes in space are a source of mystery to us mere mortals on planet Earth. They become even more mysterious when they appear with alarming regularity on our British roads.

News from the Asphalt Industry Alliance’s (AIA) annual survey indicates there are more than three million of the unfilled buggers today.

Against this backdrop, we have local councils complaining they only receive half the subsidies needed to keep the roads under their jurisdiction in good condition while paying over £50m in compensation claims for damages caused by unfilled potholes. The AIA estimates there is an 11-year backlog in road maintenance.

Councils have a roadworks department for reporting new potholes and some have a target of filling these in within 24 hours. However, faced with tighter resources some councils, 20 in total, have redefined their definition of a pothole to reduce repair waiting lists. Now, they have to be a minimum of four centimetres deep and in some cases, notably Essex, five centimetres deep.

Well, obviously, representatives from those councils don’t ride bikes. Hit a four-centimetre pothole on a pedal cycle at 30mph on a downhill section and chances are you’ll go flying over the handlebars. Net result, one damaged bike, one injured rider and one big compensation claim. Figures suggest councils pay as much out in compensation claims as they do in filling the potholes up. Have you ever heard of anything so short-sighted? Redefining potholes is putting people’s lives at risk.

The Cyclists Touring Club (CTC) has logged almost 10,000 hazards via www.fillthathole.org.uk. Launched just over a year ago, that’s nearly 30 potholes reported each day.

The AIA recommends resurfacing an asphalt road every 10 – 20 years but that timescale is now doubled due to a shortage of funds so meanwhile councils are effectively papering over the cracks.

The AIA also blames utility companies for digging more than two million trenches a year. These companies frequently leave the roads in a very poor state of repair after digging them up. Apparently, they should repair the roads to a given standard. Well, that’s a joke!

Only last week I had to report a downhill stretch dug up by BT that was left worse than a rallycross course! Every 20 metres or so they had dug holes in the road to feed through cables and filled them up to well below the adjoining road surface level. The stretch is now being slowly rectified.

This illustrates the fact that utility companies pay little heed to what is expected of them. Personally, I strongly believe that all repair work undertaken by any organisation digging up a road surface should be inspected and signed off by a council road repairs inspector.

Furthermore, I would advocate that utility companies who dig up stretches of road should be made to resurface the complete stretch of affected road if they prove incapable of undertaking a proper repair first time around.

Drive on any road in Germany and you’ll see the standard of repair required there. Why are our British workmen apparently incapable of carrying out repair work to the same high standards? Maybe we should have an EU standard?

Meanwhile, the black holes in our roads create another black hole. How many vehicles passing over them ultimately suffer a suspension or tyre failure? The resultant black holes lie in the unseen danger of cracked suspensions and bulging tyre sidewalls. Given our nanny state, potholes represent a major loophole in Government policy.

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

Minimum speeds are a contentious issue but in some cases the police should intervene when a driver is holding up a long queue of traffic…

Driving on the UK’s roads these past weeks has got me thinking about driving standards in general and lane discipline in particular.

It appears to me that one of the quickest and sure fire ways of improving journey times and reducing unnecessary congestion is to enforce proper lane discipline.

Drive on any motorway today and you will quickly observe, as we all have done for decades now, those drivers quietly pootling along in the middle lane, totally oblivious to all that is going on around them.

It seems they have this sad belief that by sticking to the middle lane they are more immune to any accident that may occur around them, little knowing that they may well actually contribute to such an accident.

I also started looking more closely at some of these middle lane road hogs and quickly observed that they never seem to look in their mirror. They drive in a world of their own, or chatting to fellow passengers.

This observation was supported by research in recent weeks revealing the average woman looks in her mirror every 25 minutes and men 18 times per day. No wonder driving standards are so poor.

All drivers should check their mirrors before any manoeuvre and when driving at a constant speed should periodically check for what’s behind them.

Off the motorway and onto country roads and the position is accentuated when drivers plod along at 35mph or 40 mph in a 60mph speed limit, usually continuing at unabated speed in 30mph villages.

These same drivers rarely check their mirrors to see what might be behind them. They certainly would get a shock on seeing a queue of vehicles.

Minimum speeds are a contentious issue but in some cases the police should intervene when a driver is holding up a long queue of traffic through failure to maintain an adequate speed for the surrounding circumstances.

So rather than just displaying signs that state ‘Don’t drink & drive’, ‘Take regular rest stops’, ‘Check fuel level’, etc, the Department for Transport (DfT) should emphasise the importance of proper lane discipline by displaying signs such as ‘Keep to the left unless overtaking.’

The Highway Code is quite clear on the subject and the DfT and police should enforce lane discipline. Another sign should read ‘Check your mirror regularly’.

The reinforcement of proper driver education would go a long way to resolving some of the problems commonly encountered on our road network.