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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."
I don't care if it looks cool... but can it still burn rubber?
kyjello is too damn smooth to make a signature.
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..
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
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
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.
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
>people haven't been too impressed with the performance of the hybrids, from what I've heard
If you have time, look into the Prius area on Yahoo Groups. You'll hear from a lot of people who are impressed.
The Prius needs computer control to keep from lighting the tires when you pull out. If it weren't limited by software, the electric drive motor would deliver 258 foot-pounds at zero rpm. Once you start moving, the power curve is impressively smooth. Toyota held it to a 12.5 second 0-60 time, partly for economy and partly because the Prius is aimed at the boring-sedan market.
"Horsepower sells cars, torque wins races" is the old cliche. Electric motors are superb for low-end torque.
Hybrids are indeed a transitional technology, but I suspect mass-produced long-lived fuel cells are more than a few years away. Looking forward to them!
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...
When Dr. Ferdinand Porsche built the FIRST electric car almost 100 years ago, he powered it with 4 separate motors housed in the wheels.
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I think GM might be on to something here. .
Of course, the powerplant issue is kind of weak though. But then again, if you had to ditch the fuel-cell idea and stick with an IC engine, look at the engine Porsche designed - the aircooled flat-four isn't much thicker than 12" or so (not including the fan housing, which could easily be designed differently). Throw a flat-6 or 8 in the same chassis, run a generator like your typical hybrid, power the electric motors at the wheels, and you can still take advantage of the same overall design. Now engineer the IC engine and cooling ductwork to be swappable with the fuel cell, you have recyclable engineering for when fuel cell technology catches up with IC technology.
Sure, I'd go to work for GM, but I can't stand living in Detroit.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Bullshit.
.. bad styling. No excuses. There's no reason why we all went from airplane-inspired sloped and rounded bodies with tailfins to. . . bricks on wheels.
Don't tell me that the Cadillac Escalade is more aerodynamic than:
1959 Porsche 356
1965 VW Karmann Ghia
1949 VW Beetle
1969 Corvette Stingray
In the 70's we sacrificed good styling for.
Perhaps safety concerns? Compare the 1973 Porsche 911 with the 1974 Porsche 911 - with the new federally mandated 5mph bumpers. (compare Detroit's changes to meet those federal mandates). Not much difference. Compare deathraps like the 70's Pinto, to the Volvo. I don't think that safety, aerodynamics, or efficiency played much of a role if any in the styling changes of cars from the 60's to the 70's and 80's - other than, at least in America, it was - more mass, more internal space - up through the late 70's where it was, "oh crap, the Japs are kicking our silly asses, lets make some econoboxes that look like Hondas" (hence the Chevy Citation and Ford Escort). And THEN, styling was dictated by - "cut weight at all costs".
Any cars with ANY design sense engineered into them at all in the past 30 years?
Maybe the late Camaro. The 'Vette. But both of those suffer from really shoddy interior work. On the Ford side theres: The Mustang, which looked like a big Escort for most of the 80's. The Taurus was a good, and honest effort - though it's dated now.
The RX-7, (no longer available in the US). The Miata (probably the most successful sports car of the 90's).
The Prowler (not a *real* production car).
The Viper (also not a *real* production car).
The only other example is that PT Cruiser. Which is pretty neat looking, I guess, if you're into that sort of thing.
But the rest of the auto industry is a vast wasteland of "variation on a theme" - econobox, sedan, SUV/Truck.
As far as other so-called "improvements"?
Coming out of the 80's I think was the best thing - 80's cars sucked so bad in every way possible, I'd say that overall, there's not one example that was as good as it's 70's or 60's counterpart. Especially American cars. Fragile and delicate. Incredibly unreliable and expensive. Having to smog-test one of these cars was a reason to buy a new one, because even on a car just 3 or 4 years old, you'd end up dropping hundreds of dollars replacing computers, broken sensors, cracked plastic ductwork, etc.
I think only in the past 5 years have there been newer cars that are compellingly as good as cars from the late 60's or 70's. All the hacks they had to put on cars to meet efficiency and pollution standards finally have the bugs worked out - though there's still a lack of simple engineering which makes it nearly impossible to maintain or modify one of these beasts yourself. Repair or restore? Forget it.
Then plug price into the equation - and for your AVERAGE car, you're talking about $20,000 - for anything special, even remotely above average, you're talking about $25,000+
Go getchyerself an old 60's classic, for anywhere from $5000-$20,000, you get power, maintainability, hackability, classic design, like nothing available on the market to day for that price.
New cars are for suckers.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Actually, it's the First law of Thermodynamics (conservation of energy) that would be violated if you could electrolyze water with less energy than you get from burning the hydrogen, but you make a good point, and the second law sets a limit on the maximum mechanical energy you can extract by burning a fuel, either by combustion or indirectly by using a fuel cell.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
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