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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!
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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..
The Honda Civic Hybrid is a hybrid fuel vehicle (gas/electric) that looks just like a regular 2003 Honda Civic.
Now you can whine that you don't like the Civic's look, that it's too small, or whatever, but you can't whine that they're all too unconventionally styled.
The funny thing, of course, is that odds are today's hybrids are just ahead of the curve, sytle-wise. And not just for fuel economy reasons. We've been moving toward more rounded shapes for a couple decades now.
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.
until they make one w/ some serious power, 4wd and some serious ground clearance. I'm sticking w/ what I have
read the article..
Because they're starting from scratch, they're not encumbered by limitations of the traditional auto: they put a separate motor into each wheel, which 'one-ups' conventional 4x4 - there's no differential or axle to limit the ground clearance.
Seriously, go read the article..
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.
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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
Design News had an article about this type of car in January. You can find it here.
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.
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.
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.
Imagine the terrorists delight at a city bus carrying a huge bottle of the stuff.
Imagine a terrorist holding a can of soup that is really a bomb. Listen to what you are saying. Anything can be used as a weapon, and any weapon can be disguised as nearly anything. I suggest you watch out, maybe that glass bottle the guy next to you is holding is really filled with an airborne virus intended to wipe out everyone in a 5 mile radius once he unscrews the lid.
Just because something CAN be used for evil, doesn't mean that it doesn't have 1000000 legitimate uses that justify its production. Should we ban hands and feet next? Afterall, they can be very deadly weapons.
What?
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.)
Imagine the terrorists delight at a city bus carrying a huge bottle of the stuff.
Imagine thousands of rolling tankers of gasoline rolling through our tunnels. Or our neighborhood streets, right by our children's schools! What about the children? Bombs everywhere! We must not let gasoline ever be carried where terraists can ignite them.
Seriously, hydrogen is a safer material than gasoline. It doesn't evaporate the same way, so it's harder to ignite in some ways. -- and no, the Hindenburg wasn't a hydrogen disaster, it was a metallic oxide paint disaster. The Hindenburg's paint job burned like a fireworks show, which caused the insane flamage you see in the pictures.
Hydrogen, when ignited, tends to burn upwards, unlike gasoline, which spreads like napalm, which is just a more jellied form of gasoline.
If gasoline did not exist, and were an alternative fuel, it would never be approved for general use.
It's not the actual danger, but the perception of danger that drives human choice. So gasoline is next to the Fritos display at gas stations. And a million parents a day strap their babies into super-safe car seats set inches from a colossal tank of liquid napalm, and no one ever notices the incredible irony.
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.)
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
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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On my side of the tracks, the issue is the ridiculous pricetag. I can barely afford to keep my twelve-year-old car running, and it's paid for!
The 1924 Model-T touring car cost $290. That's $2901.86 in 2001 dollars. What the hell happened?
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.
In a nutshell, safety and emissions regs.
Each airbag on a modern car costs about $1000, and it's against the law to build a car that doesn't have one.
Add another $500 or so worth for the catalytic converter, but at least the catalytic converter doesn't need replacement after a fender-bender.
Finally, add in the cost of designing the equipment into the car, plus the cost of filling out the paperwork to ensure that the design's approvable by all of the myriad of state and federal officials that pass judgement.
(And you can add another $4-500 if it's an SUV and it's gonna be sold in California next year. :-)
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.
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.
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.
To be real, they could mound the four motors to the chassis and run CV axles to each of the wheels. That sounds reasonable. They could still incorporate steering and braking via the motors.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
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
As you say, hydrogen can be produced in a variety of different ways. Anything from fossil fuels to algae to windmills. This means that it doesn't matter where the energy comes from. When fossil fuel is cheap, your car can run on hydrogen produced from fossil fuel. When geothermal is cheap, your car can use geothermal hydrogen. The market will decide -- we would no longer be 'locked in' to a single energy source. Hydrogen is to gasoline what Java is to assembly language, if you will.
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.
What they meant was, you could drive your car to the hydrogen refueling station, then drive it home and use it as a generator to power your house. Of course this only works until your car runs low on hydrogen, then it's off to the station again to refuel....
So what power are these cars supposed to be harnessing? Great reservoirs of hydrogen of which I am unaware?
You'll note that 75% of the Earth's surface is covered by H2O... which contains a lot of H. Of course, it takes some energy to pull the H away from the 2 O's, but that's okay, because there is a huge nuclear reactor about 93 million miles away that provides us with as much energy as we could ever need, 24 hours a day. Actually making practical use of these resources will require some engineering, but all the ingredients are there in abundance. And for the shorter term, there are less direct methods of producing hydrogen (as noted above).
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