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D. Gruden, H.-P. Lenz, S. Prüller, W. Berg, K. Borgmann, O. Hiemesch (ed.):
"Traffic and Environment";
Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg New York, 2004, ISBN: 3-540-00050-x; 294 pages.

Over centuries mankind has pursued technical progress for the benefit of improved prosperity without simultaneously taking appropriate steps to ensure the environmental friendliness of the involved processes. However, in the middle of the 20th century environmental episodes drew attention to the negative impacts on the environment caused by this progress.
As a matter of fact, concern about the int1uence of human activities on the environment is neither a new phenomenon nor a new attribute of modern people but has accompanied human society throughout its existence. What is new, however, is the increasing intensity of man's efforts to protect his environment as ret1ected in a multitude of national and international environmental laws enacted all around the globe.
Life as a whole, and human existence in particular, are characterized by con- stant movement and changes. This means that living beings need to be mobile to survive. By developing suitable technical means man has enormously increased his mobility - expressed in terms of speed and distance - when compared with other living beings on our planet. The automobile is one of the inventions that has made a decisive contribution to this mobility and it has become an inse- parable part of modern human society. In the second half of the 20th century, the automobile developed from a luxury article and prestige object for a few into a basic commodity for millions of people. It is through this widespread use that negative impacts on the environment have become clearly visible. Therefore, since the late 1960s and early 1970s, automotive development has been accompanied by an ever increasing number of strict legal standards, e.g., about the reduction of exhaust gas pollutants, noise emissions, hazardous substances and waste, as well as about improved recyclability of materials and other aspects.
Achievements in improving the ecological characteristics of the automobile are highly impressive: A modern car emits only fractions of the amounts of noise and exhaust gas pollutants produced by its predecessors 30 years ago. Today, 100 modern passenger cars in total emit less of the legally limited exhaust gas constituents than one single car of 1970. The same trend can be found with all the other ecologically relevant automotive features so that the absolute impact of the automobile on our environment is considerably lower today than it was in the past.
The development of the automobile is increasingly linked to deliberations about sustainable development. While this term in the recent past was only relat - ed to the aspect of ecological consequences for the environment, it comprises today at least two further essential pillars, namely economic consequences and social responsibility.
When discussing sustainability in the context of automotive development, it must be borne in mind that essential technical elements of the automobile - such as safety, power output, torque, fuel consumption, durability, maintenance intervals, and comfort should not be compromised.
The modern automobile has achieved outstanding performance and super- iority compared to its predecessors in all theses elements and will continue to proceed along this evolutionary development path.
This book focuses on ecological aspects related to the development and use of automobiles, leaving many environment-related initiatives towards improvements of the automotive production process out of consideration. It shall, how- ever, be mentioned in this context that also the production of modern cars is not possible without the observance of a wide range of stringent environmental laws. Thus, in order to be allowed to enter the market, a car must not only per- form environmental- friendly during its operation but must have been produced to ecological standards as well. Company audits carried out routinely according to EMAS (Eco Management Auditing Scheme) and ISO 14001 show that auto- motive manufacturers are constantly improving the ecological compatibility of their production processes.
The contributions to this book were written by experts, most of whom have been actively involved in the development of modern automobiles and their combustion engines for more than 30 years. They have participated in all phases of the ecological development of the automobile -from the basic attempts to respond to the first exhaust gas emission control requirements in the USA (1966) and Europe (1970) to the cost-intensive efforts towards meeting the comprehensive and highly demanding emission legislations currently existing and further anticipated worldwide.
As the 20th century ends and the 21st century begins, these experts have sum- marized their experience and know-how in this book which bears witness to the successful implementation of ecological considerations into automotive developmentwork.
In my capacity as coordinator of the preparatory work for this book I would like to thank my colleagues -Prof. Dr.sc. techn. Hans Peter Lenz and his colla- borator, Mr. Stefan Prüller (Dipl.-Ing.) of Technical University of Vienna, Dr. Klaus Borgmann and Mr. Otto Hiemesch (Dipl.- Ing. ) of BMW AG and Dr. Wolfgang Berg, Consultant and long-standing collaborator of DaimlerChrysler AG - for their cooperation and valuable contributions.
I would like to express particular gratitude to Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG for permission to carry out this project.