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More on GM's New Fuel Cell Cars
Whispers_in_the_dark writes "Scientific American has an article about GM's approach to fuel cell based vehicles of the future. It appears that GM wants to build a common fuel cell based drive-by-wire chassis that it will mount the body panels, control systems, and passenger compartments. This would provide a great deal of flexibility and upgradability to the cars of the future. GM has even more details."
sell a car with upgradability and you're bound to start getting a few extra mods with it :)
From the GM link: ''With its robust 42-volt electrical system, the car is configured to run any number of devices in the passenger compartment, from homes to entire farms.''
um... what????
By using numbers generated here, you can calculate energy yield of various fuel cells.
Right. Lets just monopolize the market and set insane pricetags, then finally close the division saying it didn't work out. Case and Point
Wired had an article a couple of months back:
l lc ars.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.08/fuelce
Last spring GM had demonstration units at the auto shows. Apparently you can lift one body type, such as 4-dr sedan, and replace it with another, such as pickup truck. Plug'n'play.
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...case mods for cars. *sigh*
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
What, are they made out of pigs and tomatoes?
here.
...
GM is the only US automaker developing its own fuel cell in-house: at the company's Warren, Michigan, research facility; at a 300-engineer skunk works near Rochester, New York, that recently expanded by 80,000 square feet; and at a third center in Mainz-Kastel, Germany.
...
Why? We have seen one wheel cars before :)
Speaking of economical cars, I'm tired of waiting for them to get their act together. I've read about all the great leaps and bounds the big three have made but I've yet to be able to buy the products they design, test, prove and then shelve. Where are they?
Don't get too excited. It's just another PR filled "Vision" of the future. This ranks right up there with the flying cars and moon vacations we were supposed to have by 2000.
There isn't even a prototype for crying out loud! It's LESS relevant than the concept cars you see at auto shows.
Will not happen.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I've heard that GM will debut this car at this years Paris Auto Show. According to GM the real driver for development on this car is emerging economies like China. Your typical Chinese farmer lives in a house that's miles and miles off of any electrical grid. With the AUTOnomy platform, he can buy one transport that can serve as Tractor, Truck and power generation for his house when he comes home at night. Pretty cool. Of course, where is a Chinese farmer going to get a reliable source or Hydrogen??
yea i stole your sig- whats the big deal, it sucked anyway.
If we allowed the Open Source developer community complete access to this new electrifying technology they would be able to improve efficiency dramatically.
There is a lot of knowledge and talent contained in the Open Source developer community that remains untapped and that could be used to improve a lot of business and industrial infrastructure, such as mass transportation, refinery, and handicrafts.
Only when we unleash the power of the Open Source developer community can we lift the monopoly that Kia has on the automotive industry in Singapore.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
I remember reading a magazine article about this earlier. My impression was that they are in the extremely early planning stages of any such endeavor. The idea of basing all their cars around a common chassis and powertrain sounds like an amazing way to reduced production costs all by itself, even without the fuel cells. Still, I am not holding my breath. The article I read quoted GM execs as saying something like, "We will make a decision on this around 2008-10." Sounds like they have a political interest in announcing this now. They probably want to avoid having the government force them into making fuel cell cars, and the best way to do that is to pretend they are already working on them.
This isn't anything new. GM announced this at the North American International Auto Show in January.
Anyways, the idea is for a fuel cell car that can be easily produced and not put UAW workers out of a job. You have one plant making the core part of the car (the bottom part with wheels and all points in-between to make the car move). Other plants build the top part of the car (one makes SUVs another makes luxuary lines...). and plug the top part into the same base.
Now this 'plug-in' idea is not meant for the consumer to detach different car bodies at home, but it makes production cheaper since you're building the same engine.
I for one am glad that there seems to be one new idea coming out of Warren, MI.
AnamanFan - Trying to find the Truth, one post at a time.
They better have some type of Speaker system that coincides with the throttle to blast out a throaty exhaust note.
If this becomes a reality, it could be one of the most brilliant concepts in the history of manufacturing. However, I'm more than a little skeptical. The first time around on this story we were all impressed, but we assumed it was like all concept car ideas: never destined to see the light of day.
But now the hype machine has been given another turn, and we are seeing more stories about this skateboard chassis. NPR ran a story about it last week, saying that it would be going into production in Europe. (!) Well, hydrogen delivery infrastructure aside, that got my attention. Still, with the story cropping up in mostly unchanged form nine months later, I'm still claiming honorary Missouri citizenship. You gotta show me!
IMO this is a case of not thinking about whether something should be done just because it could be done. If your cruise control or electronic throttle fails then in the worst case scenario you just put the car in neutral and coast to the side of the road. If your drive by wire steering fails you could be heading straight for an 18 wheeler and be able to do nothing about it except break as hard as you can (assuming the computer for those hasn't failed also!) People may argue that it all works fine in the aviation industry in fly by wire aircraft such as airbus and the 777 but aircraft are subjected to expert maintenance by engineers and 40,000 feet up is a relatively benign enviroment for machines. Cars are maintained by grease monkies (especially if they're old bangers) and have to enjoy rain, salt, rocks, driving across fields etc and frequently go wrong. Would I trust my life to a cars computer? No way.
GM wants to build a common fuel cell based drive-by-wire chassis that it will mount the body panels, control systems, and passenger compartments
There's a reason that different cars have different chasses. I'd like to see the ride a Caddie body on a standard size frame gets. In addition, the fuel efficiency of a small car (and how small could you make it) on a standard chassis would suck, too. This would lead to a bunch of cookie-cutter cars, most of which have lousy handling, don't perform well, and are ugly to boot.
Oh yeah... I forgot. This is GM we're talking about. Never mind.
That is all.
GM is "developing" new "fuel cells", IF you know what I mean!
When my '72 Bonneville hits one of these things at 15 MPH. "Sorry, the fuel cell is cracked, gonna need to total it"
This is only slightly less optimistic than talking about installing a Mr. Fusion. The "on-board hydrogen storage system" (that fits in a six inch frame, no less!) is currently total fantasy. So there are a few things left to work out before we all get to drive cars like this.
It's called "hot rodding" and it's been around for a while now. Maybe you've heard of it.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
GM's fuel cell cars are just a bandaid on the wound of excessive energy consumption caused by private vehicles. Even if they can be recharged overnight by electrolysis, that just moves pollution from the tailpipe to the smokestack, you are still moving over a ton of material to move one person.
Motorcycles really aren't a solution, as they suck in bad weather and too many riders are just potential organ donors. Plus, the newest super bikes have worse gas mileage than an entry level Honda.
We need to swallow our American pride and look after our European betters. We need to change zoning laws to prevent suburban sprawl, while implementing light rail and mini-bus transportation to give everyone about the same commute time as now, but with a less polluting mass transit system. In fact, intelligently applied, commuting times might be less, as traffic density would be a lot less. The next time you're stuck in a traffic jam, think how much more productive you could be in a mini-bus with wi-fi, giving you full internet access on your Linux webpad, instead of stuck behing the wheel.
As a side benefit, we would greatly decrease our reliance on imported oil, and could tell all those towelhead in the mideast to suck sand. Japan's economy would certainly suffer, but they didn't have any qualms about destroying our electronic and automobile industry.
Now, there will be the predictable outcry from the exurbs and rural sorts, but I think private vehicles owned by rural collectives, much like the famed kibbutz of Israel or the efficient collective farms of the Soviet Union would fill the bill neatly.
