Hybrid Powertrains and Hydrogen Fuel Cells

An Anonymous Coward writes "Nice article from cars.com detailing a panel dicussion with reps from Chrysler Group, Ford, General Motors and American Honda agreeing that hybrid powertrains and hydrogen fuel cells are the future of automotive propulsion, and discussing their companies' different approaches in both areas."

Comments

Blessed Altruism

[layingMantis]

"GM has taken a little different tack in hybrids," Sloane explained. The researchers asked themselves, "What is it we're trying to solve or fix? Is it that our customers are demanding higher fuel economy? The honest answer to that is no. The cheapest fluid you can get at a gas station is what? The gasoline. It's sure cheaper per gallon than this is," she said, raising some bottled water from the dais. "But we do have a societal interest in reducing the use of fuel. So maybe it's the places where you use a lot of it that you should try to make the reductions."

Heh. This mildly amusing, and mildy insulting, bit of spin-doctoring aside, it's good to see that the American auto makers aren't actually light-years behind their Japanese counterparts anymore. They've closed the gap to just a few generations. :-)

The Limits of Fossil Fuel Tech

[saihung]

While I like these ideas, projects like this make me think that we haven't even approached the limits of efficiency in fossil fuel engines. This thing might be a concept, but VW made it now, it runs on normal diesel fuel, and gets nearly 240 MPG. This is the kind of thing that we need to explore in the near-term. While I think that pie-in-the-sky exotics are sexy, I also think that they won't be ready for production or have a working support infrastructure for years - here is something we could do now to cut our fuel usage.