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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."
Stupid loophole standing in the way of progress.
There's a $2000 federal income tax deduction available if you buy an alternative fuel vehicle. And yes, hybrid vehicles do qualify.
As far as the loophole you specify -- there are efforts underway to change the wording so that hybrid vehicles do qualify. And some of the companies pushing for the change want a vehicle that uses as little as 2.5% of it's fuel from an "alternative" source to be considered hybrid. That's a load of shit and would actually be counterproductive.
So be careful of what you ask for. You may get it.
Frankly, hybrids shouldn't qualify. It doesn't solve the problem. Unless, of course, you like rewarding half-assed solutions in everything else in life.
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).
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?
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.
>people haven't been too impressed with the performance of the hybrids, from what I've heard
If you have time, look into the Prius area on Yahoo Groups. You'll hear from a lot of people who are impressed.
The Prius needs computer control to keep from lighting the tires when you pull out. If it weren't limited by software, the electric drive motor would deliver 258 foot-pounds at zero rpm. Once you start moving, the power curve is impressively smooth. Toyota held it to a 12.5 second 0-60 time, partly for economy and partly because the Prius is aimed at the boring-sedan market.
"Horsepower sells cars, torque wins races" is the old cliche. Electric motors are superb for low-end torque.
Hybrids are indeed a transitional technology, but I suspect mass-produced long-lived fuel cells are more than a few years away. Looking forward to them!
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.
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.