It's always nice to imagine upgradeable hardware, kind of like the promise of DSP-based electronics that could be field upgraded with new capabilities in the future. There's just one problem with that scenario: lost future revenues. The manufacturer can't expect to earn much on those software upgrades, so once they sold you the hardware they have little incentive to follow up with software. Instead the "future" upgreadability ends up being just another selling point for hardware, without actually delivering it. There are plenty of ways of weaseling out of it.
This holds especially true of automobiles. The main investment with new automobile development is in the platform or chassis. While the body and interior are the most visible things and what define the car to the customer, they're really just eye candy and quite interchangeable. What differentiates the automobile and its driving and performance characteristics is its chassis: the rigidity of the frame, the suspension, and the engine and transmission. Car manufacturers guard their chassis as closely as aircraft manufacturers their wings.
I just finished reading a book on the take-over of Chrysler by Daimler, and one of the driving forces of the deal was the promise of platform synergies, saving a lot of money between the two companies by sharing platforms. But when it actually came down to doing it, the Mercedes folks were going to share car platforms between say an E-class and a Dodge Stratus only over their dead bodies. To them what makes a Mercedes a Mercedes is the platform--the rest are mostly components from third-party parts bins which anyone else could buy. If a customer could get the same chassis in a Stratus, why on earth would they fork out for an E-class? Incidentally, speaking of DaimlerChrysler, they're way ahead of GM in the fuel cell game, regardless of what the article might imply. In fact, the article seems to be an expanded advertising section by GM.
This all is not to mean that I don't think that GM's shared platform idea is a great idea, I just don't think that it will actually happen for competitive reasons.
Fuel cells are a boondoggle! All they are is a new way to burn old fuels. Yes, they run on Hydrogen. Where does the hydrogen come from? There are two answers:
So what is wrong with this?
Well, in the first case, you produce a lot of carbon dioxide, and worse, carbon monoxide, in the extraction process. At least the extraction process is energy self-sufficient, i.e. it gets all the energy it needs from the fuel being extracted.
Extracting hydrogen from water, on the other hand, you get out the same amount of energy that you put in, minus losses. As such, it is not a way to produce energy, only to store it. So where does the electricity come from with which to do this?
Fuel cells are an interesting technology, but they do not come anywhere near offering a solution to any energy production problem that we are likely to face.
www.wavefront-av.com
Finally, the auto industry is thinking in new and different ways. Considering electric motors last much longer than internal combustion engines, it should mean less maintenance and lower cost. Though part of me thinks the hardcore muscle car guys aren't going to hand over their hot rods.
I love this idea. The design concept, the adaptability, the price, the envrionmental impact. Everything about it is great.
... Thousands upon thousands of gas stations. Hundreds of thousands of jobs... all gone.
But it'll be a long time before these take over internal combustion engines, and it's not because we can't make the technology work or get the public to buy them.
Put simply, oil. Billions of dollars in investments, oil tankers, refineries, oil rigs
It would kill the Western world's economy if done too quickly, and the larger companies with a keen interest in oil are going to make dang sure it doesn't happen too quickly, if at all.
In the end, the only two winners would be the envrionmentalists (we all would win), and the peace loving people of the Western world who would love to see the Middle East region reduced to nothing but a third world desert (if nobody buys oil, how could they afford those fancy weapons). Neither of the two have any foothold in the policy makers domain.
There has to be some careful decisions made if these are going to be rolled out. Lets hope for the best.
In the meantime, be a patriot; Walk.
The Internet is generally stupid
Skinnable cars!
GM said (in Car and Driver) that the cheapest way for them to get batteries, was to buy a Toyota electric at retail, and throw away the car. No, they didn't really do this. The point, you dingbats, was that the whole operation was a sinkhole of money, done to appease California fruitcakes.
wouldn't it? The noise from the tires on pavement would be there but that's it. Kinda like riding a bicycle.
These look really interesting, are affordable, and you can drive them in the HOV lanes. Not all the models are electric yet, but they seem to be working on it.
What I can say is that drive-by-wire and this stuff is currently being worked on.
Unfortunately, that is all I can say.
No problem: at the same Paris show, GM are debuting their new energy drink, "Coca Petrola". Rumoured to be the product of years of research into untapped beverage resources under the Middle East, Texas, and Alaska, Coca Petrola is nearly 100% water free. GM plans to have have pumps of the stuff in every town and is understood to be re-using their older distribution networks.
Larry Burns is on record as saying "Heck, I even bathe in the stuff", shortly prior to a mystery accident which has hospitalised him. GM deny Burns' habit of smoking in the tub is to blame.
I don't think I would want a car based on plug n PRAY technology.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I'm not sure what you mean by competitive reasons. GM already owns several brands (Chevrolet, Pontiac, etc.) and they commonly share chasis and bodies between these brands. The main differences are often just the extras (styling, interiors, etc.).
So why wouldn't they share chasis between models? Seems like a natural extension of what they are already doing.
I'm not a scientist, but as far as I know, it's not really that difficult to make fresh water from 'dirty' water through simple desalinization. Granted, the process now is cumbersum and time consuming, but with the proper technology, I doubt it would be more difficult or use anymore resources then what a current oil refinery uses to give us gas. Just a thought.
The Internet is generally stupid
Video of release.
This would be the same GM that was testifying before Congress in the early 70's that it was impossible to meet their clean air standards act while at the same time their Engineers had already finished the development of the catalytic converter. Of course, I read in the LA Times yesterday that California was modifying their timetables regarding electric cars. Then of course there's the hybrids...made by Toyota and Honda. Try as they might, American car makers just can't seem to get it together...
thats it. says it all
What happens if we change the salinity of the oceans? Lowering the salinity of the oceans is a posited factor in the beginning of the last Ice Age.
Call me a novice, but wouldn't taking the water of the ocean raise their salinity?
Also, no chemical reaction is perfect, so we lose a little of Earth's water supply every time we expend a tank of hydrogen, do we not.
Not unless we toss it out into space. Every chemical reaction is perfect. The measurement and clean up isn't, which leaves an entrophic residue, but the water's still "here."
This seems on the face of things like a clean source of energy, but could it also be the path to even more rapid climate change?
I don't think so. AFAIK one of the chief causes of global warming is still dirty automobiles. Shifting the pollution from there to power plants would be a good one--we'd have a volume where the necessary tech to clean the exhause (really clean it, that is) is affordable.
Fuel cells, by an large, are seen as a Good Thing ecologically speaking.
The amount of hydrogen you get from a volume of water is staggering. Very little water would be taken. The use of the energy in the fuel cell turns the the hydrogen back into water. Net water loss: zero.
There is no issue here.
You mean like Legos? Maybe this story should be listed with the Lego brick icon.
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
In the same issue of Sci Am, there's a Toyota ad for a fuel cell car. IIRC, ETC was Jan 2003. Just like the hybrids; the Big 3 were still making noises about how good they're going to be, which Toyota was already selling the Prius.
fuel cells are being postulated becuase the energy density of hydrogen is magnitutes better than even LiH batteries, let alone lead acid ones.
Fuel cells take H2 and O2, combine them through a catalyst, and generate electricity and water (actually, 2 H2 + O2 -> 2 H2O + electricity). Basic high school chemistry, check it out.
Electrolysis takes water, runs electricity through it, and generates H2 and O2. More basic chemistry.
