EU Tribo Research Commission’s funded research in this area found that in in your car, about 40% of the available energy is lost due to friction in the transmission, plus energy lost in cooling and exhaust, leaving only a minor portion of the energy to be transmitted to wheel.Researchers are engaged in reducing frictional losses through lubrication and surface engineering so as to reduce fuel consumption per Km and the correspoding greenhouse gas emission to conform to the new stricter limits set.Also this efforts would lead to good amount of carbon credits for auto-manufacturers which can be passed over to customers.
Along with my wife, who is a Reader on 'Environmental Studies' to graduate dtudents, I am planning to write a book covering Tribology, Surface Engineering and Global Warming.With my best selling reference book on 'wear'(ASM Intl,2001), and strong selling book on 'surface engineering' (Springer'2004),and help from my wife on the third front,i.e., global warming',I am confident of doing an equally good job on this proposed project.
I was on my own in writting the two books.
For the proposed book I need institutional support, where I can spend sometime in doing reasearch/teaching alongside with the book writting.
Any taker?
ram chattopadhyay

Good luck Ram, hope you find the necessary support.