Green cars go beyond fuel, according to Greener Ideal.
Automakers have been trying to make motor vehicles more fuel-efficient for decades, aiming to curb CO2 emissions and reduce the negative impact they have on the environment. In their efforts to build more environmentally-friendly vehicles, they have been mainly focusing on developing vehicles powered by alternative fuels, such as electricity, hydrogen, or even solar power. While using alternative fuels to power cars or making engines more efficient surely help make cars greener, there are other technologies that can make them even more eco-friendly, and most of them have to do with the materials used to build a car’s body.
The fact is that a significant contributor to vehicle emissions is the steel that is used by many car makers to build various automotive components, including body panels and cars’ chassis, and since it’s a pretty heavy metal, it increases a car’s weight substantially, resulting in poor fuel economy and increased CO2 emissions. This is why virtually all car companies have been using other materials during the manufacturing process for a while now, but still, most of the weight on cars is attributed to steel, and alternatives like aluminum or carbon fiber are being adopted relatively slowly.