So, the incremental cost for a fuel cell car to be able to take household 120V and reconvert the water from the fuel cell back to H2 and O2 is pretty small, and it elimates the problem of where to get H2.
than many new motorcycles, and calling motorcycles fuel efficient is silly today.
So, if the cost of car is the sum of...
- chassis design*
- powerplant design*
- interior design
- body design
- safety testing and government approval
- marketing
- support*
... I can see the ones with stars being reduced by sharing a chassis. There will be an additional cost/unit from being constrained at the chassis/body interface. After all, the car industry optimized away frames because they could save by providing that function in the body.So, the finaly question is, does the savings in design and support justify the increased per unit cost? The answer has to be "it depends".
If GM only makes a couple of models and sells them with different trim in all their model lines like they do now, then the design savings is relatively small compared to the per unit cost.
If GM is planning to make many more models than they do now then this provides a large design savings which might more than make up for the increased per unit cost. I doubt it will work in the end. Marketing will be too expensive. It would be a nice way of letting the market decide what it wants in a car. Provide many choices and after a few years concentrate on the ones that people liked best.
You are likely to lose a very minute amount as a gas, which will eventually leave the earth's gravitational pull, hydrogen isn't dense enough to remain on earth. However losses would be small enough to ignore.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
now we come here to verify that what we have read is the cutting-edge, and old news! There must be a big red "rejection" button next to the computers at slashdot central! Hey i have 3,638,429 rejections!
You are right, of course. But this happens anyways through electrolysis and radiolysis in nature. I also agree with you that this loss would be tiny.
But you've got nerds debating automotive design and mechanics. Talk about armchair quarterbacking. It's right up there with a blind guy trying to describe the color Teal.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Let's get literate: The phrase is "case IN point" not "case AND point."
Is we'd have to add really powerful speakers on the outside of the car to pipe appropriate RUMPTY RUMPTY noises, otherwise no one can hear us coming and look up to admire our mechanical prowess...
From the article on the GM's site:
"With its robust 42-volt electrical system, the car is configured to run any number of devices in the passenger compartment, from homes to entire farms."
Gee, finally I can drive my farm to work.
So if it's an article for the company web site it doesn't have to make any sense ? Why ? Because no one important will read it ? Because you can take it off when some one points out how lame it is ?
Aigh!
Okay troll, you win. What do you suppose you get when you combine the hydrogen with oxygen in a fuel cell?
Wow, GM is right - it will be like the car has been reinvented, only this time they'll be profiting from the entire life cycle of the vehicle and its consumables. And you can bet that as long as we have a Presidential administration and a Congress that kowtow to big business interests, this turn of events will benefit no one except GM and the politicians whom they bribe, oops, I mean to whom they contribute campaign funding.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
This car will never make it to market. Big oil won't allow it.
did you know the oil industry owns the patent on NiMH battery technology? That might have had something to do with it. Toyota and Panasonic were/are being sued because they didn't use "D" cell NiMH batteries in the Prius like the ones in the Honda Insight.
BTW, The US government gave the US auto industry billions of dollars for the advancement of battery technology and they came up with nothing. All the while they told CARB that people wouldn't pay for an electric car and that you'd need to pay them $17,000 and give them the car. They hired experts to present this "case" to CARB. Just like the US auto industry turned away the Rosen Motors hybrid design, they will keep turning away anything which cost THEM money. They all jumped on the HYBRID bandwagon when it was shown how well Toyota was doing with the Prius but as soon as there was a way out( fuel cells ) they dropped the hybrid projects and started holding up the fuel cell banner. Only hybrids are here TODAY and fuel cells are just a "hopeful" technology.
And the result is no current change in fuel consumption for the foreseeable future. And if you thought Microsoft was bad, I'll bet the US auto industry is full of corruption at any cost.
IMHO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
That's part of GM's sales model for this tech.
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The GE fuel cells are supposed to run an entire house and aren't that big. They are fueled by natural or LP gas, I don't know how that might affect size vs. power.
It does seem odd that GM would over-engineer the power plant by a large margin to run a farm, but on the other hand maybe the farm is using Energy Star sheep shears and milking machines.
For once, there is an opportunity to create something technologically simple. Maybe me, but a modern, fuel efficient IC engine in 50 different chassis and engine designs and configurations are complicated; creating a standardized chassis based upon solid state electronics should be much easier.
The Chinese (or someone else) would likely be able to build add-on bodies better or cheaper, and they won't necessarily try to *lease* it to you.
Beware; GM will try to exclude Open Source bodies or technologies to protect it's cash revenue stream, and leasing is one way of paying through the nose.
Don't ya just love people who say things like this!
OK, here's the deal.
It would cost a lot of money and piss off the oil cartels if we replaced gas with fuel cell cars.
The big 3 don't like to innovate. Innovation is expensive. Even the energy crisis of the 1970's didn't make them change until the Japanese started selling fuel efficient cars. They'd have to spend many billions of dollars developing new cars if a switch to fuel cells really happened. Auto mechanics would have to retrain, the tow truck drivers would need to add gear to tow the new cars, full cell stations would have to be set up nationwide. Factories would have to be retooled to manufacture the new cars. They'd have to bid out a whole slew of contracts to manufacture the outsourced components.
The only real changes that have taken place in fuel efficiency has been forced by legal mandate.
If they throw a sum of money at alternative fuel R&D, they have a very strong footing to push back new regulations. "We're already developing these new cars. It will be $current_year + 20 before they're feasible!" becomes a valid, supportable excuse.
They're spending 1 billion, not to develop new cars, but to avoid spending even more on developing a real line of fuel cell cars. They want to keep selling us the same old same old year after year, which is far less expensive than developing something new.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Of course, where is a Chinese farmer going to get a reliable source or Hydrogen??
Biomass.
Alias: Weeds, manure, inedible parts of animal carcases...
Leave it to rot and you get lots of methane. Burn that straight, or reform it into hydrogen (using the energy from burning the carbon) for fuel cells. Use the leftover solids for fertilizer.
(Most of the energy is in burning the hydrogen anyhow, and a fuel cell isn't limited to carnot cycle heat-engine efficiency. So you may even be ahead to throw away some of the energy from the carbon to get the hydrogen into a form suitable for fuel cells.)
Now maybe in the "third world" it makes more sense to use an inefficient animal that makes more animals without the aid of a factory. But China has serious industry now. It's a nuclear/space/manufacturing power, no longer a collection of farms with minimal roads.
China was a major civilization for most of history and is now breaking the ideology-bind that had it melting down its infrastructure and returning to world-class status (in more than brute-force army size) as measured by western standards.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The X-Type is a Ford Contour/Mondeo chassis.
:)
I'd rather have the XK8 convertible anyway
I wonder who is doing the security work on this. This feature has interesting implications. Call me a luddite if you will, but I don't know that I'd be willing to drive a car with this type of capability.
-l
Read the GM article. No details, just a bunch of wildeyed dreaming. Nothing wrong with that, just don't mistake it for shipping hardware anytime soon.
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.
This would provide a great deal of flexibility and upgradability to the cars of the future.
Can't wait to hear about someone overclocking their car and adding extra fans and windows in places they don't belong.
You said: There's a reason that different cars have different chasses.
The article says (page 2 paragraph 1): ...large plants could eventually mass-produce a small number of skateboard types--for example, compact, mid-size and large...
Oh yeah... I forgot. This is /. we're talking about. Never mind.
