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GM's Billion-Dollar Fuel-Cell Bet
nakhla writes "Wired is running a lengthy article detailing GM's billion-dollar effort to invent a radically new fuel cell vehicle. The interesting part is that GM's engineers are no longer trying to squeeze a fuel cell engine into a traditional car design. Instead, they're building a completely new type of car from the ground up. No gears, clutch, braking hardware, etc. It's all drive-by-wire (computer controlled). Even the engines are located in each of the 4 wheels. It's a fascinating read, and the article outlines economic reasons for such a car, as well as environmental concerns and practical uses (imagine powering your house with the excess electricity generated by your car). For anyone remotely interested in the future of automotive technology, this article is very interesting."
Heh... good to see GM working on new products. Kind of strange coming from the makers of the infamous Suburban :)
I don't care if it looks cool... but can it still burn rubber?
kyjello is too damn smooth to make a signature.
An interesting point to note is that fuel cell cars, once mass-produced, may be more competitively priced than one would expect. There *are* federal subsidies for alternative-fuel vehicles. The reason hybrid cars are so expensive is that because they still use gas some of the time, they're technically not alternative-fuel vehicles. Stupid loophole standing in the way of progress.
Best of luck to GM!
My deviantArt site
the main reason alternative cars dont sell is because they are UGLY! give me an attractive design and I will consider it...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
"imagine powering your house with the excess electricity generated by your car"
Now THAT I've gatta see to believe. Last time I checked, the laws of physics still apply to earth.
-Valiss
it looks and sounds pretty cool, but until they make one w/ some serious power, 4wd and some serious ground clearance. I'm sticking w/ what I have...
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
I thought american car manufacturers were just paying lip service to people about alternative fuel cars, producing the most bloated, ineffectual monstrocities possible simply so that concerned citizen could shrug it off and say "at least they tried" while they drive off in their Zaibatsu Monstrocity.
Maybe its the radical re-design that will scare off people... and I'm sure a number of "Hydrogen is dangerous!" reports (perhaps authored by the Alexis DeToqueville sell outs!) will circulate for just long enough to FUD alternative fuel cars into the ground.
I just read what I wrote. Gee, someone got up on the cynical conspiracy side of the bed!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Will we have to pull into the nearest Texaco or Irving and fill 'er up with good 'ole H2O? I can't imagine that this will go over too well with the oil companies if all we need to "gas up" is a garden hose..... I'm all for it of course...
-RickTheWizKid
The interesting part is that GM's engineers are no longer trying to squeeze a fuel cell engine into a traditional car design. Instead, they're building a completely new type of car from the ground up.
This is not "builing a fuel-cell car from the ground up", this is "building an electric car from the ground up". A fuel-cell is just a power source.
I'm not saying that there's no room for innovation in car design, but there's a reason cars are the way they are. If you have to make the car weigh 500 pounds to match the performance of a gasoline vehicle, you are doing something wrong. If you have to use bicycle tires because normal tires create too much friction, you are doing something wrong.
When they can make a no-compromise car that looks like a CAR and not a golf cart, give me a call. I'm not loading my family into a 500 pound death trap.
The fact that they feel the need to reinvent something that has over 100 years of refinement tells me they are doing something wrong.
Here's an idea: How about not doing it until you have a powerplant that at least comes close to matching the efficiency and performance of a gasoline motor?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
computers, which are going to be blocked by internet regulations anyway
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
You misspelled "image a Beowulf cluster of these". HTH.
Of Fossil fuel consumption, we certainly need an alternative. Recently Honda and GM have made the battery cars, where they are charged by gasoline instead of a power line... they work well, run silent, but people just seem to want the power/reliability of fossil fuel cars.
Making something from the ground up might allow for a whole new vehicle to emerge, which would certainly have a hard time starting in the market, but if fossil fuels ran out than we'd have no choice
I'm surprised people never went to natural oils, like hemp and such alternatives for combustion solutions.. they're certainly very viable and easy to replenish..
I find it quite interesting that an American car company would be pioneering this and not a Japanese or European brand. Way to go GM! Unfortunately, they'll be extremely ugly since Americanss don't have a clue about car design. :)
sig.
Don Lancaster said this was the way to go with electrical vehicles 20 years ago. Way to go, GM, you've reinvented the wheel.
what is it running : windows or linux ? Will I have to reboot my car on highways ? Will there be 'liveupdate' for new viruses from the satellites !!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
imagine powering your house with the excess electricity generated by your car
I hate being a critic, but humbug.
You have any idea how much damn electricity the average house uses up? About 6,500 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year. Even supplimenting this with your car seems kinda like filling up a pool with paper cups...
feel free to correct me if I'm wrong (and im sure you will)
The discontinued EV1 was a joke -- it batteries spread throughout the vehicle and was available only on a lease basis.
I've head Lead/Acid batteries are 95-95% recyclable...countries outside the US use standard battery packs that are swapped in minutes for recharging, replacement, etc.
What kind of cleanup/toxicity issues do fuel cells have, considering all of the elements used (catalysts/fuel/fuel generation).
Is this plan really a better bet than electric cars with high density batteries and some type of remote hydrogen powerplant running the juice over cables?
I've always had the sneaking feeling that fuel cell technology was just another way for the petrochemical industries to keep their jobs when the wells run dry.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
And this is the same company that fights against raising CAFE standards by a couple miles per gallon? WTF?
http://www.ita.doc.gov/td/auto/cafe.html
1. That they come up with somethinig that is economically viable (i.e. they succeed).
2. That they aren't going to try to fail on purpose, to make the idea of "alternative vehicles" look bad, thus bolstering the consumer desire for "regular" vehicles for a long period.
3. That whatever vehicle they design LOOKS like cars do nowadays. Vehicles that are ugly, or distinctly different-looking than regular vehicles, will get ignored because most people don't want ugly cars. It's pissed me off that until recently, most hybrid or electric vehicles were sort of ugly and misshapen... and then everyone's surprised when they don't sell as well as regular cars! Well, duh.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Amory Lovins has been pushing this kind of thing for years. Except, instead of a fuel cell, Lovins suggests using an ordinary gas engine whose sole duty is to power a generator; rather like a diesel locomotive. He theorizes that, because the engine can run at a constant RPM and torque load, it can be smaller and reduce weight, so fuel efficiency goes up. Also, getting rid of the transmission and other mechanical linkages reduces weight, so fuel efficiency goes up.
Given that, it's not clear why Detroit is interested in pursuing highly advanced fuel cell tech.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Even the engines are located in each of the 4 wheels
Which is dandy until you actually take it off the showroom floor an onto the road. Where I live, there are holes in the road from time to time. There's debris in the road. Sometimes, I get a flat. Sometimes, they cut the top few inches off for resurfacing, which gives you a nice noisy ride for a time (what my kids call the "Groovy Pavement") followed by a 2 - 3 inch bump.
I've even managed to bend a rim when an accident-avoidance maneuver took me into a curb (rather than the side of another vehicle) which set me back $200 for the rim and re-alignment, but it didn't take out 25% of my motor.
Take a clue from God -- the vital organs go in the core, surrounded by bone. You don't put them on the periphery!
The one very big and very ignored part of any new durable mass market product is repair. Anyone can build a car from the ground, the trick is to build a car that utilizes fuel cells using parts that are mass produced and easily repaired, fixed, serviced, etc.. For example, GM loves to build cars with very expensive, shiny, weak pieces of plastic for grill covers. When involed in a TA it has to be replaced 95% of the time with a $600 part with $150 labor.
GM is not building the next generation of Fuel Cell based cars to help out the enviroment. They are just like many greedy corporations, they will make money of the parts, service and maintance industry for a fuel cell powered car. Remember folks, industrial factories are still the leading pollution and natural resource draining offenders.
So before you get all green and go blow 20K on a honda insight or some other enviromental friendly car, really consider the true impact/benefit of supporting the automotive industry.
"Get them before they get....
There a numerous stories about Daimler Chrysler developing and giving prototypes of fuel-cell-cars.
I'm pretty sure the competition of the big players will emprove the speed of innovation
EV-1 (An overpriced piece of crap)
What happens when companies innovate at their own pace, but pushed by competition:
AUTOnomy (a possible revolution in car design)
Just because the government isn't spending billions of dollars on some particular type of research doesn't mean that business won't fill the gap. In fact, this is precisely what is supposed to happen.
Companies aren't there just to be evil and pollute. They're there to make money. If people want more eco-friendly cars, that's exactly what they'll get.
10 minutes working on a sig. What a waste.
