The German automaker has created a range of automobiles from their superminis to crossover SUVs, and now are about to touch another conscientious level of unconventionality to their portfolio, by adding a new line of carbon-neutral cars. But rather than creating just a ‘green’ automobile, Audi will take an ambitiously collective approach for a whole new sustainable system depended upon wind energy. How? Well, just read on.
Audi has already started financing the construction of four wind turbines off the North Sea that will generate annually up to 53 GWh of electricity, to be fed into public electricity grid. Now in a rather concerted operandi, the company plans to use some of this power derived from wind energy to charge its electric e-tron vehicles. Now charging aspect aside, the fueling aspect like production of hydrogen and Audi’s very own ‘e-gas’ (a part of the A3 TCNG e-gas project) will also be derived from clean and green wind power.
The hydrogen production has in turn the dual effect of either powering fuel cell vehicles, or contribute to further production of a synthetic natural gas or ‘e-gas’, which can be derived in combination with carbon dioxide in Audi’s very own facility (with an estimated capacity of producing 1,000 metric tons of e-gas). The carbon dioxide in question will be collected from an adjacent waste-biogas plant.
This e-gas will be used as a fuel for the Audi’s advanced yet eco friendly engine based on the four-cylinder TFSI. Now we have used the term carbon neutral, because – though the tail pipe emissions of such fueled cars will be low (not zero), the resultant carbon emission is almost equal to the amount of carbon used for manufacturing of the above mentioned synthetic methane. This makes the whole meticulous scenario an ‘exclusive cycle’ of sustainability.
Source: CNET
