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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."
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...
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.
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..
Just remember,
There are people paying $3.00 a 1 liter bottle for water.
1. put water into container
2.
3.
4. Profit
Ask Slashdot - google for stupid people.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Of course, that would mean your kids couldn't watch tv while you were away from the house.
Seriously, I doubt powering your home with your car would be simple enough to do practically, but it doesn't violate any known laws of physics. Calling it "excess" does sound like you are getting something for free, but really it is just that it would be an efficient power supply and perhaps cheaper than being hooked up to the grid.
More likely you just get a seperate fuel cell for your home from somebody like ballard
The fact that they feel the need to reinvent something that has over 100 years of refinement tells me they are doing something wrong.
I don't know where to start on this really.
The abacus had thousands of years of refinement, care to trade in your calculator or computer?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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.
Are cars today better than 10 years ago? Yes.
Are cars today better than 20 years ago? Much better.
Are cars today better than 30 years ago? WAY better in almost every possible way.
Are cars today better than 50 years ago? ...etc
The only argument you can make is perhaps styling, but that's because we've sacrificed styling for wind drag efficiency. That tends to homogenize the looks of everything.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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
LV
Woot w00t w007.
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....
Design News had an article about this type of car in January. You can find it here.
Sure we do. That's why we buy foreign cars a lot. It's the designers that don't have any taste :) . Seriously though, they're starting to make some extremely ugly cars nowadays. The PT Cruiser, Chevy Impallas, not to mention the MiniCoopers, the Beetles, the Civic Hatchbacks, just to name a few.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
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
The abacus had thousands of years of refinement, care to trade in your calculator or computer?
That would be a valid comparison if you were comparing cars to airplanes. The both move you, but one gives you dramatically better and different capabilities.
But we're comparing cars to cars. A gasoline car and an electric car both drive on roads. They both have tires. They both have controls. They both take fuel (just different types). In other words, there are no new capabilities being given to the driver. It's just a different powerplant.
Or to put it another way, if this design is so good, there's no reason you can't drop in a gasoline powerplant to get all the supposed "advantages" of the redesign.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The power companies would just sell the fuel to power the fuel cells, I doubt they would just go out of business. And we might get rid of those ugly power lines.
By your logic, plasma TV's make no sense because CRT TV's have had 50 years of refinement.
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?
Match efficiency? Everyone knows that the problem with fuel cells is performance and it looks like thay will beat that by the time they release.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
I'm waiting for my "65 tons of American pride" Canyonero.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
Companies aren't there just to be evil and pollute.
With the exception of the oil companies, of course. They've got it made good with the way things are, and instead of trying to adapt to change, they'd rather try to increase our dependency on oil.
What?
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
That would be the T-Zero
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
That's funny. That's exactcly what the loosers of history have said of new inventions. Take Xerox and the mouse, or replace "car" with "computer" and you will have the statements of all the people who thought the iMac would be a failure.
I thinks this is the step needed in the right direction. Oil companies my ass, even as I live in a country which bases it's whole economy on oil I'm waiting this to succeed. Mass produce this and you will have me at least dreaming on getting it.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
Match the efficiency and performance? Sure. No problem. First, define efficiency in this context. Don't forget to include waste products in your calculations.
Performance? For how big a motor? How long a trip?
The bottom line is that no, we can't build an electric motor with a self-contained power source that has the torque, horsepower, and range of an equivalent gas motor. Yet. So, clearly, we should scrap any attempts to do so and just keep on using internal combustion.
Right. If you think that, go sit with the Luddites - you're just as bad.
As far as your whines about looking like a car - well, there's a few thousand home built electric vehicles that look like cars because they're built from one. There's the new Honda Civic Hybrid which looks just like any other Civic on the road. And there's more coming down the pipe.
As far as your whines that they have to scrap everything - hello! Wake up! You don't HAVE to scrap everything. You can continue building them exactly the way they've been built for 100 years. But why? A major design consideration for the past 100 years has been "where the hell do I put this engine?". Eliminate the engine, the radiator, the fuel tank, the drive train, and so forth and you've eliminated everything outside of the passanger compartment that you had to design for. Sure, you have different stuff that has to come into consideration, but that's the entire point - it's different. You can optimize layouts in a different manner and potentially get a lot of cost and efficiency savings that way. Who said anything about using bicycle tires? Or having the car weigh 500 lbs empty (hint - the fuel cells will weigh more than that, period).
The safety considerations and regulations that have come about in the past 100 years aren't going to be scrapped either (unless, of course, GM manages to get the new vehicle classified as a light truck/SUV -- in which case about half of those safety requirements are scrapped).
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.
Ethanol, at least as produced today, requires more petrochemicals per gallon to produce than it replaces.