Design News had an article about this type of car in January. You can find it here.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I wonder what is meant by this. By no braking hardware, are they implying that the motors will be used to brake the car (maybe like some subways)? What about the need to "stop on a dime"? The idea of not having real brakes, I would imagine, is about as scary to the public (if not moreso) than carrying potentially explosive fuel tanks.
:) If it's real in 10 years, I want one!
Also, I think they underestimate the public's willingness to invest a little more to be able to refuel at home. It'd be worth it to me to not have to leave early to get gas
There will be no Pontiac Model of the above mentioned vehicle. The Pontiac model entered testing, but failed miserably due to the weight of the excess plastic plastered all around the body.
For the humor impared...you are supposed to laugh.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Given the new models currently available from Honda and Toyota, you'd think they would just change a the body shape a slap their Brand name on the thing. Its not like they haven't done it before.
As for Electric Motors in the tires, thats already been developed by a subsiduary or Hyrdo Quebec in Canada.
Makes you wonder if the BIG THREE really want to be in the forefront of innovation.
I think the article makes a great point in that you can't expect to simply pull an ICE out of a car and plunk in a fuel cell and expect it to perform anywhere near par. This is not necessarily because of any technological deficiency of the fuel cells, but because of hundreds of design elements that are best-case trade-offs for an internal combustion design.
Unfortunately, the world's unconscious is so used to the emergent design brought about by these design elements that it's difficult for them to look at a radically new design and still think "car".
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
-brian
and was heckled for it.
Well I think it is... at least they are finally starting to look at it now whilst we still have other fuels available. I'd hate for the world to get to the point where there is NO raw oil left to drill, and we have no choice but use alternative fuel cars.. I welcome the fact they are doing somthing like this now so that we can bring it in gradually :)
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Umm, you have any idea how much energy the average car uses up? If you drive 12,000 miles a year, at 20 miles/gallon, that's 600 gallons of oil or about 14.5 barrels, energy content = about 25,000 kWh per year (see this Conversion table). So your car is using about 4 times as much energy as your house. If you drive a lot and have a gas guzzler it's probably 10 times as much or more.
GM's idea is actually a pretty good one - it could easily be much cheaper to power your house from the fuel cell in your car than from the electric grid (high efficiency and no transmission losses, and no middle-men).
Energy: time to change the picture.
Makers of "fine" Pontiacs, SAABs, Olds, and Chevys...all cars who can't live longer than 9 years without their interiors falling apart. All cars that choke and wheeze at the 100,000 mile mark. All cars that have no life whatsoever. I'd rather have an electric BMW, Volkswagon, Honda or Toyota...hell, even an electric Dodge would be better than an electric Pontiac.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
The interesting point about the 'excess power' was in areas that didn't have power wired in. Rather than installing a generator in the cabin, you plug in your car when you get there.
In rural areas without power, as long as you have a supply of gas that's not too distant, you could use your new vehicle as transport and power, both.
It's called Research and Development. R&D if you will.
/., CmdrTaco's little baby, but do we really need the sensationalist headlines? Would click throughs (and, God forbid, ad revenues) plummet if the stories had less flashy but more accurate descriptions?
The one certainty for car makers is that, sometime in the very near future, they're going to have to come up with a mass market alternative to the traditional gasoline-based internal combustion engine.
This isn't a bet, it's survival. The bet would be if they weren't seriously examining the alternatives.
I know this is
(No, I'm not a troll. Yes, this is on-topic. No, I'm not a whiner. Yes, I am interested in journalistic integrity.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
This was in Popular Science about 4 months ago. They showed several differnt concepts of how the new platform could be built. It's nice to see Wired is maintaining their reputation of being on the cutting edge, by posting a story that was already done in print months before. Par for the course I guess. What's worse, in the Wired article doesn't really add anything new.
Is this plan really a better bet than electric cars with high density batteries and some type of remote hydrogen powerplant running the juice over cables?
Yes.
The energy storage density of batteries is horrible. Even for the strange and wondrous experimental designs that you won't ever see because they're expensive or run at 300 degrees C or what-have-you.
Fuel for fuel cells, on the other hand, has an energy storage density approaching that of gasoline (better by weight, considerably less by volume for hydrogen, which is a royal pain to store; comparable to gasoline on both counts for methanol, but that's a pain to re-form).
Fuel storage density has been the limiting factor for the design of electric cars, so this makes one heck of a difference.
BMW already has a hydrogen-powered 7 Serices car. Of course, it is still just a prototype.
cpeterso
I have yet to read the article - however, these would be electric *motors*, not engines...
This is *exactly* how diesel locomotives work, except they have one motor per axles, rather than one per wheel (which means most loco's have 6 to 8 motors).
The advantage to this is that the motors can be smaller, cheaper, probably lower in center of gravity, maybe less weight (compared to one large electric motor and 2 or 4 wheel transmission),???.
Remember that electric motors have *way* more torque than gas engines - could be quite the "E" ticket.
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
It's all drive-by-wire (computer controlled).
This is going to bring the term computer crash into a whole new light.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Ideally, what the ratios are today and what they are likely to get to (given Moores law or whatever applies).
Strikes me great application in flying (partic. GA) rather than driving if right ratios.
Going away from the central engine idea is the equivalent to looking foreward to the first moon landing as far as the slow world of auto design is concerned.
The idea that cars may be made cheaper and safer in this manner is also overwhelmingly appealing an idea. Combine the idea of smaller redundant engines with cheaper replaceable parts, and you have a better machine in total.
None of this is to say that the end result will be anything like the plans - but the ideas coming to fore lift my impression of the U.S. auto industry many times what it had previously become.
Besides, the endless stream of sedans on the highway have long since warn out their $15,000+ price tags I mentally see on each of them. I'm finally excited about the idea of a car again.
Ryan Fenton
Wow, you would have never thought this was shown publicly at the Detroit autoshow.
Got lots of attention then, now many months later slashdot notices, come on editors, get with it~!!
Sheesh, first the
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Think for a moment what you GET when you put the power-plants in the wheel. no driveshafts, differentials, axles = less weight and more efficiency. Lower center of mass. Simple torque control systems for better traction.
Also, this is not a new idea, some of the monster dirt movers in the mining industry use electric motors in the wheel hubs.
.sigless since 2003
http://www.econogics.com/ev/evcanper.htm#Hydro_Que bec
has a few more details, but the info is a little hard to come by. The project was almost scraped, its original author losing all control over his "invention".
It's a very sad story in fact, but now I'm almost happy the tech. is going to survive. For your information, in 1999 or so, HQ built a car, actually, used a normal car model, but replace a couple of its wheels (not the whole 4, but that's the idea) and tadam, had an EV in no time. Of course, you have to throw in all the computer equipement, but it was a normal looking car.
IIRC, cars are required to have mechanical links to things like steering and braking, for the simple reason that if the computer controls fail, you would still have some measure of control over your vehicle.
I've personally had the power steering and power braking fail on a few cars that I've owned. If there was no mechanical backup. Not a fun experience, but at least I was able to stop/steer, albiet at with somewhat less control.
The thought of riding in a car whose steering/braking suddenly fails completely with no backup makes me shudder.
Think For Yourself. Question Authority.
Oh well - more competition and new ideas is always A Good Thing (tm MSO)
The EV1 was available in lead-acid and NiMH versions. The lead-acid got a respectable 75-100 miles per charge and the NiMH got up to 180 miles per charge. The joke was that GM wasn't serious about promoting, selling or advertising them. (Quite the opposite, in fact.)
What kind of cleanup/toxicity issues do fuel cells have, considering all of the elements used (catalysts/fuel/fuel generation).
Consider that for many years to come, hydrogen will be produced by splitting existing petroleum products. Same dependence on foreign oil, same refinery pollution.
Is this plan really a better bet than electric cars with high density batteries and some type of remote hydrogen powerplant running the juice over cables?
If the fuel and power companies would have spent these billions on ramping up production of advanced battery chemistries (NiMH, LiIon, NiZn) instead of beating up on fuel cells, the problem would have been licked already.
But we're talking oil companies here.
I've always had the sneaking feeling that fuel cell technology was just another way for the petrochemical industries to keep their jobs when the wells run dry.
It also keeps the aerospace and defense industries running. (No reason to have wars over there if we don't need their oil.)
I'm not a die-hard ecologist basically he says that it doesn't water if we switch to H2 cars today or in fifty years because eventually there won't be any oil left, so we'll have to make the switch anyway.
It's true of course, but he ignores a major point: the sooner we will get rid of oil, the less CO2 will be released in the air and the less hot the earth will be for our children..
NOT A DETAIL, I THINK!!!!
Wait just a minute friends. As much as I love technology, and the idea of a 'zero-emmission', radically designed vehicle is awful fun to think about, lets get real please.
