Audi unveils the car powered by windmills

Audi is hedging its bets in the alternative energy race by investing an estimated 50 million Euros in a wind farm in the North Sea that can be used to create electricity, hydrogen or a synthetic form of compressed natural gas.

The four wind turbines are due to be operational in 2013, the same year Audi will release its E-tron supercar and a CNG-powered version of the next generation A3 hatch.

Two of the turbines will be used to 'power' the E-trons while the other two will create pollution-free electricity used to make a synthetic form of compressed natural gas.

The Audi A3 used in the demonstration at Audi's energy conference in Hamburg at the weekend was powered by a Volkswagen turbocharged and supercharged 1.4-litre petrol engine, and could run on both petrol and CNG – as the production car will.

With a 55 litre petrol tank and a 110-litre (or 15kg) CNG capacity, the car has a driving range of more than 1000km. Audi says performance is identical to that of a conventional petrol powered car.

Audi has entered the joint venture project that turns hydrogen into methane and then a synthetic form of CNG – all using 'clean' electricity – because it believes CNG is a more viable solution than electric or hydrogen power for cars.

"The problem with electricity is the energy creation – there is not enough viable space [for solar and wind farms] to make it CO2 neutral for every car on the planet. Plus it is hard to store," said Dr Michael Sterner, a Fraunhofer Institute specialist in wind energy.

"So if we use the wind energy to create a synthetic CNG you have, in effect, energy you can store and then use when you want it, not when it is dictated by wind flow."
 
CNG outlets were more widely available than hydrogen refilling stations and there was already the skeleton of an infrastructure, he said.

One minute's worth of power from one Audi turbine could run an electric car for 300km – all four turbines running 24/7 could run a fleet of 1500 electric cars, it was estimated.

"This is obviously not enough for the whole fleet but it is a sizeable amount," Dr Sterner said.

"This is still the pilot phase, and there will no doubt be many things to refine. But this is a step in the right direction."

Another energy consultant at the conference, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker (who co-authored – with two Australians -- the book Factor Five about climate change) said there needed to be a radical change in what powers the cars of the future – if the world wants to remain on four wheels.

"I have no idea if [Audi's wind turbine system] comes to the mass market, but it's a start," he said.

"Car culture developed at a time when oil was plentiful and cheap. There was a hiccup in the late 1970s with [the price of] oil soaring. But between 1982 to 2000, oil prices tumbled and during that time typical commuter distances in the USA more or less doubled and made us very dependent on car commuting, and formerly existing public transport systems collapsed."

He said if the planet wanted to wean itself off a dependence on fossil fuel energy, governments needed to be brave and make it more expensive – despite the political ramifications.

"Let us agree on a system in which energy prices go up parallel to documented efficiency gains of the previous year," so there is an incentive for companies to develop more efficient systems.

"That would trigger a rat race for efficiency," Weizsäcker stated.

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