I have just come back from the Frankfurt Motor Show 2011 in another EU-project called Clean Drive.

It was very interesting to see that the focus of this year is on smaller and low-consumption combustion or electric vehicles. However, even though the car manufacturers have made significant progress in the development of hybrid technologies, the demand for large vehicles such as SUV is still growing in emerging markets, such as BRIC countries.

For EnercitEE the challenge in the mobility area will be to foster future investments in electric mobility infrastructure, such as a dense grid of electric fuel stations or solar carports. This infrastructure needs to be ready when electric vehicles enter the market at a larger scale than today. Apart from this, intelligent and renewable electricity generation and storage are crucial to support electric vehicles. Promising approaches for this is the use of wind power at night to recharge electric car batteries or the above mentioned solar carports.

Further information on the IEE campaign on cleaner vehicles can be found under www.clean-drive.eu