.... instead of killing it. For Conspiracy-Prone: I guess their buddies in the oil business didnt like the idea of not having a product to sell.. but i guess Hydrogen Filing Stations is all the same to them...
GM is presently taking the State of California to court over its ZEV rules. It cancelled its EV1 - which was arguably the best ZEV around...
Now we hear of GMs * new real big commitment * to introducing a method for us to get off-the-oil, and its only (in the best flying-car style promise) 8 years away! They promise, there not kidding - just give them some time to deveolpe this new best thing, all the while allowing them to continue with the filthy ICE vehicles they produce now -- they promise to get us off the junk Real Soon Now(TM).
No wonder GM is winning awards for GreenWashing
Dont get your chequebooks out just yet friends, this sounds like allot of smoke-mirrors FUD to give their Lobbyists some time to convince(bribe) the Plutocrats in Washington to ease off the legislation.
In conclusion: Fuck GM.
Maybe they should spend some of that $1.5B on reaching some economies-of-scale for their ZEV EV program
One possibility is that it comes from oil, which seems like a wash. It could come from plant products, but if ethanol is any indication, that's an even bigger wash (i.e., you use more energy in farming than you get from the product -- maybe hydrogen production is more efficient, but I doubt it's that much more productive).
Would it be produced from water or other plentiful sources, using electricity, at power plants? This would be useful for unreliable power sources, like wind, which could just produce as much H as they possible, without having to meet instantaneous demand. But would this hydrogen really be efficient? How much more power would we have to produce to power all these fuel cells? And will this distribution network be any more efficient than the current power grid?
I've heard this before: imagine powering your house with the excess electricity generated by your car... what are they talking about? Cars don't generate power. Nothing generates power -- power exists, and we harness it. So what power are these cars supposed to be harnessing? Great reservoirs of hydrogen of which I am unaware? Fossil fuels? Some plant mass that produces hydrogen much more efficiently than corn?
(This post is entirely uninformative -- I'm just really keen to hear answers)
So, Bush tossed away the $1.5B that Clinton threw at this, and is simply tossing GM and it's cronies a $125M package next year instead. Hasn't anyone noticed that Toyota and Honda have already delivered their vehicles? I'm all for investing in America, but when, if ever, is this corporate welfare going to produce the goods!?
This is critical as I will not own a GM (unless this comes in a vette).
One thing has struck me : how much does one of these fuel-cell powered cars weigh? If it's less than or equal to that of a conventional car, could we not do away with the wheels altogether and have the flying car we've all been waiting for for the last 50 years?
Stick Men
I am a bit confused and frustrated by what I percieve to be GM's strategy here. They should make these cars available NOW, with all the conventional trappings. With all this fancy "AUTOnomy" crap, they're essentially saying to the public something like this: "You can't have this environmentally responsible vehicle until we have all this new stuff too." In other words, they're saying that they can't and won't give us a hydrogen-powered vehicle for years, if not decades into the future. What we need is efficient vehicles in one year, not twenty years. A car with all these new technologies will cause a tremendous number of problems. Let's mount a hydrogen-engine in a traditional car and work out the bugs with the new power system first. Then we can worry about satellite navagation and that other stuff.
Part of the reason to create a hybrid car or a fuel cell car or something other than pure electric is to avoid the reliance on power lines.
Recycling batteries at car dealerships or whatever is one thing, but making plug-in spots available for electric cars at all gas station outlets is entirely another. The infrastructure to really make that kind of move practical is overwhelming. This is the main reason that the rang on an electric vehichle is such a big thing - there's not enough refueling stations around!
We may see them in the future, but not until all other non-infrastructure-changing cars are no longer viable.
Just use corn.
(imagine powering your house with the excess electricity generated by your car)
Buy one in Colorado, drive it to the coast and sell it. Repeat until wealthy.
They're partially reinventing the wheel. In 1993, a company called Rosen Motors was founded. Their goal: a car with a turbine engine generating power to be distributed to electric motors powering the wheels, and using a flywheel as a battery. No automaker ever bit at that bait, and they closed their doors. Even their website is gone now, and I wonder how much of Rosen Motor's work GM and any of the other automakers is having to do that duplicates the earlier efforts.
(Forget about needing (as my car does) e.g. 92 octane. Gas? OK. Diesel? OK. 80+ mpg on kerosene? OK, too. That would have been cool.)
I doubt that it can be doable easily.
It is the main componant of the human interface to drive a car, I expect the steering to stay long after we've switched to drive by wire, hydrogen power,etc..
It would be very hard to retrain people to use a joystick and think about the legal problems when there is the first accident..
Because freedom from guilt is a big luxury, and because a lot of your early adopters will be rich people with strong environmental sympathies.
So don't build a fuel-cell-powered crappy econobox. Build a fuel-cell-powered Lexus or Suburban.
Quiet, tons of torque, guilt-free.
Heck, with the engines in the wheel hubs you could build something with the offroad capabilites of a Hummer for a lot less, because the powertrain would be so greatly simplified.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Boeing already built a vehicle with electric power and motors for each wheel, 30 years ago. It is, of course, the Apollo Lunar Rover--three were used on the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 missions.
(To my surprise, the LRV didn't use a fuel cell, though fuel cells were used for other applications on Apollo.)
http://irishcar.com/ICOimages/autonomy.jpg
chinacars.com (google cache)
e-insite.net (pdf)
enjoy
MotorWeek (the tv show) did a special on the Mercedes concept car that steers and accelerates/brakes with a joystick. It was very cool, but according to Mercedes, US law requires a direct linkage between steering mechanism and wheels. This is law, which is why power assisted steering still steers if the pump dies. For this safety reason it will be a very long time before rack-and-pinion vanishes.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Um...
The new Suburbans get better than 20 MPG. That's not bad considering the size of the vehicle. (The Dodge Durango, Ford Explorer, and Jeep Grand Cherokee are all smaller and yet they get worse mpg!)
So what's wrong with a Suburban? Assuming you need a large vehicle to tote a bunch of people around, or to tow a camper or a boat, I'd say it is a pretty decent choice.
Well, there wasn't supposed to be any text, but then I forgot about the lameness filter ...
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
in 96 bombardier pulled the plug of the developement of a new car based on "motor rue" one electric engine per wheel (1500 joules each) the test vehicle was a dodge spirit this car was basicaly 4 engines, regulators (4 per wheel included inside,) bateries and computer, thus no brakes, shafts no transmission
no noise, and yes it could burn rubber it was also fast, I wander why bombardier pulled the plug
cualquier vaina hagase el muerto
what I want is a moller skycar
http://www.moller.com/
1 horsepower = 746 watts.
So my Honda Civic HX, with its relatively small 120hp engine can make 89,520 watts. My average electricity usage is significantly lower than that. My small car could easily provide all the power I need and then some. Lord knows what you could run from an SUV.
Want 50MPG?
A 0-60 time better than the average car?
It's called a motorcycle.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Fuel cells all require platinum.
Lots of it.
There is a finite amount of platinum that can be
economically retrieved.
Therefore, there is a significant practical bottleneck to fuel cells.
I wonder how bad it is?
You are infringing on my patent, which clearly covers your post above.
Prior art, which I created, is located here.
Please be prepared to pay royalty payments of $500 per letter of lameness filter bypassing text. Thank you.
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
how do i put this in easy terms...
AINT - GONNA - HAPPEN.
1 billion people crowded into an area larger than the US. -- not that hard, right? *wrong*. if you look at the population density of china, you will see that most people live in the east, costal areas where fertile land and rice farms exist. huge chunks of land (say, Tibet, or the mongolian desert) supports no life. and as the trend continue -- the city will gets very very crowded -- so; no place for cars buddy.
think Tokyo. do you know how many people drives to work in Tokyo?
anyway -- as the economy gets better, people will start to afford cars in China. but i really hope GM is not counting on each family to buy one. right now *bicycle* parking is hard to find! more than 5% of city dwellers owning cars is a rediculous concept, and due to the scarcity of land (mostly are farms now -- there won't be any suburbs as the US knows it. But even then -- the population trend has been influxes of people into cities.
GM should have actually done some studies before banking on such a stupid assumption. it would have made better money selling them fuel cell buses (china needs new buses -- badly)
btw -- did you know that China is still using leaded gasoline? not switching to unleaded until 2004. wow.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Question: If this vehicle is going to generate more electricity than it needs, and the home-based hydrogen generator needs a bunch of electricity to generate hydrogen, wouldn't it be a good trade-off to swap the excess electricity for hydrogen when you park the vehicle at night?
I mean, I know that it wouldn't generate enough electricity to make an equivalent amount of hydrogen, but it seems like the two feeding each other would make the cost of hydrogen production much lower.