TodayTM BillyJoelTM GoogleTMd for StitchTMes due to WindowsTM while RollerbladeTMing with an AppleTM and a PopsicleTM
Have a look at the 'dashboardless' interior... The windshield extends lower than the control pedals. Imagine a some babe wearing a skirt driving this car. Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. Thomas A. Edison (1847 - 1931)
This concept is what pulled Chrysler out of the hole. It's not a new concept IMHO but I don't think GM can pull it off. Think about it, instead of producing fuel efficient hybrid( gasoline/electric ) cars( Toyota Prius, Honda Civic ) with some of these technologies( Prius uses most brake-by-wire and has electrical-power steering ) they are shooting for the moon.....
:(
It's all a ploy to do nothing now and to spend federal grant money so it looks like something is happening.
The money and oil keep flowing as usual. And the public is buying it.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
thanks Mr. Chomsky. I'll make a note in my palm pilot.
Essentially, because fuel-cells allow a radically different organization of cars' structures, GM is betting it can make cars cheaper. This despite the fact they'd be running on the famously expensive fuel cell. Wired wrote about this"billion dollar bet" in its August issue and quotes a GM exec: "If we're not there by 2010, we'll have dug too deep a hole to recover the time value of that money."
In other words: call us bad businessmen if you can't drive one of these by 2010. This is some good reading for those wanting to know more about what GM's plans to do with its fuel cell "platform" that it hopes to use for virtually every vehicle it makes in the future. Of course, as Wired notes, a fairly heavy dose of skepticism is NOT optional. It's very much required.
---- SNIP ----
oh yeah, hehe
Note: grousing about rejected submissions is Offtopic and usually gets moderated that way. It happens, don't take it personally.
Moderators: Do your worst ;-). But there are some intersting links in there, so be fair!
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Hrm.. Lots of parallels...
Windows are a definate must.
Lights - also good.
Cooling systems are a plus.
Display Panel - I should hope.
Tool-less access doors, wireless communications, quadrophonic sound...
Hey, cars have had all this stuff for years! When did computers fall so far behind?!
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
". In addition, by-wire technology may make it feasible to provide remote-control operation"
I'm guessing it's a nono to have even your environmentally friendly car drive in the carpool lane with nobody in it.
Is this why they killed off the Camaro and Trans Am?? To put more money into damn fuel cell technology?? I know that fuel cells are cleaner, will do my dishes, give me a foot rub and save the world, but I will drive my 2002 WS6 Trans Am anyday before I drive a car powered by fuel cells... Unless it comes with Trans Am panels... I don't think that we are ready for fuel cells yet, we should wait till our fossil fuels are depleted, and the ozone is non-existant until we decide to sit down and think of a solution... and fast. Isn't that what happened with Y2K???
My Sig left me for another poster...
This will probably develop a market for alternate bodies from non-GM companies, like there is for cellphone batteries and faceplates. The PC market has already proven modularity quite successful - if it weren't for PCI buses and the like, we'd never be able to pull our computers apart and make them more usable in the ways we'd like.
GM's patents on the modular car means they will have a lock on profit for years to come when everyone is making parts which are compatible with the standards they set - IF they are the first people to successfully market the product when hydrogen fuel cell technology matures enough.
And, for all the Digital Rights Management people: since a large portion of the systems in the vehicle are going to be controlled by a central "brain", GM can easily enforce a type of DRM on their intellectual property by rendering non-authorized plug-in components to be unusable. Although, it would be a tremendously bad marketing decision for the first five years or so. Then again, auto makers have never seemed to want the kind of locks on things that PC & software makers are trying to have. But something like this could change the automotive landscape too.
Gives new meaning to Blue Screen Of Death...
You get into the car for the first time. You feel a little nauseous when the car asks, "Where do you want to go today?" You know this ain't gonna be good...
You're driving down the road, and you encounter a rare bug that tries to divide by zero when you try to change the MP3 file you are listening to, when suddenly what to your wondering eyes should appear but an opaque blue windshield that asks if you would like to report this bug to Microsoft...
But don't worry! A) They'll fix it in the next "hot-patch" and B) the fact that you can no longer see the road doesn't really matter, because you have lost the ability to steer or brake!
Your last thought in this world is the regret for your decision to sit directly over the bumper in the "helicopter pilot" configuration, instead of the back seat in the "passengers die first" configuration.
Ok, let me say this nice and slow so that all the raving super-greens can get it:
Energy consumption is not inherently unethical. Pollution and destruction of non-renewable resources, in some cases, yes.
What we need is not low-energy-cars; what we need is cheap, clean power!
Now, you're right about one thing; this whole nonsense about electric cars being 'clean'. WTF do people think the electricty comes from? Elves?
I think this is a great concept and I applaud GM for attempting to bring such an environmentally friendly vehicle to the masses, but I couldn't help laughing at this quote:
"All of AUTOnomy's essential systems, including the fuel cell stack and on-board hydrogen storage system, are neatly packaged in the skateboard-like chassis. The unit is intended to last for years, much longer than a conventional vehicle."
So their conventional vehicles are designed to last for what? 6 months? I'll keep my Toyota, thanks!
They're making their decision in the next year or two on whether to proceed, to have the cars out in the 2008-2010 timeframe.
What happens when you hit a wall at 60MPH in this Lego-car? Will it break into pieces?
Yeah. A bunch of Lunix dorks who couldn't even find, let alone perform the simple operation of changing an air filter.
GM has spent over a billion dollars on this design. They can sell this where no other car can go right now. Think about China; no gasoline infrastructure in most of the country, and no reason to put one in. But if a car that costs less, has a higher utility value, can power your house, and requires less maintenance is available, more Chinese will buy it. That's a market with a huge possibility for growth.
And what do you do when everyone hass the wonderful 15-year fuel-cell car? You build something better while the competition is still reeling from your advances.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
This model seems to be based on the Ford Hindenberg announced earlier this year.
...not fuel efficiency. They have been in the past- it was one of the biggest selling points of the Yamaha Virago back in the 70s. But no one cares now. They either want big, ground-pounding Harleys, or Grand Prix poseur sport bikes. If people really wanted fuel efficient motorcycles, they'd get them. Blame motorcyclists, not manufacturers.
The "California Fruitcakes" (Oh, Rush! you neologistic god!) are drowning in a oxide poison tank. The IC engine, over a hundred years old and horribly inefficient, needs to go the way of bustles and button-up corsets. The "fruitcakes" actually breathe in the gunk that most car drivers blow over into other states.
There is no reason, industrially, why lithium or nickel-metal batteries should cost what they do, save that the owners of the IP want them to cost that much. And as another poster in this thread said, these new battery techs are bough up by petrocorporations as soon as they show any promise.
The "free" market, isn't. The taxpayers ponied up hundreds of millions of dollars to car companies to develop non-IC powerplants. The car companies develpoed the Insight, an great vehicle, and several hybrid vehicles, which work great too. The battery tech has stagnated, tho, for no apparent reason. GM nuked the only working electric car, to the horror of its engineers.
Point is, they didn't make an alternative to their IC cars because, well, it's suicide for them! Electric cars don't have a tenth of the parts a present-day car has. They don't break down. Theat means the entire service bay portion of the automakers' bottom line is almost GONE. It means the cars don't fall apart as fast, since the stress on the engine is nil, so that means that they can't nearly as many new cars.
