Tantalum’s Air.Car project “highly commended” at the 3rd Business Green Technology Awards

Connected vehicle technology leader Tantalum Corporation (“Tantalum”) was “highly commended” on Friday 1 December in the R&D Programme of the Year category at the 3rd Business Green Technology Awards for its Air.Car project. https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3022274/businessgreen-technology-awards-2017-and-the-winner-is

The awards recognise and celebrate excellence in innovation and disruptive technologies from the best of British clean tech companies.

Tantalum’s innovative Air.Car (https://www.tantalumcorporation.com/air-car/) is a £2 million Innovate UK and the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles funded project with Imperial College London (https://www.tantalumcorporation.com/tantalum-and-imperial-college-london-to-deliver-air-car-project/).

It is perfecting ground-breaking real-time NOx emissions estimation capabilities, which will give individuals, businesses, governments and local authorities the ability to drive down poisonous transport pollution.

In the same week, the Mayor of London launched a formal consultation on expanding the Ultra-Low Emission Zone in 2021 to the North and South circular roads – an 18 times increase on the 2019 zone in size and 28 times in population. Air.Car will enable the implementation of a dynamic emissions based road user charging scheme, which would mean that drivers only pay for their actual vehicle emissions instead of paying whenever they entered a specific area. This would be a smarter, fairer and cheaper option, while also enabling significant co-benefits such as safer driving, as driving behaviour is proven to help reduce the production of polluting vehicle emissions.

Ozgur Tohumcu, CEO at Tantalum, commented:

“The recognition of our Air.Car project is very timely, coming just a day after the Mayor of London launched his consultation on hugely expanding the capital’s Ultra-Low Emissions Zone.

“As cities across the UK are thinking about how to improve air quality, we are delighted to be recognised again as a leader in the fight against city transport’s pollution emissions and look forward to working with these cities to help save lives.”

ENDS

Available for further comment: Lincoln Jopp, a Non Executive Director on the board of Tantalum is available for further media comment, including radio and TV. He can be contacted on [email protected] and +44 (0) 7757 855 366.

Tantalum and Imperial College won a grant from Innovate UK’s Connected and Autonomous Vehicle competition (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/funding-competition-connected-and-autonomous-vehicles-2) to support their £2 million collaborative project to deliver real-time NOemissions estimation capability from an OBD (On Board Diagnostic – the vehicle’s computer) connected device.

Once perfected, Tantalum’s CO2/NOx product will be able to provide a detailed understanding of the environmental impact of vehicles and the tools to minimise it.

The Air.Car project started in July 2017 and the 1,000-vehicle trial begins in the new year, offering participants an estimation of their NOx emissions. The trial is fully funded for participants.