Alternatively-powered cars can not and will not make a majority sell in the world so long as hydrocarbons exit to burn.
A bold statement? Perhaps. But realistic? I think so.
You thought M$ has a stranglehold on the computing industry -- can you even conceive of the grip that the hydrocarbon industry has on the automobile industry? Internal combustion engines are going to be around for a looong time, my friend.
Nothing to say of the efforts and successes that we've had in making alternate fuels work. Good job, good science, but it won't fly on the market. Years ago science had developed the 50mpg engine...where is it? Oh, right, Geo Metros that sound like a bumblebee and have 2 cylinders. Big success there.
Is the oil industry ready to back down in favor of more environmentally-friendly fuels? Right. Tell an oil tycoon to shut down his wells because he'd be doing the world a favor and he'll tell you what to put in your pipe and where to smoke it.
Consider this, my fellow ingenious geeks: Which is better, Microsoft or GNU/Linux? Is that a resounding vote for Linux I detect? Ok, then...so why isn't it the dominant OS?
Which is better: internal combustion or alternate fuels? Alternates? Then why isn't that the market standard?
Fact is, folks: A speeding train is really tough to stop. A speeding train with the combined momentum of the oil industry, automobile industry, and lobbyists is even harder to stop. Pure money still speaks volumes and will for years, as long as the public has enough Preparation H and is eased into high prices slowly enough.
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- 1 used GM AUTOnomy base - $7000
- 1 Beowolf cluster composed of 1000 10k mhz transmeta blades off eBay - $4500
- linux kernal 12.1.2
- latest rev of your neural net/genetic algorithim AI program
- 1000 throw-away camera capacitors - $0
- rail gun - $? - you "barrowed" it
- fuzzy dice - $20
look on your competitors face when you frag his bot - priceless
from http://www.laughbreak.com/html/if_microsoft_built_ cars.html
At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty- five dollar cars that got 1000 mi/gal."
Recently General Motors addressed this comment by releasing the statement "Yes, but would you want your car to crash twice a day?"
IF MICROSOFT BUILT CARS.....
Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.
Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail and you would have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you would accept this too.
You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought "Car95" or "CarNT". But, then you would have to buy more seats.
New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive - but would only run on 5 percent of the roads.
The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars, which would make their cars run much slower.
The oil, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single "general car default" warning light.
The airbag system would say "are you sure?" before going off.
If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.
The internal combustion engine is an incredibly efficient source of power...
Since when!? Consider all of the friction-impacted power transfer points of your standard internal-combustion engine. Pistons, rods, valves, lifters, camshaft. Lots of moving parts. And none are frictionless, hence a loss of efficiency.
Now, take that standard internal combustion engine and attach it to a transfer case so that the torque of that rotating cam can be transfered laterally to the wheels of the car. The power lost in the transfer is considerable.
I would agree that the sum of the force of power of those thousands of tiny little explosions produces some remarkable output in terms of horsepower, but "efficient" would not be the correct word to describe such a lossy system.
For all those who are complaining about the lack of performance from electric, and suggesting that it dooms the idea to failure, you don't have enough imagination. When I was a kid, I build a go-kart with an old Datsun starter moter (indestructible little bugger.) The potential torque from an electric drive (and related acceleration) beats anything Enzo ever designed. Admittedly, this was really a drag racing kart - I had enough juice to run for about 30 seconds flat out, but that was more then enough time to 1) dissolve the drive chain into little metal projectiles 2) reach absurdly unsafe speeds 3) break your leg and arm (last run only.)
Electric drive is the way to go - most ships, and the entire navy is moving in that direction if they're not there already. The diesels or reactor generate electricity that run electric motors attached to the screws. The power source no longer drives the ship directly, just like an efficient electric drive car could have any power source, but drive the wheels with electric motors.
Because the amount of energy required increases substantially with speed, it is unlikely forseeable technology will give us an electric drive car that can do 130mph all day on the autobahn. But I would happily buy a 4 passenge convertible that could do 0-60 in 4 seconds and top out at 90mph with at least 250 miles without refueling. I'm not saying I need 0-60 times like that from every stoplight, but that's what will sell the average American (picture an ad with a slightly square young professional type being challenged at a stoplight by some undesirables in a mustang, and promptly smoking them - electric cars become penis replacement sexy)
at this point, it's just an engineering problem.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal...
It's actually for sale in Munich, of course there is only one Hydrogen station there. BMW also has a program/series of classes for owners on retrofitting most modern BMW engines to run on hydrogen as well. Don't forget, BMW's engine can also run on Gasoline as well. As for the hydrogen tanks being blown up, it's my understanding that even if you take a hammer and knock off the... "spigot" (or whatever releases the fuel into the rest of the car) it would leak slowly.
Yes, this is a VERY flamable post - I'm sick and tired of the level of stupidity flaunted in these forums. If you don't like it, you can kiss my hairy and probably not to well wiped ass!
... it's called "having visions and goals" - something you obviously dropped since flunking kindergarten.
I'm a fairly fast reader, and I've only just read the article, and still there are a LOT of nay-sayers who think (repeat think) they are spewing forth words of wisdom.
"But what does it look like? I don't want to buy it unless it looks like a car!"
So don't buy it. Oh and by the way - it will look like what ever you want, as the AUTOnomy is ONLY the chassis; it's not the body. They even mention switching from a tractor to a car in the same sentence - does that indicate that the BODY is the same? Nope - didn't think so. READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE YOU NITWIT!
"Imagine the terrorists delight at a city bus carrying a huge bottle of the stuff."
I take it you even flunked idiocy at stupid school. Water has hydrogen, but that's not really flamable. Fuel cells don't, can't and won't explode, unless you use something like dynamite; it mixes hydrogen with other chemicals, bonding it in other ways, because if you didn't, the hydrogen would leak - hydrogen is the smallest element, and is all but impossible to store in gaserous form in a closed container.
"Repairs Anyone?"
Read the fucking article you moron! Or is that too dificult for you? They explicitly state, that they aim to build a chaciss that will last for 20 years, and since it won't have moving parts (except for the suspension and pivoting parts of the wheels) that is quite an obtainable goal; I have a computer running next to me that is from 1981 - if they could make that kind of quality hardware then, they sure as hell can now as well.
"GM is not building the next generation of Fuel Cell based cars to help out the enviroment"
Well - duh! Who in their right capitalist mind would throw out 1 billion dollars for the sake of the environment? Noone! It's done for money purposes, but the side effect is that it will be good for the environment. Oh - I forgot that if the good things aren't the reason, and only a huge side effect, we should just scrap ideas altogether. Get a life.
"until they make one w/ some serious power, 4wd and some serious ground clearance. I'm sticking w/ what I have"
Here's a fun sentence for you, since you couldn't be bothered to READ the article:
"The AUTOnomy will accelerate like an F-111 because its electric motors will deliver instant torque to the wheels."
True - that is their goal, but why shouldn't that be possible? 2 years ago, it was impossible to get standard PCs to run faster than 2 GHz in the forseable future
And all the rest of you sikofant trolls who can't even be bothered to read an article before proclaiming your raving lunacy that is only rivaled by your idiocy to the world: Please drop dead now - it would mean a great deal to the rest of the worlds population, if the average IQ would be raised by some 40 points.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
GM has a long history of making really sweet concept cars, but by the time they are actually produced, somehow they get turned into "your father's Oldsmobile." For example, compare the Olds Alero concept with the production model. See what I mean? All these nice ideas that GM engineers are teasing us with will not come to pass. They're going to make an ugly SUV out of it by the time it gets to us. Leave it to another company to turn the concept into the actual production car without pandering to the lowest common denominator.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Dude. A separate power source for each wheel. That is just like when I played Autoduel (by Origin Systems) on my Commodore 64.
In the game, it meant that you had to get a whole new chassis if you wanted to go faster, since the wheels and the rest of the car had to be tightly integrated. (Pardon my use of modern-day buzzwords to describe a video game from the '80s.) It sounds like you'd need to do the same thing here, or at least upgrade all four wheels at the same time. Otherwise it would be like upgrading just one CPU in your quad-xeon box and that's not right.
The internal combustion engine is great and all, but fuel cells are like twice as efficient, if not more. There are some brilliant ideas for more efficient vehicles out there (I remember reading about a diesel-electric bus that runs the diesel at efficient, low-polluting RPMs to charge a battery, and the bus draws power from the battery) but the tool-up cost for cars is SO HIGH that most conecpts never get off the drawing board.
If GM pulls this off they just owned the market in Europe.
..I'm the obligatory exception. I have a 70's full size chevy van with over 300 thou, original engine and transmission, just fluid changes and stuff like the occassional alternator or starter, etc.