Endgame: they don't want their money machine to die. They won't give us electric cars, even if we give them free tax money to develop the tech. The "free market", as Adam Smith forsaw, is it's own worst enemy. The triopolists simply have agreed amongst themselves never to make the things, and they won't. It's not in their interests.
If we want an electric car that works, let the feds give cash to non-industry affiliated universities, with the stipulation that the IP generated becomes open-source to those that paid for it, the taxpayers. Then people can hack together their own powerplants.
No one is going to be displaced or made redundant. The same players will be in charge in the hydrogen economy, as in the oil economy now. The greatest amount of money being spent on hydrogen fuel R&D is by the oil companies themselves. If and when the hydrogen economy ever arrives, they want to ensure their piece of the pie.
And here are those patents, in order of significance:
1) electrons
2) clueless executives
3) the wheel
4) Egypt
5) your mom
6) 9 horsepower
7) refuel WHERE?
8) cheese in sandwich
9) did you see how little those tires were?
10) CowboyNeal
11-24) give me a hybrid-electric Ford!
hi, I like pancakes -.-- -.-- --..
Fuel cell vehicles, electric cars, etc. are not being produced because there is no demand for a vehicle with a large pricetag, limited range, and no fueling infrastructure. Oil, and consequently gasonline is very cheap to produce, and also easy to distribute compared to these hydrogen alternatives, and most people are not going to willingly surrender their money to purchase vehicles that make no economic sense.
until the price of driving my gasoline fueled car rises above the cost of driving an (fill-in-the-blank-alternative-fuel-vehicle) I'll go out and buy one, but not until then.
Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
I have real questions about how well this will behave with mediocre maintenance. Engine control computers have a good track record, though, better than was expected by auto engineers in the 1980s.
I worked on an engine control reliability project in the early 1980s, so I saw some of this happen. There were lots of backup modes; not only did the computer have a stall timer and could restart in less than a rev, but the ignition module had a hardwired backup (with no spark advance) in case the CPU quit. You were limited to about 25MPH in this "limp-home mode", as it was called internally. Presumably something of equally brutal simplicity will be provided for steering and brakes.
In the end it will all work, because, unlike most software companies, auto companies have to take legal liability for their failures.
They keep talking about software controlling the ride.
I hope GM will not use any of the Micro$oft crap, otherwise phrase "Honey, I crushed my car" will have a whole new meaning!!!
Will we have to pay per seat licence?
Oh well....
If you look at the Mercedes (Daimler-Benz) A-Class, you will see it was designed for batteries/fuel cells. The floor is a double layer with space between the layers for the cells and the drive gear. That way the passengers are reaonably high, like a small SUV, but the weight is low down. The concept was launched as a passenger vehicle in the small car market, but in order to make it work with an ic engine the engine/transmission has to be a weird shape and, because there's no room for a normal steering system, the linkages go everywhere and the steering sucks. (Plus the lack of low down weight in the centre of the vehicle meant the handling was terrible). But by the time fuel cells are available Mercedes will have huge passenger mileages of experience with the platform. Daimler also own the Smart city car design which again makes a lot more sense when the transmission subunit is replaced with electrical drive.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
The money and oil keep flowing as usual. And the public is buying it. :(
And we're about to blow up a few tens of thousands of people to get Free oil for the oil companies, as well. They'll make trillions of dollars in "renegociated" oil leases with our new puppet dictatorship in Iraq. And I read that France, along with some other Western nations, are being told that if they don't back this "war", they are getting their Iraqi oil lease prices "renegociated" by us as punishment.
As Mark Twain said:
"The loud little handful--as usual--will shout for the war. The pulpit
will--warily and cautiously--object--at first; the great, big, dull bulk of
the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be
a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, 'It is unjust and
dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.' Then the handful will
shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason
against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and
be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them,
and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity.
Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the
platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their
secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers--as earlier--but
do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation--pulpit and all--will take
up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who
ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open.
Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the
nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those
conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse
to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince
himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he
enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
Mark Twain, "The Mysterious Stranger"
So the EV-1 didn't work out financially. GM is still trying.
The EV-1 was a big gamble for GM. It was a leap of faith in one technological direction and an answer to an increasingly stiff regulatory environment in California and possibly the nation. And by all accounts, it turned out to be really good for the kind of car it was intended to be.
But the first company to try something doesn't always mean it works out in the long run. (What's that phrase about leaders and arrows in their backs?) One approach to the alternative fuel automobile might make more market sense than another. Hybrids seem to be working better these days. Fuel cells might make sense in five years. (Remember the excitement when we thought the Segway HT was going to have an innovative fuel cell?)
Did the lease cost a lot? Sure! Go buy a Kia for $10,000 that is based on a century of technology, existing infrastructure and plenty of common knowledge on how a vehicle should work if you want something cheap. Want a first generation technology vehicle that has limited volume manufacturing beneifts and could have unforseen operational consequences--or worse, a fatal flaw in its design--and you'll pay more.
(Lease? You bet--there's a heck of a lot of proprietary technology locked up in the EV-1. You don't want just anyone to buy one and take it apart for reverse engineering purposes. [Oh, then there's the possible fatal flaw issue, too.] That's the way the world works today.)
Did enough people lease them? No. Gas prices didn't shoot up, the incentives for consumers just weren't good enough and, dammit, the convenience of $10,000 gas powered vehicle is just too great to overcome. GM can't be forever in the business of offering a next generation vehicle that is selling only to people who are committed enough to take the long view.
[Would I have leased one if I lived in California. I'd like to think yes: I'd been driving Saturns at the outset of the EV-1 program. But the cost would have made me think twice. Full disclosure: My father worked for GM for 40+ years and retired as a senior engineering executive. We both wanted the EV-1 to work out.]
--- "It annoyed me, so I fixed it." -- Tom's First Principle of Engineering
Fieros are still the number one platform for kit cars, since the tube frame provides all the strength. I've seen a very nice Ford GT-40 built on a Fiero. There are also at least a couple companies that make frame/suspension mods to swap the V6 (or I4) out for a V8. If GM goes forward with the AUTOnomy, you can bet there will be a revival in fibreglass. They will probably encrypt the "x-by-wire" thing to keep us from buying entire bodies from someone not approved by GM, but that won't stop people from building their own mechanicals around GM electronics. I'd like a '57 Bel Air with 2 trunks, please.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Probably not the BEST place to ask this, but why does everyone always mention Global Warming and Climate Change as if it were necessarily bad? Wouldn't heatting the earth up 5 degrees actually end up giving us MORE arable land in places like siberia and canada?
Maybe a warmer earth is a good thing!
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I'll be brief: nope, you're wrong.
Yes, fresh water is low, but the fuel cells don't run on water, they run on Hydrogen, often taken from such things as natural gas. Yes, you can use electrolsys to get the h from h20, but it more expensive.
How do you propose we are going to change the salinity of the oceans? See above.
Umm... in this case, the reaction is perfect... if you don't use the hydrogen, you don't get the electron... although there will be some leakage of the tanks, I'm sure... but there's already h2 in the air, it nature does just a fine job of using it.
The thing that is killing these enviromentally friendly cars is cheap gas. I would like to get one but I find it hard to break even in comparision with a regular car. $20,000 is alot of money to spend on a new car regardless and through property tax, insurance rates in there you are paying alot more than a regular car.
I would like to see the price of gas go up to $1.00 gallon so these type of vehicles would get serious mass production consideration.
