Global problems require global solutions – so said Carlos Tavares, the 50-year-old, French-educated Portuguese gentleman in charge of product strategy at Japanese motor firm Nissan, during a speech made in the US last week. You can see where he gets his perspective. “Looking upon planet Earth, you see its characteristic colour is in fact blue,” he said, helping to explain the otherwise puzzling existence of environmental automotive brands like VW’s BlueMotion, Hyundai’s i-Blue, Mercedes’ Blue Hybrid, and Peugeot’s Blue Lion. “‘Blue citizenship’ is Nissan’s commitment to the planet,” added Tavares. “Blue citizenship should be our goal rather than green cars.”

So what does blue citizenship involve, other than turning down the central heating? We’re not exactly sure, but Tavares expanded his point by looking to microwave ovens for automotive inspiration – a technique we thought Toyota had cornered.

Microwaves rose from obscurity to ubiquity in less than 30 years, despite initially arriving as a technology push rather than a consumer pull. “Were consumers actually seeking a new way to cook food?” Tavares asked, pointing out that cooks can’t even fry an egg in one. Microwaves muscled their way into our kitchens anyway because of their convenience. “They are easy to use, easy to maintain, unobtrusive and affordable.”

Today’s cars, by contrast, are “easy to use, except when moving in reverse, parking, or sitting in a middle seat; easy to maintain, except for fill ups, oil changes and car washes; unobtrusive, except for noise, pollution and traffic; and affordable, as long as financing is available and gas prices are low”.

We’re not entirely convinced by this stretched analogy, but we like where Tavares is going. You only have to look at Nissan’s Pivo 2 electric car to see that this kind of thinking really is driving Nissan’s view of the future. And of course Nissan aims to be one of the first mainstream makers to attempt to sell electric cars in large numbers, as previewed by the Nuvu concept at the Paris motor show last month. “Our first pure EV will arrive in selected markets in 2010, followed by a mass-market rollout globally in 2012,” Tavares said, adding that this first EV will be “a real car” aimed at everyone, not just hair-shirted environmentalists.

There is a consumer perception hurdle to overcome, particularly with regard to range. People are used to the notion that a city commuter car can, if needed, cross a continent. “Our first generation battery will deliver 100 miles per charge,” Tavares said. “Through today’s lens, this looks like a sacrifice of convenience, especially in expansive countries like America. Through tomorrow’s lens, it could look more convenient.” He argued that overnight charging at home is more convenient than visiting a petrol station, and that running an EV plus joining a car club for those occasional long journeys is much more cost effective for consumers. Plus, the removal of the conventional drive-train opens up yet-to-be-exploited options in cabin layout. “An EV could well become the mainstream just as microwave ovens found their way into our kitchens,” Tavares said. “Range may not be the stumbling block that many people claim it to be.”

And Tavares had one more remark, which leaves us wondering exactly what he’s getting at: “Advanced technology may help us overcome challenges with charging. For example, do we know for sure that the vehicle cannot be charged while driving? Think about it.”

We have thought about it, and we conclude he was hinting at one (or perhaps a combination) of three things. Firstly, you can slap a solar cell on the roof of your electric car. Second, you can put wires in the road or overhead and use them like a small railway engine or giant Scalextric car. But there is a third option. Tavares talked a lot about microwave ovens, and it’s a little-known fact that the same principles that heat up a ready meal can be used to transfer electrical power from one place to another. Might Tavares be suggesting that power might be transferred wirelessly from the roadside to a moving electric car? We’re not sure, but it’s certainly an intriguing possibility.

If you’re interested in greener driving, you’ve probably encountered more than one list of the things you should do to cut fuel consumption. These usually contain sound advice: drive smoothly, accelerate gently, maintain correct tyre pressures, remove unused roof-racks, remove needless weight from the boot, use the aircon sparingly, don’t drive at speed with a window open, etc, etc.

The hardest tip to follow is the one that’s most obvious and most effective at reducing fuel consumption: drive more slowly.

Whatever make of car you drive, and however smoothly you pilot it, cutting your speed will dramatically cut your fuel consumption, particularly on faster roads. This is because the fuel being spent pushing the car through the air increases with the square of speed. If you drive a large, boxy car where drag is a big factor, travelling at 100mph can use as much as four times the fuel you would use to cover the same distance at 50mph.

We are not suggesting that you should drive at 30mph on the motorway – it’s not safe, and you could even be stopped by the police for obstruction.

However, there is a huge benefit to driving at the bottom end of the acceptable speed range on a given road. It will save you fuel, it will encourage others to save fuel, and amazingly enough you might actively reduce the fuel usage of even the most aggressive drivers on the road behind you.

Engineer William Beatty has published some interesting theories on how traffic jams form and how they dissipate. His informal research strongly suggests that drivers arriving more slowly than average at the site of a jam can help to remove the hold-up.

This is because a slower driver on a single-carriageway road or congested motorway will tend to accumulate an area of open road directly in front of them. This open space acts as a pulse of “anti-traffic”, an area with a lower density of cars than the rest of the road effectively “travelling” towards the jam at the same speed as you. When this area of emptiness arrives at the back of a queue of cars, it helps to give the jam the respite it needs to start to clear. If a number of drivers arrive in succession with a large gap in front of them, the build-up of cars can even clear completely.

As a slower driver you can, therefore, help to reduce the time that other drivers will spend in a traffic jam, where fuel economy usually plummets well below 10mpg. That is real green driving.

On a similar theme, Beatty explains that once in a jam, it’s vital to continue to behave meekly. If the cause of the jam is that two lanes are merging, don’t try to prevent other people merging ahead of you. Merging in “zipper” fashion – in turns, one from each lane – might seem like the best way to ease the congestion but in fact is still a slow way to defuse things. A greater volume of traffic will get through in a given time if the lanes take turns in larger lumps. So let two, three or even five cars jump in ahead of you. You can smile in the knowledge that you are helping to ease the blockage and will cut the fuel wasted in the jam as a whole.

You can even encourage this behaviour by leaving an extra-large gap ahead of you whenever you have to halt on a congested dual-carriageway.

The secret of green driving, therefore, has less to do with pumping up your tyres than it does with avoiding red mist. Leave in plenty of time. Drive more slowly. Look further ahead and adjust your speed to avoid braking. Don’t feel you are competing with other drivers. Accept that other cars will get ahead of you. Always let other drivers merge in front of you without complaint.

It may take some gritted teeth to drive in this way, but it will make a difference to the fuel consumption not just of your own car, but to the cars on the road around you