My opinion, most cars don't make it from two things-people just WILL NOT follow scheduled fluid changes or do them early, and they never clean electric connector one, maybe the batt connectors. You need to clean the dozen or so grounds a year in the body, and the one or two on the frame, and the engine block. Keeping all the juice flowing clean everywhere is pretty important and no one does it and stuff burns out, and the way cars are designed now, one thing going leads to another and another, etc. And oil, forget it, pull the average dipstick it's filthy oil. That's really the only magic secrets to auto longevity, generally speaking.
If you bother to look at this information before you buy your car, you might well end up choosing cars with lower running costs. Sooner or later the market signals will get through to the manufacturer.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
hydro quebec (the dominant power corp in quebec) had a similar project a few years ago, to make motor wheels and batteries for a car... i believe they had a working prototype (with a few glitches of course)
When they built the EV1, they got a lot of good press for doing something innovative and good for the environment, but then a few years later they quit making them and recalled most of the existing ones because of "fire hazards". Sounds to me like they took the good PR, then let the world know that "electric cars aren't safe! they catch fire easily! so keep buying your big expensive gas-guzzeling cars."
The whole angle of 300-mile car and refilling options is quite difficult to overcome. As the article points out, it's a catch-22 situation.
;-)
Geoffrey Moore quite aptly models the problem as a technical chasm in his
Crossing the Chasm book. I think if GM markets this car to an audience that appreciates a bit of hassle for economy/environment/technology they will be able to build a base with whom they can establish intelligent interaction and benefit from the feedback. I see no dearth of such people, overclockers, water coolers, misfits and troublemakers
However Detroit will have to do so being sensitive to timing. Otherwise they'll feel rushed to bring out something before gas runs out and it will take quadruple the effort to earn populace's trust then.
The thing I like about the modern design is how pretty much everything is modular.
I remember reading an article in popular science, I think, about GM designing the "standard frame".
Standard connects for the generate and the motors/wheels since the car is all electronic.
If you generator goes bad you unplug it and put another one on. Gone would be the days of messy unpolite mechanics. Sure there are still going to be idiots who won't want to mess with their cars, but I just can't imagine anything I couldn't fix on one of these things. I mean changing a spark plug isn't that hard, but it is a pain in the ass.
When people get in recks they'll simply buy a brand new shell for the car and stick it on. Or take out the seats, etc and reuse them. I'm think insurance companies will like the fact that repair costs could go down once these are in mass production.
It'll be nice if they decide to make the things upgradable to. When you motor goes bad you get another one, but it's also more efficient or faster. Or you can't afford the super fast model when you start, but then you can a few years later.
I'm no scientist, but it seems to me that hydrogen might make a bigger bang than diesel fuel.
:)
That's why you're not a scientist. Diesel fuel is a hell of a lot more explosive than hydrogen.
There's a reason that gasoline vehicles are allowed thru tunnels but campers carrying a propane bottle are prohibited.
Yes, and that reason is because propane is heavier than air. If the tank leaked, you'd have this nice puddle of gaseous propane floating around, never really disapating. Imagine that x1000. Gasoline fumes are lighter than air and will disapate much faster.
Although why you suddenly brought up propane when the article/discussion is talking about hydrogen, I really don't know. They're about as different as.. well, gasoline and propane
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Hear, Hear. That was an excellent Fuck-U! to all the idiot posters here who are happy with the status quo and don't know how to reason... or dream...
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Hmm, with one motor per wheel, and impressive torque, these could be fun to race but I wonder about the "unsprung weight" of one motor per wheel. How would this perform on a less-than-smooth surface?
I'm sure they can make it look cool, and even be safe and economical, but there is a fair percentage of people who like racing, and will race anything - witness the Neon races by the SCCA. I hope the designers also look into lessons they could learn from racing - I mean, isn't racing supposed to help design better vehicles?
Lemon curry?
"Now McCormick wonders how to get enough hydrogen on board the car to give it the 300-mile range drivers expect."
This problem is already solve by Millennium Cell
"China builds a system to deliver hydrogen without ever having one in place for gasoline".
What many don't realise is that you don't need a fuel network. You can sell solar powered fuel recycle systems along with the car and have people making their own fuel.
Knud
Yep, especially with wheels that can independantly rotate 90 degrees inward/outward for easy parking!! Think I'll wait a few model years for the high-speed bugs to shake out...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!
Okay all you brainiacs,
What effect will having 100 million of these vehicles dumping gallons of water into the atmosphere everyday have on the weather? Sure, I heard it will just rain out. But will it? Or will we have a massive rise in thunderstorms, tornados and hurricanes not to mention the massive flooding.
I can't believe it will have no effect at all. If it's like most of our "miracle cures" it will come with a cost of 10 curses of un intentional side effects.
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
Now I don't know about you, but I ride a bicycle, and bicycles are dead quiet. The problem with this is that pedestrians keep stepping off the pavement (sidewalk) right in front of me (as in, someone did it yesterday).
One thing that's quite good about cars is that they tend to make a bit of noise, and faster and bigger ones (the ones you really don't want to get hit by) tend to make the most. Well, nothing is louder than those little 2-stroke hairdryers, ok but there is a trend there.
I do like the idea of these electric cars, but people are just not gonna hear them coming. I know you are supposed to actually look before you cross the road, but people just don't.
Seriously, the whole article reads like a GM press release, with no attempt made to question the claims of the GM engineers. It sounds to me like GM is putting the government's $125 million (intended for fuel cell research) into developing its drive-by-wire technologies and single-chassis production line, which will then be transferred to internal combustion vehicles when the fuel cell money runs out. A drive-by-wire internal combustion vehicle (with the engine coupled to a dynamo which powers electric motors in the wheels, just like a diesel-electric train) would have most of the benefits of the AUTOnomy concept, without the expensive fuel cell. Of course it wouldn't have lower emissions than current models, but since when have car manufacturers cared about that?
like the toys.
It just struck me at lunch today that it is pretty strange that the US government haven't put more force on the car industry to try to limit the abysmal fuel consumtion of american cars. After all, it is the huge dependency on oil that gets the US stuck in frying pans like the Persion Gulf and the mid east.
I know, the car industry (with AAA and other friends) have lots of lobbyists in Washington, but we're talking about foreign policy now, and the risk of wide scale wars. Shouldn't that be pretty high on the presidents agenda?
Mats
I was reading the bit about having problems with the devices that create hydrogen from water using more energy than the hydrogen they produce creates... but couldn't some rooftop solar powered hydrogen distiller take care of that? I mean who cares if it takes 6 days or whatever to process enough hydrogen to fill your tank?
If it is just passively suckling sunlight anyway, and you have a huge reservoir, say 10 - 20 tanks worth, theoretically, you'd rarely ever use it all up before it could replenish itself.
Or does the process require so much juice that solar is 100% impractical?
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
where Dr. Brief "fixes" the policeman's motor scooter... and it accelerates quickly and rear ends a motorist... Maybe bikes should be feared after all. :)
Hydro-Quebec, a hydroelectricity company from Québec, Canada, has made a four-motors-wheels vehicle way ago. The idea was sold to some oil company... and was never commercialized since... The vehicle was a Chrysler concorde.
This will be a major setback in the handling department though. Manufacturers have been working on reducing unsprung weight of cars for years. Most new cars have either cast aluminum control arms or individual strut rods. These are much lighter than the live axle of older cars.
By installing an electric motor on each wheel, you've significantly increased the unsprung weight.
Unsprung weight is directly tied to the "smoothness" one feels while driving over bumpy surfaces. You need a less agressive shock absorber with lighter unsprung components and the components have less inertia as well. An electric motor will have considerable inertia and cause ride quality issues.
Here is a short list of things I would like to see in my future car.
-Low fuel cost
-Last at least 20 years
-Plastic pannels(metal dents too easily, rust, and expensive to paint)
-Modular design
-Easy to exchange parts in and out
Basicly I want a car where I can swap any part in or out in less than 15 min. If one of the pannels get a scratch or I want to change the color of my car I just order the panels from my dealer and swap them myself.
Todays cars are not built to last, are very diffcult to repair and cost way to much to keep on the road.
But I'll never see my dream car in my life time. The car companies will never have it, imagin millions of mechanic out of work, and you would only need to buy a new car every 20 years or so. Even more jobs gone then. But on the flip side you can work at a low paying job and still afford to own and drive a car.
Corporations shouldn't just make the rich richer, once a company pays back its shareholders %200 of their investment it should owned by itself and its objectives should be to serv it customers and employees. The corporations then should be controled by its employees democraticly. Pay increases should be goverment controlled. The products should be priced based on how much it cost to produce them including the cost of R&D, marketing, labour, etc... (Err got off topic)
God, root, what is the difference?