Jeez, the more of that article I read, the weirder it got. You'd think the best way to market a new technology like a hydrogen car would be to say "Just like your current car, except great for the environment (and doesn't rely on foreign oil *cough*)". Not "Everything about this car is totally different, so you won't have a clue what to do with it, and therefore won't buy it". I mean, snap on bodies? Relocating the driver's seat? Remote control? Four wheel steering? New interfaces to steer, brake and accelerate? Instead of easing people into it gently, they seem to be creating something that's so un-car-like that it'll hit people's minds and bounce off.
Don't get me wrong, I think the skateboard chassis is an excellent development - it's really really good. There's tonnes of extra space, and it does allow for more flexible designs in the future. Hell, there are tonnes of weirdass things car companies could be doing with a current chassis... but why don't they? Because they know IT WOULDN'T SELL. It's like the frog in a pot - heat the water slowly and he doesn't notice, throw him into a boiling pot and he just hops out.
Of course, conspiracy theorists are already seizing these points as proof that this project is set up to fail... let's hope not.
I have a 1999 Pontiac Firebird. Just after 30,000 miles the Alternator went out - not a big deal, I replaced it myself. Now, it's in the shop - after 52,000 miles the transmission blew. Something about a "Reaction Sunshell" that split wide open. There's $1500+ I didn't want to spend.
Maybe GM should worry about rolling cars that aren't lemons off the assembly line before trying to develop fuel cell cars. Fuel Cell doesn't do you any good if you can't get the damn thing to shift into gear...
"In developing nations, one chassis might be the common base for vehicles as diverse as luxury limousines or farm vehicles."
I find this amusing, how many farmers in developing nations will be able to afford this cutting edge technology to use as 'farm vehicles'?
"The unit is intended to last for years, much longer than a conventional vehicle."
Oh, another good one. Here they are admitting that todays vehicles are not intended to last for years.
"The nerve center of AUTOnomy's electrical system is a universal "docking port," or connection, at the center of the "skateboard" chassis."
How much you want to bet they use a huge mass of wires with a custom connector of some sort instead of a nice, simple ethernet connection?
"With its robust 42-volt electrical system, the car is configured to run any number of devices in the passenger compartment, from homes to entire farms."
Thats one hell of a passenger compartment.
I hate to be a pessimist, but this seems to interesting and novel to actually happen. Anyone ever wonder why the auto industry doesn't have a term like vaporware?
I don't know what motorcycles you're looking at, but my Y2k Ninja gets 45mpg consistently. I'd say that's pretty good for a vehicle that can do 0-60 in about 3 seconds.[Not that *I* have the talent to actually do that].
As a comparison, my '97 Nissan 200SX [2 door Sentra basically] gets about 33mpg [0-60 in about 9 seconds], and my gf's 98 Mazda Protoge gets about 26mpg [0-60 in about 2 years
Now sure, if I go and put on Ti headers and pipe [not quite legal], and stage 3 jet kit the mileage will go down the tubes. But that's something the owner chooses to do, and you can just as easily kill the gas mileage of a Civic.
Somewhat more on Topic, I think GM is looking in the right direction. If they can make a fuel-cell car that is viable at $20k, lasts longer, is WAY configurable, and cheaper to own [TCO] than a Honda Accord or Toyota Camery [just examples of standard cars today] then I'll definitely be in line to buy one.
Ender
Nothing to see here
I was talking to a chemistry teacher in college a few years back and he told me something pretty funny about hydrogen burning stuff. ONE, when you burn hydrogen in a pure oxygen environment, you get water. we don't live in a pure oxygen environment, our air is 80% nitrogen. when you burn that, you get some kind of greenhouse gas, i forget what it was. But this is a fuel cell car so that wouldn't make a difference, just putting it out.
The second point he made was where the hydrogen comes from. hydrogen floating free is very rare. it has to be refined. when NASA sends a shuttle in space, it has thousands of gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. And what does NASA use to refine this liquid hydrogen? He said they refine it from gasoline and other petrolium by-products. The number i remember him shooting off was something like 15 or 16 gallons of gasoline to make 1 gallon of liquid Hydrogen.
Just something to keep in the back of the brain pan.
*** I suffer from a colorful array of psychological problems
You mean "case in point."
"Electric wheels just dont turn as hard as gas-driven ones. (torque)"
That simply isn't true. Electric engines have gobs of torque. Their limitation is that their power is great at low RPM's and drops off precipitously as the RPM's go up, Kinda like a diesel, only more so. Thats why Hybrid vehicles have caught on. The electric engines are very good from a dead stop, but peter out at 30 or 40 mph, and then the little gas engine can carry the load.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
"Did enough people lease them? No"
Actually, there was a long waiting list of people wanting to lease them.
"GM has spent over a billion dollars on this design."
GM spends about a billion dollars on every car model redesign, so that isn't a dire a sit sounds. And they spread the expense over a decade. And deducted the expense from their taxes, so taxpayers subsidized it to the tunes of hundreds of billions. And billions of tax dollars was sprqayed at the car companies to develop new tech, which they used to develop proprietary IP they get to keep -- not to mention bury in a hole, as well as using the patents to nuke similar lines of research by others.
So, GM did not even spend half of what they spend on a Grand Am redesign. And the Impact gave them lots of patents. And they are going to crush them all.
I don't see how battery-powered cars help anything, if we're just going to build more coal plants to charge the batteries.
I find it hard to believe that fuel cells used in cars would be so fragile that they would "crack" from the jarring involved in going over a speed bump. These things contain hydrogen after all, which is MUCH more explosive than gasoline. But by all means go ahead and drive your Bonneville into a hydrogen explosion. Somehow I doubt your big car will menace these new cars any more than it already menaces the environment and everyone else on the road.
later,
Jess
I am programmed for etiquette, not destruction!
Surprisingly, even "diesel" train locomotives use electric motors to drive the wheels. The diesel just powers a generator. Along with providing high torque, this arrangement is also economical because the electic motors can be replaced more easily than a diesel.
to err is human, to forgive is divine, to forget is... umm...
Conspicuously absent is a discussion about the source of hydrogen. It's true that hydrogen is a really common element but it's tied up in compounds such as water and it takes a lot of energy to split it off. The best way today is to use petroleum and it might be a more efficient use of petroleum than to convert it to gasoline and then burn it in our vehicles, maybe. And that still releases CO2 to the atmosphere. The same holds true for methanol, corn oil, etc.
Hydroelectric power could be used. After all there is always a source of water where there are hydroelectric generators but it would have to be excess power that is used and that's disappearing and there won't be many more hydroelectric plants built.
Solar power might be used but solar power is expensive and would require truly immense "farms".
Wind farms, too, could be used, but it would require a lot of them and the power is expensive.
What's left? Nuclear power plants. Good luck on that one.
In the future we might be able to collect power in space and beam it to earth but that's a long way off.
So where is the hydrogen for our new "hydrogen economy" coming from?
(Oh, yes, the hydrogen will have to have an odor to comply with current laws, and that compound will have to be removed before it poisons the fuel cell).
Nate
It seems like most of the naysayers around here are only considering the US market. One of the articles pointed out that only %12 of the current world population have automobiles. That leaves a bunch of people who could use more flexible/better transportation, and many of them would also be interested in the possibility of powering their home off the vehicle. If GM could capture even 20% of 1 billion Indians that they wouldn't get with an IC car...