BMW already has a hydrogen-powered 7 Serices car. Of course, it is still just a prototype.
cpeterso
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
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~!!
Mass produce this and you will have me at least dreaming on getting it.
You seem to think that all-electric cars have never been done before. They have, and they universally suck.
But let's talk about Xerox and the Macintosh. Do you remember the Macintosh's early reputation? SLOW SLOW SLOW. It had a horrible reputation because the technology had not caught up with doing a full-GUI. It took them a decade to shed that slow label.
I'm not against electric cars -- I'm against CARS THAT SUCK.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Sheesh, first the
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Haven't seen the new Suburban commercials?
Suburban's been around since 1935 - a testament to the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
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
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.
So, clearly, we should scrap any attempts to do so and just keep on using internal combustion.
Yes, we should scrap any attempts until we have a decent powerplant. There's only two ways to improve performance: more power, or less car (less weight, less tires, etc). Another poster made a good analogy: The Macintosh versus earlier computers. At this point, we are trying to make a Macintosh run on a 1.1Mhz 6502. It's probably possible to do some kind of GUI, but not anything most people would want to use.
I have no problems with electric cars. I think they would be a great idea. But I care more for having a GOOD car.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.)
The only reason you want mass is for traction not for safety in a collision. Being a death trap has more to do with acceleration. ie an air bag slows you down more slowly, than the windshield or dashboard.
Ideally to save yourself your car has a hard shell with a squishy interior. but you want to protect the shell itself so you put on another squishy layer which we call a bumper.
Although, mass would make some difference on slippery surfaces like ice, so we shouldn't dismiss safety concerns. But maybe car designers will make further use of spoilers and body shapes to push the car down at speed, so these things will be much more interesting looking.
But that's not true. A gasoline powerplant, or more correctly, an internal combustion engine is fundamentally different from something like an electric motor. An internal combustion engine has zero torque at zero RPM (it can't run at zero RPM). An electric motor can start from a dead stop and doesn't need to maintain a relatively narrow band of RPMs to produce power.
This is just one example, but an important one. Electric motors also scale differently, one example that others have pointed to is that it is feasible to have a small motor for each wheel, something that is not feasible for internal combustion engines.
I think there are fundamental differences between these technologies, and the redesign is warranted.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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)
We all know electric cars have been made in the past and have had no success, but we cannot stop there. There _is_ an environmental problem with normal cars, and any step towards solving it should be supported by anyone who cares about it.
If any car which addresses this problem hits the mainstream (all electric cars are really expensive) I will be buying it, as will be anyone who is worried about our environment. I really dont care if it only gets to 150 Km/h, that's enough for myself, and should be for anybody. Which draws to another issue: why if almost everywhere there's a speed limit, any car you buy can double that speed?
I'll stick with any environmental car that meets my needs, and I can assure you my days will be happier knowing I'm no longer part of the problem. I'm pretty sure there is a _lot_ of people like this out there.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
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!?
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
(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.
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
Well, if it flops when they first release it, they'll essentially lose that billion, and they'll forget about it for years, until we actually need it.
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/
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
There is a third way - make a more efficient transmission for power from the power plant to the wheels.
... that you can obtain, the better is your efficiency. Conventional engines are efficient at source (about 40% efficient atm, been getting steadily better, but is expected to top-out at ~50%) BUT there's a hell of a lot of turning /grinding/jointed stuff between the wheel and the engine. Each of those elements reduces the overall efficiency. The gear system (required to keep the engine within it's small peak-efficiency envelope) alone accounts for ~5%
Different power plants have differing characteristics. It's not just 'push a button and vary between 0->10'. Traditional car engines have a narrow range of RPM within which they function efficiently. Electric motors have a much wider range over which they operate well.
Location of the power plant as close to the power-delivery mechanism as possible is an aid to efficiency, but not possible with traditional engines. The fewer terms of (1-N, 0N1) in the equation:
Power out = (1-a)(1-b)(1-c)(1-d)(Power in)
The point is, don't dismiss their ideas until we see what they can do, there are good reasons to be innovative when the underlying technology changes, most of the time.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
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.
What? What is the precondition that requires vehicles to be terribly heavy and require fat-friction-loving tires? Maybe *YOU* dont understand, but the ICE, big heavy cars driven by 1 person with terrible gas-milage IS A FAILED design -- witness global warming, toxic rivers and smog-filled urban areas.
The point isnt "i want a ZEV or LEV to be EXACTLY like my present car" but "what do i *need* in personal transportation, what does *not* making the right choices cost me (us)?"... again, th think greenfaces choking urbanites with gas-masks here...
you have re-evaluate the method you go from point A to point B. Ever ride a bus? sheesh.
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
[grin] as I pointed out in another post, they're up to about 40% at source at the moment, but by the time you take off the inefficiencies due to the transmission/gears/joints/whatever that drops to about 20% overall.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
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.
