Better fuel efficiency will be crucial to the health of the environment as world car ownership increases, especially in China and India. This photo shows traffic near Beijing's 3rd Ring Road.
Car lube, in its earliest forms, has been around since at least 2400 B.C., when ancient Egyptian construction workers used water and natural oils to lubricate the sledges that carried the stones of the pyramids. But we still have a ways to go in reducing friction in our cars, according to a paper published in December 2011 in the journal Tribology International ("Tribology" is the study of friction). A third of a passenger car's fuel consumption is wasted on overcoming friction in the engine, transmission, tires and brakes, the study found. That's one area innovation should focus for better fuel efficiency, the researchers suggested.
The savings could be enormous. The researchers, from the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, forecasted that cars' fuel consumption could decline by 18 percent over the next decade, if half of the world's cars used the best friction-reducing technology that's available now. Such an update would save the world 31 billion gallons of gasoline and 290 million tons of carbon emissions every year. In the next 15 or 25 years, with "intensive and focused" research, friction reduction technology could reduce cars' fuel consumption by 61 percent, the researchers wrote.
To make their predictions, they analyzed published data on the cars in the world. They read papers about the best available commercial friction solutions, including high-tech, low-friction materials for car components; better lubricants and better tires. They also interviewed experts about what the best possible car might be like in 2020.
The paper isn't a perfect prediction for the future, however. For simplicity's sake, the research doesn't take into account some important changes that the world fleet will probably make by 2022, 2042 and beyond.
People will surely drive more hybrid and electric cars in the future, for example. Electric cars can convert some braking friction into energy, so electric cars in the future would have about half the friction loss of internal combustion cars.
The number of passenger cars in the world will likely double by 2035, with most of the growth happening in developing countries such as China and India, said Lew Fulton, the lead transport analyst for the International Energy Agency. In that case, innovation in fuel consumption won't save the world as much oil and carbon as this study predicts, but it would prevent a much larger potential amount of petroleum from going up in the air.
Studies like this don't usually tell the car industry anything that is new to them, Fulton told. “I think carmakers know this more or less," he said. "There may be some new friction reduction ideas." Instead, it tells those outside the industry what's possible. Politicians can use fuel efficiency research to set miles-per-gallon requirements for new cars. The Obama administration already has a 35.5-mpg rule for 2016 and is pushing for 54.5 mpg by 2025. Cars today need to have a fuel consumption rate of 27.3 mpg.
The current U.S. administration is "going for big targets," Fulton said. Manufacturers will have to work on many different aspects of car technology to meet them. "I have no doubt that friction reduction will be part of it."