I think the world demands fuel cell vehicles. It doesn't matter if the US won't build it because of conspiracy or whatever, it will be built. Perhaps GM realizes this and wants to be ready so that the fuel cell revolution isn't driven by India, or China, or Brazil.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
All I have to say is that I would prefere a car that had a solid link between the steering wheel and the wheels.. and a solid link between the brakes and the brake pedal.
The last think I would want is to be cruising along, have the power systems fail on my car, or malfunction, and kareen into a wall at 100 Km/h just because the drive by wire system wasn't working properly. At least with solid mechanics there its a little less likely that they'll fail.
> I hear this conspiracy theory alot, but in the real world, how could they prevent a better technology?
Easy - the same way the automobile industry killed off the trolley industry - they bought up trolley systems in cities and shut them down. (It probably wouldn't be exactly the same tactic, but you get the idea.)
Save it for when you need it, or
use it to make plastic or something.
Duct tape, XML, democracy: Not doing the job? Use more.
Point is, they didn't make an alternative to their IC cars because, well, it's suicide for them! Electric cars don't have a tenth of the parts a present-day car has. They don't break down. Theat means the entire service bay portion of the automakers' bottom line is almost GONE.
There may be SOME truth to this BUT the situation is only tenable while the superior technology is only marginally superior. (by superior I mean superior for the purposes of the consumer not in a diffuse "better for everyone" sense) Once the technology reaches a point where it is inarguably better for the consumer the situation will change. One (or all) of the car manufacturers will be driven by greed to betray their tacit agreement if they can produce a product significantly superior to those of his competitors. If greed isn't sufficient motivation FEAR that those competitors will be the ones doing the betraying will be the motiviation. Established companies like the big three auto makers have no particular interest in pursuing speculative research but once the research progresses to something more concrete their interest in it and willingness to develop it will pick up dramatically.
There will probably be a lot of false starts and abortive attempts at introducing any truly new, disruptive technology. What is interesting about this latest effort is that they are spending a significant amount of $$$ on it. Perhaps it is a sign that the technology is starting to reach that critical transition from "vapor" that looks good on paper to something real.
This idea of a low-slung 'pancake' chassis with an easy-to-change body is not at all new. Ever see a VW Beetle (the old one, type 111) with its body lifted off? Yep, it kinda looks like a skateboard. The tallest part (other than the steering column) is the engine's cooling shroud. The 411 (squareback) type reduced it even more. Great concept, easy to manufacture, easy to fit bodies for different models (the Thing and Beetle, for example, were both 111 types.)
In contrast, the modern Beetle is a unibody design. While it shares running gear with the Golf, Jetta and other VW models, the body and chassis are unique to that model.
As much as I like modular cars (I've owned two 'old-school' VWs), guess which Beetle I'd rather count on protecting me in a crash?
Admittedly, this comparison between the old and new Beetles is unfair. Okay, so compare contemporary unibody cars to body-on-frame types (SUV's in particular). The unibody-type vehicles fare much better in crash tests. This is because the entire structure of the vehicle can work as a unit to dissipate and redirect the crash energy away from the passenger cabin. That's very hard to to well with body-on frame.
Reducing the height of the components as GM proposes is a great idea. It opens up new options for more-efficient vehicle layouts, much in the way Ferris Porsche's "People's Car" did over 50 years ago. It could, in the context of an integrated body design, actually enhance safety by allowing energy-abosorbing structures to assume optimal shapes instead of having to accomodate bulky drivetrain components.
But I think for passenger cars body-on-frame layout has (fortunately) gone the way of the dodo bird; SUV's are going that way and it won't be long before trucks finally get away from body-on-frame too (it's been done - nerd points to the person who can name the vehicle.)
There's another stupid idea I don't like in this car: putting the motors in the wheels. Even if the unsprung weight were equal to disc brakes, can you imagine the pounding these motors would have to take? (not to mention the fireworks they'd give off in a crash.)
- dvd_tude
This is the Chrysler K-car concept but with fuelcells. Not new really and atleast the K-Car was real. This is fantasy and mostly hype to stall attempts to reduce oil consumption by using existing technology. IMHO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
It's great that the US automotive industry is embracing fuel-cell technology, but the problem is they can't even get a traditional combustion engine correct. What makes you think they would be able to put such a vehicle together at 20k when they can't produce 200+ hp from a V6 engine without a turbo or supercharger and half inch gaps in the sheet metal? The US auto industry is in bad shape, and as of now I would never purchase from the Big 3. Even companies such as Hyundai offer better passenger cars then Detroit.
They spend a billion on every platform redesign (mostly more than one model to a platform). In 3-4 years they're going to be due for a new platform to run for the next 20. The Autonomy is a contender for that new platform design. If it makes financial sense, I think GM will do it. If not, it'll get buried and the patents used defensively to hinder competitors from blowing GM out of the water just as you speculate.
But it *is* a speculation, not a certainty that it'll all get buried. If Saddam Hussein decides to nuke the Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti oil fields, you can bet the Autonomy's going to get built because we'll be stuck at the oil price ceiling of $35 a barrel, extracting oil from the tar sands of Canada to make up the volume. That's $3-$4 oil here, $5-$7 in Europe. That makes hydrogen much, much more attractive.
God forbid it happens, but it's certainly not impossible.
this thing looks awwwwwful...lets trys some other strapon...
Sorry but that all sounds too much like the PR crap we got from Microsoft for 4 years and resulted in Windows 95. All hype and only used to stall the competition.
It would make more sense to be designing home fuelcell systems and hybrid gasoline/electric cars today. Did I say TODAY? Then, migrate the hybrid toward more electric and charged via the home fuelcell before building a car run by fuelcell 8-10 years from now( maybe ). If they did this then I might believe this is less than hype.
if it looks like a dead fish, smells like a dead fish, and feels like a dead fish... it's most likely a dead fish.
IMHO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
my vfr750 gets around 45mpg and does 0-60 in 3.0.
its a honda as well.
heck my passat gets 36-38mpg on the highway. the big 3 should just adopt supercharger/turbo technology on more of its cars if people want displacement, the turbo isnt spooling up while the car is on the highway anyways.
most new bikes still get 30+mpg.
most oil in the US is not used in cars, its used for consumer/industrial goods and power generation.
www.commutercar.com is an interesting idea. its an electric car that is a good autocorsser and does 0-60 under 5 seconds. its range is only 80 miles and can have a quick charge in 10 minutes.
too bad its super expsensive.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
What is interesting about this latest effort is that they are spending a significant amount of $$$ on it.
Spending money does not equate to delivering products. GM has had a long history of holding up really cool concept technology (anyone remmber their one-person commuter vechicle?), but only as hype - never as an actual product.
Superior technology argument is partially true (I'd argue that the benefits of hybrids currencly outweigh any negatives for 40% of the US population) - it takes a shitload of money to product cars for the consumer market - there's all sorts of saftety testing that must be done before certification, you still have to have manufacturing capacity to build the actual cars, even if you have the tech to produce an electric or hybrid drivetrain/powerplant. This is the barrier to entry for competitors, barring those who have gotten government supports for domestic competitive concerns (ie, military/industrial.)
Finally, you have to have a distribution network. It's like going up against Microsoft in the pre-open source days - nobody is gonna fund you.