I hope you are not loading them into a 5000 pound bloated monster that's death trap for the other families who are driving the same road, instead?
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
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.
Yeah, thank goodness conventional gasoline tanks aren't potentially explosive...
:wq
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.
Blog,Twitter
There is a third way - make a more efficient transmission for power from the power plant to the wheels.
Well, that's why engine horsepower is measured at the wheels, not at the motor.
I probably shouldn't have said "efficiency" in my original post, since electric motors are much more efficient from an energy standpoint. I meant "efficient" in terms of "more utility".
The thing is, everyone is talking like an electric car has never been tried before. It's been tried a lot of times. And it has failed a lot of times. It always comes back to the powerplant. You simply don't get even near the same performance as a gasoline car.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
.
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.
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.
RTFA
Fuel cells all require platinum.
No, current fuel cells require platinum. This is why GM is researching new methods, instead of using current models of fuel cell.
Read the article, this point is addressed.
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?)
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.
" It always comes back to the powerplant. You simply don't get even near the same performance as a gasoline car."
Well, sure. You're sticking a power plant with vastly different characteristics in a chasis designed for the gas power plant. It's like sticking horse shoes on cheetah. The shoes work great on horses, but won't do $hit for the cheetah.
BlackGriffen
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.
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?
Sheesh, man, you are looking through the rose-colored lenses.
Cars nowadays are incredibly longer lasting and more reliable. Yes, parts are more expensive, but you don't have to fix them as often. There's a reason that old cars only had 5 digit odometers.
Of course, the usual comeback was, "but they were simple enough for me to fix them myself". I personally would rather have a car that I don't have to touch for 100-200,000 miles than one of the pieces of crap from the 60s that has to be fixed and tuned constantly.
1949 VW Beetle
This is the dead giveaway. Jesus, man, have you lost your mind? I realize there is a religion around beetles that I will never understand, but you don't get much worse of a car than a beetle. From slow performance to crappy heaters to uncomfortable plastic seats to rust everywhere. The only good thing about it was that it was relatively fuel efficient for the day, and it was simple enough to fix yourself. That's the ONLY reason it was popular -- it was fuel efficient in an age of 10 mpg dinosaurs.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
And it was (and still is) a very aerodynamic design. Moreso than many new cars out today.
In fact - Hitler was kind of an armchair futurist (horrible person that he otherwise was), and thought a lot about aerodynamics (as much as he thought about streamlining the genepool - totally different debate). The Beetle was designed with aerodynamics in mind from the first basic sketch. Porsche's low-profile flat-four engine was ideal for the aerodynamic body shape. Especially placed in the rear.
You're telling me that your basic "brick" sedan has that much thought thought towards aerodynamics put into it?
Simple enough to fix it yourself is a GREAT benefit, unless you get off on paying $100/hr labor rates to guys who'll come out of the garage and tell you your tweakajammeter is blown, and you'll have to get a new one, and it's going to take a week. (guess you're hoofing it).
The simple fact is, that for all it's shortcomings, there were still some BASIC design principles that went into that car that were thrown out by later car designs, much to the extrememe detriment of the entire automotive industry. Well, not the industry, just the poor saps who have to buy these new cars every 3 years, and watch them depreciate down to junk. Mainly these priciples were thrown out because they went against the way the big three automakers did things going back to Ford. (ever see the movie "Tucker"? That's how resistant to change these people are).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
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?
GEM, Print Shop and Print Magic all ran fine. As did several front ends for compilation disks. :)
I'm fairly certain that GM knows that all the problems aren't addressed - like the 300 mile per fuel stop goal. They aren't tossing what they have right now into a car... they are saying "we're close enough to be confidant that we can lick the problems by 2008". How confidant? Several hundred million dollars confidant, and expanding. Will they be sucessful? We'll find out.
The tech is there - it's just a matter of making it work right. They have demos running on the fuel cell equivelent of 6502s, but they are betting that the 8Mhz 68000 will be out soon, and that they can jam 128k of memory in there.
--
Evan "Stretching a metaphor has never been so satisfying"
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
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
No doubt - GE is already well on the way to producing such a beast with PlugPower.
Granted, we are a ways away - but the potential to get better efficiencies is there - If you install a Fuel Cell for the house, you don't rate it on pure power generation efficiency when comparing to the grid since they produce a LOT of heat - so most prototype designs are setup to heat your hot water as well. When this is done the efficiency of the units overall goes way up when looking at your total energy bill. The interestin gthing is - most of the home fuel cell units are supposed to run off natural gas since its available to many folks - but if a Hydrogen cell in a car were more efficient it would be way cool to go partially off grid by plugging the car in :)
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
. From slow performance to crappy heaters to uncomfortable plastic seats to rust everywhere.