As soon as they can come up with a vehicle that isn't completely rediculous looking but still is enviro friendly, I'm all for it.
Until then, I'll stick with my only-marginally enviro friendly low-power '80s Japanese vehicles and/or VW diesels
Retrofit some behind-the-tyre electric motors or whatever onto a '66 AMC Ambassador, and I'd be in valhalla.
It's hip to be square
--- Do you believe in the day?
Yes it's called the GM Autonomy. It debuted at this years Detroit Auto Show.
You can find some measurements and another picture here.
I've also read that the Autonomy part it just a skeleton. They have made it so you buy the fuel cell, motor, and so on and then you can pick a type of car you want. They can just give you the shell and you stick it on. Whenever you want to change you stick a new shell on. You may be able to have many shells to stick on the car. You could have one for going to work or another for weekends. Just imagin, drive an Impala to work then Friday afternoon you switch it to your Corvette. Wouldn't we all just like that?
Bah!
What would I like to see succeed?
How about the McMaster Motor? Two moving parts, light weight, innovative fuel source (but could be run off of steam in a pinch!), simple design - similar to a
Nutating Disk Displacement Meter.
Or, how about the Ball Piston Engine? An interesting design that looks more like a ball bearing than an engine. The nice thing about the engine is the "standard" parts - ie, all the cylinders look the same and operate the same, parts can be swapped almost at will. I would bet one of these could be prototyped using parts from Home Depot.
Yet another twist on engines, The Henry Engine is a rotary steam engine, not a turbine.
These are the kind of mechanics I want to see in a future car. Something different, maybe based on older tech (I am sure all of these examples I have given are based on older principles/ideas).
Another kind of engine, one that I think would actually make for a better and lighter hybrid vehicle: the free-piston engine. Basically this engine consists of a piston that is fired on both side (alternatingly), with the shaft that extends through the piston driving linear hydraulic pumps, with the hydraulic fluid being conveyed in the normal manner to power hydraulic motors which drive the wheels. I would suggest that instead of the piston driving pumps (more indirection=more friction=more heat=wasted energy), make the piston a magnet of sorts, wrap a coil around the cylinder (or make the cylinder be the coil), and extract the electricity directly as the piston is bounced back and forth between the ends. I would think such a system could be made to use the fuel in a super-efficient fashion (not perfect, but better than a standard piston engine). I can think of a number of design issues (ie, how to make a piston be a magnet with the heat of combustion working at odds, among others) - but these can be worked out.
Think about how (relatively) simple a free-piston engine is - a tube, a piston inside the tube, and inlet/outlet ports (and controlling valves) plus spark plugs at the ends. I would think a good spud-gun builder could build a prototype (that would run for a while, then melt from the heat) from ABS/PVC pipe, sprinkler valves, etc from Home Depot - make the piston from a chunk of wood with steel end plates, magnets set in holes around the edge, wrap wire around the middle. Control the solenoid valves and plugs with reed magnet switches, maybe some relays (or Hall Effect sensors) - hmm, if I had the time I would do it myself!
Someone should try to build this - I guarantee you will get /.'ed in seconds if you do (heck, it will be a better story than another one about case mods)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The motor would be all but solid state anyway.
Just a series of coils, with ceramic magnets embedded in the wheels or something. The Japanese have been hot for this for a while. Most of the Japanese motorbike manufacturers have shown concept electric bikes with (2 wheel drive!!) motors in each wheel. _The_ bike in the Manga Akira was meant to be of this design.
Keep in mind that your combustion engine is only a few percent efficient at converting gasoline to usable energy.
That billion dollar turbine power plant is only 60-70%, near the limits of thermondynamics for that technology.
The theorectical efficiency limit for a fuel cell is 100%.
So, yes, it might be practical to make hydrogen from your house electricity in order to charge up your car.
These redesigned cars are also VERY light. They make a Saturn look like an armored vehicle.
Formula One cars are the fastest & safest cars there are and even then a significant part of their weight is in the form of lead weights to get them up to the regulation (500 kg??). Weight and safety are not the same thing at all. I'd rather crash at 280Km/h in an F1 than at 100 in my old 1984 Corrola that's for sure.
Probably terribly off-topic and not entirely relevant in any thread I've read on here to date, but none-the-less I still found it an incredibly insightful and interesting read.
Any chance of this guy getting a few cents from slashdot or at least some exposure? I found this far more enjoyable than anything I've read from Katz in recent memory.
Glenn
The Smrt way to trade CFDs on the ASX
And thats using 1970's computer technology. Imagine what could be done with modern technology.(And it won't cost $36 million either.
My family swears by GM cars, mostly Chevys.
In 1987 we bought a new Chevy Astro. That car was driven from hell to back, had the engine replaced relatively early, and was driven by my father day in and day out until he finally got a new one--in 1998. (That's 11 years later, btw.)
Dad gave the van to my brother, who drove it for the next three years, until its mechanical problems finally all crashed at once. If he had maintained the darn thing, it would probably still be on the road, too.
And in all this time, the interior has *never* gotten more than "filthy." The celing didn't fall down. The carpet didn't wear away. And, in more than 300,000 miles of driving, the darn thing *still* ran as good as any other vehicle of comparable age or milage that I've ever seen. (Give me the cash to fix the several comparatively minor problems with it, and it'd be back on the road easily.)
Stop spewing FUD. GM builds cars as good as any other car company in the American market... the only reason they (and Dodge and Ford) have a bad rep at all is because no one bother's to export the cheap POSes from other countries.
The Military has been using fly-by-wire systems in aircraft for at least 25 years. As far as I know all Airbus aircraft are fly-by-wire with no mechanical or hydralic controls. The Boeing 777 is fly-by-wire as well.
The technology for making extremely reliable electronic control systems exsists and is fairly well understood. In theory as long as you had electrical power of some sort you should have control over the vehicle. Remember the cars GM is thinking about are very simple, fuel storage, fuel cell, and electric motors in all of the wheels.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
I would say that all gas isn't bad, but I would rather have quite a bit left, just in case. We do need to change to H2 fuel soon. And the production of H2 will make O which will join with another one to make O2. It should make the environment better until you burn the H2
Clearance then won't be a problem. (-:
Power is a design issue that they haven't spoken about, but if you want more volts just add more or bigger cells. As far as the actual 4WDing goes, this idea would be unbeatable. It has 4-wheel full time fully independent drive with anti-skid braking and acceleration designed in from scratch. Works just as well for a racing car as for a 4WD. Blowing up a motor 300km east-south-east of Wolfe Creek Crater is not a heart-stopping issue, since you still have 3 left. If they've been sensible and at least twinned the generation system (simplest way to get extra power for a 4WD), you could even get away with blowing up one of those, too.
I would like to scan the design specs for the drive-by-wire stuff though.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
This was in the LA Times and Popular Science almost a year ago. Oh well.
There aren't engines at each wheel, there's an electric motor at each wheel. The front page comment makes it sound like a fuel cell per wheel.
Okay, now the part I like most. GM insiders (and therefore outsiders too) nicknamed this thing the Skateboard chassis. One of the ideas is that you can change body styles to suit your mood. Don't want to drive the SUV today? Just drop the Roadster body on instead. Feeling nostalgiac for them old right-hand-drive British roadsters? Unplug the pedal and steering wheel assemblies, and plug em into the other side of the car. Or put em in the middle if you don't want side-seat drivers! Configurability is going to be their key selling point, the environmental friendliness will just be for the EPA folk. (that's my take on it anyway). It also will make it so GM can drop production costs drastically. They can just turn out platforms by the millions, making for low costs. Then they can develop just the body of the car seperately, no more having to redesign frames, chassis, engine mounts, etc... Everything will have the same plugin style mounting, cutting new model design time and cost by (my guess) at least 50%!
Okay, done raving about GM finally pulling their head outta their collective ass. Now if Mopar would pull theirs' the rest of the way out...
Any idea how much money the government would loose in taxes if no gasoline would be sold say tomorrow? Can you you say billions?
Example: Here in Canada, today, price of gas is around 0.75 CAD/litre.
I don't remember the exact figures, but about 0.20$ of that is actually for the brute oil, refining, marketing and profits. So about 3/4 of what i pay for gasoline is going to the government in the form of taxes.
I'm sure it's similar in the US and is even worse in Europe.
So in short you have the big car companies, combine them with the oil moguls, all lobying the government, add the tax money the government makes off gasoline. And you have recipe for things to stay the stay the same untill the very last minute.
The governemnts couldn't care less about the environment, money talks, as they say...
