You can drive the car to biofuel

GENEVA - Henry Ford's chestnut "A customer can have a car painted any color he wants so long as it is black," is almost correct for the 2008 Geneva Auto Show. The cars are available in every color imaginable - so long as they are also 'green.'

Everyone in Geneva is talking about environmentally-friendly cars, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, hybrid engines and fuel cells.

But outside the exhibition grounds near Geneva's international airport, it is business as usual for the Swiss. They are still buying big, expensive, fast, powerful and environmentally filthy models.

You won't see a plain old Renault Clio 1,400 on the streets of Geneva. But you will see, and in large numbers, the Clio Sport. Not a boring Subaru Impreza, but the Impreza STI, or at the very least the Impreza WRX.

And it is not only the Swiss. All of Europe is in love, as it always has been, with the fast and powerful cars.

Take for example the Toyota Prius. The hybrid is environmentally-friendly and puts out only 104 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer. But the Europeans have bought only 100,000 Priuses in total since 2000. Toyota has sold over a million of the same cars in Japan and the U.S. in the same period. Toyota's European management thinks the only solution is regulation.

"The drastic fuel price increases have not influenced people. Maybe the new tax they are planning, the carbon dioxide tax, will influence consumer behavior and maybe the regulations requiring car manufacturers to lower the average emissions of their models to 130 grams of carbon dioxide by 2012," said Willi Tomboy, Toyota's director for environmental affairs in Europe.

The solutions offered for pollution problems are a question of geography. The Japanese, led by Toyota and Honda, are pushing hybrids which combine a gasoline engine with an electric one.

But the Europeans are advancing with their modern diesel engines.

Who is right? Both says Honda. "In Europe people travel longer distances than in Japan. Under these conditions, diesel is a better solution. A hybrid vehicle is not more efficient for long-distance driving and the batteries it carries are just a burden and useless weight. But in trips in the city in Japan, where traffic is very heavy and crowded, the hybrid system is preferable," said Sachito Fujimoto, the manager of the FCX Clarity project at Honda.

One BMW engineer said hybrids are only a passing fad and not a sustainable solution in the long term. BMW has reached the conclusion that modern diesels with carbon dioxide reduction systems are the answer - and they plan on selling a million such vehicles by the summer. BMW says it will sell more environmentally-friendly vehicles in Europe in a year than Toyota has in 10.

But the two solutions, says Fujimoto, hybrids and diesel, are both wrong in the long run. "Both of them use fossil fuels and both still emit pollutants," he said.

The only long-term solution is fuel cells, says Fujimoto, with a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity to power the car. This is a solution with zero air pollution and uses zero oil. The Honda FCX Clarity which was shown at the exhibition is a fuel cell vehicle, the first production model in the world according to Honda. How much production? Honda manufactured only 100 which are leased to customers in Tokyo and California, where there are already hydrogen filling stations.