My memory of old VWs was my parents having to have four cars to make sure at least two were working at any point. The bottoms of our bug was so rusted that you could see the road below. The heaters barely worked, and I remembering wondering if my feet would freeze off in the winter. And those wonderful vent wings work fine - unless you are in a backup, and then your body would begin to stick to the vinyl seats.
An axle on a bug broke while going around a corner. The brakes on our VW bus stopped working while driving one day. CV joints went bad on a regular basis.
Today my '98 VW Golf has nearly 90K miles without a single major incident.
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.
Yes, but your mass determines your acceleration in response to a given force. F = ma, remember? When a light car and a heavy car collide, the light car undergoes more acceleration which makes it a more dangerous place to be.
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
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.
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
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.
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"
As for the joy stick/drive by wire system, I don't think this will ever take off.... Also the problem of what happens when the power dies or the computer crashes is a big issue aswell. The current stearing system seems to work good to me and its one of these if its not broke why fix it things.
well, what happens with a car using current technology has a systems failure? if the power steering locks up, if the brakes fail.
Saying that this new system is terrible because it is unfamiliar seems a little ironic to me.
Why don't you advocate the use of the MS operating system as well, after all, it is "good enough". its the same attitude.
if something new comes about, you don't have to rush out and adopt it, but just because old technology works doesn't mean that it shouldn't be improved upon...
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
Fortunately, with the spiffy modular design thingy, you can buy an American 'skateboard' (skatecar? carboard?) and get designer frames from around the globe. Bet the shipping on it is monumental, though.
Dyolf Knip
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
Certainly at first, but eventually, perhaps not. Keep in mind that two major problems with electricity are that there is no good way to store it, and no perfectly efficient way to transmit it. So if you've got a solar/wind/geothermal/tide generation facility that is harvesting energy from the sun/win/earth/ocean and nobody wants that energy at the moment, you currently have to throw it away. But if you can instead use that unneeded energy to generate stored hydrogen to sell (or convert back to electricity later), then you just cut out a big source of waste, making the system more efficient and the energy cheaper.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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
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!
It's called rain.
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.
I suggest we all buy ourselves tanks.
But seriously, what you say there isn't as true as you might think. There's a lot more to be won in the technology. Compare an old car to a new one. Take for instance a Citroen CX (1974) and a Renault Laguna II (2001?). I estimate their weight is about the same, about 1300 kgs. And they're even both French :) I know in which one I'd like to be when they slam into eachother. I haven't seen many crashes with a normal car and a Formula One car, but in that case I'd prefer to be in the Formula One car... Even if its weight is less than half of that of its opponent.
But the article wasn't focused on security. In fact, the article wasn't even focused on the subject: it didn't talk as much about the car as about what the author thinks the world is like. Sure, internal combustion engines are dirty and stuff... And sure, oil reserves are running out. BUT WE'VE KNOWN THAT FOR AGES! Geez, why didn't he go into the car's details?
Woefdram, l'apprenti sorcier
The reason that electric cars have universally sucked is Because they've been regular cars with a big battery. GM realized this, looked at Ford and others plans for fuel cell cars and said, "This sucks. Gasoline will be gone in 50 years, tops, and cars are going to suck ass. Let's not do that." Not those words, obviously, but that's what I got out of the article (I read the print version in Wired a week ago).
GM started over from the ground up because they're not building a gas-burning internal-combusion-powered car. They're building a wheeled conveyance that uses hydrogen as a power source and electric motors to drive the wheels. Other than the fact that both have wheels and have to carry humans, there are no common factors. The GM design concept lets them make cars that look like cars and run like cars. They can put on a body that looks just like a Suburban (well, as close as possible without infringing on designs), has the same accelleration profile, sounds the same, and has the same interior. Or they can make a car that looks like it fell out of a sci-fi flick, goes 0-60 in 3 seconds, is driven from the back seat with two joysticks, and is completely silent. And they could do either one for the same price.
Given the situation with dimishing fossil fuels and growing public demand for environment-friendly vehciles, I think GM is the only one taking a realistic approach to this. Everyone else is making a half-hearted for-show effort at building a fuel-cell car and just assuming that the status quo will continue for another hundred years. Gas-based cars are all they've known for their entire corporate lives, and the bigger the company the more resistant to change.
Barring some major failure in fuel cell development in the next 8 years, I don't think there's any question that GM will succeed. The question is what will happen when gas prices are at $20 a gallon and GM is the only company to have a viable alternative, probably with patents falling out their ears. I'd really like to know what will happen to Ford and Toyota when they're caught with their pants down. Even if they don't hit their 2010 deadline, GM will have a decade of R&D and billions of dollars investment above everyone else when it hits the fan and there is no gasoline left.
Now where do I buy stock?
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
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).
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.
"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.
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