I bet you never take your SUV on a gravel or dirt road much less truly off-road. Truth be told most SUV drivers are terrified to take them off the pavement for fear they will get their $50,000 trucks dirty, or heaven forbid, get a chip in the paint.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
So, why not 3 wheels instead of 4?
If we keep the same refineries, but no longer have pollution coming from the cars themselves, that would be a win. Add to that the fact that pollution controls on refineries can be improved much more easily than those on cars (because there are only a relatively small number of refineries to upgrade, and there are fewer weight, space, and cost restrictions required from the equipment that can be added to them). Add to that the fact that if/when someone comes up with a better method of generating hydrogen, he could then start selling it right away (as opposed to making everyone buy another new car first).
For those reasons, even "dirty hydrogen" is better than the status quo.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Rule number 1: make it as light as possible.
Rule number 2: the chassis should be as stiff as possible
These two rules dictate that the most efficient design is a stressed-skin or monocoque chassis. That's what is used in advanced aircraft, F1, CART, IRL and passenger cars (where they call it "unibody").
This vehicle "features" a separate chassis and body. Not cool. Can you say shake shimmy rattle and twist? A separate body/chassis design won't can't be as stiff as a monocoque unless it's far heavier, and won't be as light unless it twists too much for good handling, and of course twisting will result in fatigue failure as well as creaks and rattles.
Of course, what is shown here is probably just a mock-up by an artist with little to no design expertise. In the end, the lessons they learn about design can be incorporated into a modern chassis design, it just takes more time and effort.
To hear the gods laugh tell them your plans.
Where are the developpers located?
Area 51???
In recent news, another fatal car crash happened on the interestate, do to a malfunction within the onboard computer... Spokesmen at Microsoft claim it is due to hardware problems, and claim their software had no liability in the inncident..
In other news, the LinuxDrive program has advanced in leaps and bounds, and can now, with version 2.5, even STOP your car... too bad the beta testers of 2.4 didn't wait a week or two.. [fake news-anchor laugh]."
"Every computer Crashes, cause Every OS Sucks.. Everything since Apple/DOS..Just a bunch of crap"
I think it is fair to compare dollars because the retail cost of electricity and fuel, taking efficiency into account, is about the same -- my Sun Belt sibs run their houses on about $150/month (lots of AC). Frost Belt me (with a lot of engineering expertise) runs a house on about $80/month -- $60/month for heat and hot water, $20/month for electric. So my sibs Sun Belt houses are at a 2-car equivalent while a reasonably energy-efficient Frost Belt house is perhaps a 1-car equivalent.
http://www.nedra.com/records.html
love is just extroverted narcissism
IIRC, cars are required to have mechanical links to things like steering and braking, for the simple reason that if the computer controls fail, you would still have some measure of control over your vehicle.
Not only that, this comes from the company that brought us the Corvair, Fiero and countless other goodies...
I don't want to be in the first model year, that's for sure.
It's interesting to see that a big corporation that most enviromentalists love to loathe is actually doing something that won't pollute the enviroment. These new automobiles won't pollute like the current crop of autos do. I have yet to see one enviromental group actually do something constructive that allows people to retain their current standard of living. Instead most of them SEEM to want everyone to live in mud huts and walk everywhere.
*please don't mark this as flaimbait or off topic it's not meant to be. I just see most enviromentalists groups as a bunch of socialist or communist pigs who want to destroy capitalism*
This is great news and I apploud GM, but. Where will I fill my car up at? I don't know what kind of range these will have, but I'm guessing that I will have to fill up once a week or so. What are the options going to be for refueling?
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Ok since it seems no one got the Simpson's reference, here is the song from the episode titled
Its from Season 8 if anyone cares
Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala-D'oh-cious
Cut Every Corner
Shary: If there's a task that must be done,
Don't turn your tail and run,
Don't pout, don't sob,
Just do a half-assed job!
If... you... cut every corner
It is really not so bad,
Everybody does it,
Even mom and dad.
If nobody sees it,
Then nobody gets mad,
Bart: It's the American way!
Shary: The policeman on the beat
Needs some time to rest his feet.
Wiggum: Fighting crime is not my cup of tea!
Shary: And the clerk who runs the store
Can charge a little more
For meat!
Apu: For meat!
Shary: And milk!
Apu: And milk!
Both: From 1984!
Shary: If... you... cut every corner,
You'll have more time for play,
Shary & OFF: It's the American waaaaay!
it would be great to have this type of technology and get away from foreign oil purchases from countries who don't like the US too much. i just hope big oil companies such as exxon, chevron, etc are not going to attempt to hinder this project's completion. i mean, who would make profit selling hydrogen? on a different note, it's gonna be a great engine for eventual space travel since it's a pretty abundant element.
Torque is twisting force, you get torque at zero rpm each time you try to loosen a tight nut with a wrench, whether or not the nut turns or not.
If electric motors couldn't apply torque at zero rpm then all of those toy radio controled cars would need a clutch!!!
You can't be very serious about promoting and advertising a car that cost more for you to produce than its retail price.
...
At least, not for long
D
I disagree here. Although the hydrolysis of water isn't the most energy efficient way to get hydrogen, if our nation were to get over its fear of nuclear power and adapt nuclear power on a widespread scale it would certainly provide enough energy for hydrolysis to counteract the shrinking supply of petroleum products.
Of course the very long term (for the future of man) solution would be to harness nuclear fusion, of which the fuel seems to be very readily available (even if it requires deuterium) from water (or heavy water).
-bugg
"What if you could make your own hydrogen out of water, right in the garage? The technology is already available; you electrolyze water by more or less running a fuel cell in reverse. At the moment, this takes more electricity than the hydrogen would ultimately generate."
Welcome to the laws of thermodynamics. But that's just "at the moment." Maybe they'll change.
Does anyone ever stop to think that fuel cell and electric vehicles are all using power that was generated by buring fossil fuels at an electric plant somewhere?
Or an enzyme if you're feeling biological.
This brings up an interesting point. Perhaps we could have hydrogen farms where microbes collect solar energy and generate hydrogen from water. I wonder how that would compare to simply setting up solar panels all over the place.
The "engine on each wheel" concept isn't new. There was an electric Italian sports car featured in Popular Mechanics about 5 years ago that had the sort of set up, and according to the article the handling was suh-weet.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Perhaps they should be building a car containing the motor described in US Patent 6,392,370.
Or if they don't want to go that route, they can maybe try US Patent 6,362,718
Fuel cells are a waste of money.
I missed a number wen redoing this for 100 panels instead of 200 wihch might not fit on the South facing roof.
That should be 60 KWH per day.
The truth shall set you free!
as soon as they figure out how to make an electric motor sound like driving one of these. Until then they can keep their pussy motor.
Didn't Porsche use this with his multi fuel vehicle before the second world war? I seem to recall this car had an electric motor in each wheel, with a petrol powered generator providing the power for them. He was very successful in competition with these cars.
Merlin --- We're an autonomous collective... Help, Help, I'm being oppressed!!
Funny thing is I posted it as a crapflood. I'm just getting sick of Slashdot and their crap. I'm being converted a standard -1 troll.
I just dont care about slashdot, and I'll plan to make it miserable for users too.
Listen guys, I think you take this too seriously. Put the sci fi books down. When is this going to happen? "Wonderful new technology" my ass. Those fuel cells have been around a while and I think the only thing that uses them are two prototypes. This will not come in the next 20 years, much less now. Save the drool, since by the time they do arrive, the only driving we will do is "walker forward, move legs; walker forward, move legs".
This is a 50's "one day" commercial. Nothing more. No prototype, not even a tangible deadline. This is scifi for the masses.
I once saw a average annual windspeed map of the US, and what struck me was the Aleutian Islands were all red. They have the highest average windspeeds in the US, nearly in the world. I have an idea. Couldn't we put BIG windmills there and immediatly use the electricity to make hydrogen from the ocean water, then pipe the hydrogen down to the states just like the oil is. To give you and idea of how much energy is available,the energy content of wind is the CUBE of speed.
Smoking is an expensive, slow, and unreliable method of suicide.
Here in the UK you can buy one-use-only fuel cells for recharging your mobile phone. They'll provide 2 or 3 charges, I think. Useful if you're travelling, I suppose. You can get them in Tescos (one of the big UK supermarket chains).
The Oil companies will NEVER let this car see the light of day. They will NEVER allow it to be built, manufactured, or used.
Things like this will NEVER happen. Just like in the 60's when someone invented the carburator that gave ANY car triple gas mileage, where they bought up the patent and sat on it.
the only out of this energy mess, besides a huge drop in human populatiom, is fusion
wrong.
as a student in plasma-physics I am all for fusion-research, but I very much doubt we'll have commercially viable fusion reactors in less than
30 years. Actually a proof-of concept break-even machine has not been develloped yet (though the advances were enourmous). Fusion reactors are not fully a technology-problem yet, there is still much basic scientific research involved.
but we have an alternative: SPS (Solar Power Satelites) : they can utilize conventional turbine-generator techniques at a large scale, and beam the power as microwaves down to earth.
there is no new, yet to be researched science in SPS (as opposed to fusion), the only problem is financial: get the investment to start mining the asteroid belt.
Working for necessity's mother.
I remember that many vehicles have toyed with wheel motors. The one here created for an electric car by the provincial electric corporation sort of ended for different reasons.
But I remember speaking with one consultant on the project who was talking about a major problem with wheel-motors: the weldings eventually breaks because of the vibrations. Of course, in the wheel you have no suspension to absorb small vibrations. They'd have to use soft metal (which are often harmful for health and the environment) and even then...
In other words, there was a problem making them durable. I'd be interested in knowing if GM can or has solved these problems. Or maybe they'll just unleash another extremely perishable car.
GM had full size mockups (early prototype ?) of the "Autonomy" concept platform during the last "Detroit Auto Show". They had some interesting features like "designer tops" - ie. the same base can be changed to a drive to office car from a sports car just by changing the top portion (which contains the passenger compartment) - much like the way people create custom looks for wristwatches / cellphones / laptops(Dell ?)by changing a faceplate with a different design - perhaps much more advanced ...
The only way the typical /.er can pick up a chick is with a forklift. -- AC
A playing card. One pack will last you all year. Geez, I've known that since I was 7.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The only way the typical /.er can pick up a chick is with a forklift. -- AC
VW even had to pay compensation to Tatra after a court case in the 60's
The body, suspension, powertrain, basically everything about the Beetle was virtually a straight copy of the Tatra 97
The short end of the story is that without knowing if all other things (such as routine maintenence) are equal, we don't know if the reliability ratings are meaningful in deciding which vehicle to purchase. I know people with Hondas, Toyotas, Fords and Chevys that haven't lasted long at all. I know people with all of the above that through excellent maintenence habits have driven all of the above for hundreds of thousands of miles.
And the same goes for interiors. I know people with VWs, Toyotas, Fords, Hondas and Chevys that look like hades on the inside. I also know people that take care of their cares and the interiors seem to be perpetually in excellent condition for more years than I've been alive.
The car companies are planning for the contingency that one day we won't want to pay an extra quarter for every gallon of gas we buy; or that we are put in a position where we are no longer allowed to buy petroleum fuels at all.
I've read the print version of this Wired article; and several other news/etc. articles on the topic. The idea that the car's engine could become one flat panel under the car is not a new concept; but turning those concepts into reality *is* a goal of major car manufacturers in the next decade or so. They're in the business of making money by selling cars/car parts/etc. - if this will let them sell more cars regardless of how long the car parts will last; and they can see a profit in it, they will do it. They will very likely design in MTBF or require programs that 'force' you to replace some of the longer-lasting parts - look at how much a 60,000 mile service at your car dealer costs and don't tell me they won't - but they "will" build alternative type vehicles if it is in their best interests. We have few 'compressed gas' refueling stations; far far fewer 'hydrogen' or 'electric recharge' stations in the country - not to mention the world - so right now it is not in their best interest. When the fuel infrastructure is forced to change - and I bet they will be forced - then the car industry will change. Besides; your local gas station will make the change if the cars make the change because they are not making a very high margin on fuel sales to begin with.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
Don't let this de-bunking of "common sense" go unnoticed.
Ever used a "torque wrench"? Understand what they measure? I believe if you do some research you'll find that ALL electric motors develop their max torque at 0 RPM. Seems logical to me... like, er, common sense.
you have a serious drinking problem.
:)
get help
I heard that there was this ninja who was eating at a diner. And when some dude dropped a spoon the ninja killed the whole town. My friend Mark said that he saw a ninja totally uppercut some kid just because the kid opened a window.
And that's what I call REAL Ultimate Power!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you don't believe that ninjas have REAL Ultimate Power you better get a life right now or they will chop your head off!!! It's an easy choice, if you ask me.
Ninjas are sooooooooooo sweet that I want to crap my pants. I can't believe it sometimes, but I feel it inside my heart. These guys are totally awesome and that's a fact. Ninjas are fast, smooth, cool, strong, powerful, and sweet. I can't wait to start yoga next year. I love ninjas with all of my body (including my pee pee).
(reprinted from realultimatepower.net)
That your daily commuter car gets 3mpg?
What, are you Satan?
Not sure if you were serious, but, actually that would be a good idea for toll highways. Install an inductor on the underbody of the car, and lay power alog the centers of the lanes. Electric vehicles could recharge as they drave, and hybrids could shut off the engine.
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
I agree Hydrogen's a safer fuel than gasoline, but all the same, a pressure vessel filled with 20 Kelvin liquid seated behind my arse doesn't tickle my fancy either. However, there are much safer ways to store Hydrogen. Metal hydride and carbon adsorption looks promising, asnd great strides are being made in fuel cell technologies. But the one I hope really succeeds is plain old Borax!
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
I found this sitewhere this guy claims that Boron would be a safer, more efficient, and friendlier fuel for transportation. He makes an interesting case... but IANAS. Ok, I got a BSc in Chemistry wayyyy back but I was a C student ;-) Anyway worth looking at.
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
This linked article talks about using recyclable sodium borohydride as a automotive fuel. The hydrogen is extracted using a catalyst with a liquid borax byproduct. A 300 mile range/tank is mentioned. There are issues and problems, but that's true of everything. Worth a look...u ttingEdge /cuttingedge011214.html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/C
How many times have you crashed a slot car :)
I will bend your mind with my spoon
"You don't need to be sitting on top of a huge patch of oil to make hydrogen fuel."
Where would you get the humongous amount of energy needed to power hundreds of millions of cars?
Coal is in limited supply too you know, and we don't even know where to store our current nuclear waste.
Solar, Wind? Something will have to be improved a lot. Fuel cells will just be step 1, an enabler, but step 2 must be better energy sources.
<cliche>
1. Fuel cells
2. ???
3. Profit!
</cliche>
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Let's see. 1) It uses fuel cells, to provide pleasing zero emissions. 2) But if it can't store enough fuel, then it will plug into the wall and make its own fuel, to please the people who need 500km range. 3) And it will take gasoline as fuel, and reform that into hydrogen, 4) except in China, which will have H2 stations. 5) All the drivestuff will be in the low-profile chassis, so that you can put a variety of tops on it. 6) In fact, we'll even let the user put different tops on it. 7) It will be so cheap that more than 12% of the people in the world will be able to buy it, unlike ICE vehicles. 8) It will have 4-wheel drive. 9) It will have 4-wheel steering. 10) It will have a 20 year life, with few parts that would wear out before then. 11) It will satisfy USA safety regs for things like mechanical steering, emergency brakes, parking brakes. 12) It will look cool.
There is no such animal, nor will there be. Some of those goals and design constraints need to be discarded. They need to pick _a_ market, and aim for that.
I'm tired of paying the big car companies my tax dollars to pretend to work on a solution to the fuel economy and exhaust pollution problems. Aren't you also?
Instead of handing the car companies money to produce concept cars and glitzy powerpoint presentations about what they might build in a decade, the USA should just increase the gasoline tax, and also tax those gasses/particles coming out of the tailpipe that are deemed harmful.
Then let the market decide whether hybrid, fuel cell, reformer + fuel cell, battery, rubber band, or whatever is the best. I guess as they suggest the Feds could step in and subsidize the building of many H2/methanol/??? stations, if it is later determined that a different kind of fuel would be better.
If GM then decides to build a gasoline-fueled 4x4x4 roller skate with changeable tops, they are quite welcome, and I wish them the best of luck.
But if they miss the market window because they farted around at my expense, while Honda and Toyota actually built cars and figured out how to make them work well with electric motors at the wheel, then I have little sympathy for them.
Call be a skeptic (or a fool) but I don't think there is any feasible way of getting antimatter because antimatter tends to cancel itself out with matter in our universe, so as far as we know there's no natural way to get enough of it where you want it for power generation. And creating it should take more energy than you would get from cancelling it out, I think, due to the second law of thermodynamics. It certainly wouldn't produce more energy than creating it.
I'm not holding my breath for hydrogen fusion, but I wouldn't be bloody surprised to see a D-T fusion reactor within either my lifetime or the lifetime of my children/granchildren, but if I saw an antimatter reactor any time around I'd... well, I don't know what I'd do, but it would look something like pissing myself. That or an orgasm.
-bugg
The only way the typical /.er can pick up a chick is with a forklift. -- AC