In the interests of fairness, I'd yank all government funding to corporate labs that don't deliver products. No, the EV1 is not a product, and it never was. Witness the GM exec who said the EV1 was pulled because it "sold poorly." Of course it "sold poorly" -- IT WAS NEVER SOLD - only leased! This sound byte was repeated by the press so often, I'll bet every American was convinced that there was no market for the electric car - despite the fact that there was a long waiting list for new EV1s...
change displacement to fuel economy
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
A modular, fuel-cell vehicle will certainly be easier to manufacture and better for the environment, but the resulting cars will drive like slop.
The main problem here is that the "skateboard" technique of manufacturing is really a throwback to the good ol' "body on frame" method of car design. Just like your great-granddad's Ford Model T from 1903, the body is a separate unit from the driveline and suspension. As a result, stiffness will be much, much, much lower than the cars of today, and ride quality will be wobbly and uncomfortable.
But wait, you ask. Won't the new "drive by wire" stuff help this? In a word, no. The truth here is that the only stressed structural member will be the flat "skateboard" and no electronics can do anything about that. Modern cars use a "unibody" design where the entire passenger cabin, including walls and roof, contribute stiffness. This is the reason that a modern shitbox (like a Kia) drives so much better than an antique shitbox like that Model T. GM's plan will only serve to give us postmodern shitboxes.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not down on tech. I think that electric motors will be the way of the future. They're lighter and more efficient than internal combustion engines (ICEs). They develop their peak power and torque from standstill instead of at redline. They can run at road speed, so there's no need for a pesky transmission.
If GM really wants to set the world on fire, they need to make their assembly lines modular and not the cars. I forsee a world where they can pump out custom spaceframe chassis for fuel-cell powered vehicles using four-wheel direct electric drive. If they were really smart, they'd work on driving the costs of composites down so we get carbon-fiber monocoque street cars with bullet-proof kevlar saftey cells.
But this is GM we're talking about. They brought you the new Impala. Oooh, and don't forget the Aztek. Yay.
Tetris rules.
Interchangeable parts on GM and other cars is old history. The stories from the 1970's and early 80's about Cadillac owners finding Oldsmobile engines under the hood of their brand new Cadillac are true. And the only difference was the serial number stamped on the engine. The doors and other body parts were interchangeable, too, just needed different trim. This was also true at the Chevy-Pontiac-Buick level. This interchangeability varied from year to year.
I suspect that, after you pay enough for all the interchangeable parts to convert your passenger car to a light pickup and back, you'll have spent enough for one each of the non-interchangeable type cars. So why bother?
Um yeah, it wouldn't be any different. Now explain to me why we should kill a few thousand or tens of thousands of them, at a cost of a few hundred or thousand lives and billions of taxpayer dollars to us, just to have nothing change?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Now that's a non sequitor if I ever saw one. Emissions include CO2, which gasoline will always produce. To be zero-emission, it means no CO2 either. Also, gasoline is deliberately manufactured during the cracking process at the refinery. If there were less demand for gasoline, then the oil can be used for other purposes thus reducing the demand for oil which means less trade deficits for the U.S., better national security by reducing dependence on foreign sources of oil, reducing the price of oil which reduces the amount of money for terrorism, etc., etc.
You've made a huge freaking assumption that coal plants are the only source of electricity.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
If General Motors made computers, they would all run on gasoline and have a pull starter.
The only thing holding back scientists and engineers are corporate executives who can only see the world in terms of profit and loss on the stock tickers.
Not many people realize this, but every single diesel automobile produced today is capable of burning 100% Biodiesel fuel. Here is how you would buy Biodiesel. Here is a forum site for the only passenger automobile diesel engines available in North America, the TDI. On this site, are forums, among many others, that deal with biodiesel fuel itself, reducing emissions, and getting better fuel economy. Another little-known fact: approximately 40% of the automobiles sold in Europe today are diesel-powered, yet only 1/3 of 1% of the automobiles sold in the U.S. are diesel-powered.
Biodiesel : domestic, renewable, clean, and in the fuel tank of my bone stock 2002 New Beetle TDI
sorry, but I don't buy your argument.
The whole point of the AUTOnomy is to be able to swap body styles and to a lesser extent power plants of cars as needed, so you keep a basic chassis and swap out the power plant and frame as desired. GM probably won't lose money because they can sell new bodies and more efficient power plants as your needs change. Got a sports car and just had twins? Swap on the minivan frame. Want a convertible for summer but a SUV for winter? Just buy two frames and swap 'em out. What you drive suddenly becomes a fashion statement (then again, it is already or people wouldn't dump $60G-100G into Hummers).
Early battery powered cars didn't work out - they cost too much to compete with combustion engines and can't be fueled as fast (or at all, depending on where you live). This is why we have hybrid engines - a tradeoff that allows the technology to mature and cuts some of the problems. Hydrogen has similar problems - no refuling stations, more expensive to build (right now), potentially dangerous in accidents. A lot of people are also fearful that terrorists will use hydrogen powered cars as explosives, but I don't know how feasible that is (depends on quite a few factors).
Also, a good chunk of automobile parts aren't manufactured by the big car companies, they're purchased, so less parts may be BENEFICIAL to the makers. AUTOnomy specifically could be VERY beneficial to GM, seeing that frames are a big part of their profit (that and engines, but engines have more 3rd party).
Monopolies on parts are bad, however, so if one company owns the IP on batteries and charges high fees for use, manufacturers will look elsewhere for technology. So oil companies owning and charging high prices on battery technology could easily be crippling the industry. I know nothing about this, so I'll let others argue it.
Most of all, though, cars obsolete themselves just like computers, so sooner or later, people will upgrade because they use power more efficiently or have better styling, or just cooler features (mmm GPS). I really don't think automakers fear electic power all that much (in some ways it's being forced on them early, but that probably is because they want the technology to mature first and in reality the only way to get the technology to mature is to use it).
My children are going to evolve wings and just fly.
Ave Molech Setting
Ummm...Saudi Arabia itself has 25 percent of the world's known oil reserves. The U.S. only has 3 percent of the world's known oil reserves.
"Electric wheels just dont turn as hard as gas-driven ones. (torque)"
Electric motors actually have more torque, pound-for-pound, than gasoline engines do. Furthermore, electric motors have a perfectly flat torque curve from 0 RPMs, whereas most gasoline engines don't hit their peak torque until at least 1,750 rpm. This means electric motors have a MUCH larger area under the torque curve !! Thus, I would argue electric motors have substantially more torque than gasoline engines. If you don't believe me, check out this link and this link.
Biodiesel : domestic, renewable, clean, and in the fuel tank of my bone stock 2002 New Beetle TDI
Don't forget about diesels. I am NOT a Volkswagen salesman nor am I in any way connected to Volkswagen (I'm a Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) software engineer, if you must know), but you can buy a VW Golf, Jetta, or Beetle with a diesel engine far cheaper (under $17k, brand new) than you can buy an Insight or a Prius and STILL get 50 mpg on less pollution and more torque !! With a diesel engine, you can also use 100% biodiesel fuel, a renewable, lower-polluting energy source grown here in the U.S. that is not much more expensive than regular (petroleum-based) diesel fuel.
Click here for more info.
Biodiesel : domestic, renewable, clean, and in the fuel tank of my bone stock 2002 New Beetle TDI
If the cars release only water vapor, is it pure or does it need purification? It could be a way for someone to keep fresh water and not have to go to the store all the time.
did you know the oil industry owns the patent on NiMH battery technology?
I thought that Energy Conversion Devices did?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
If Mods saw the sensible replies before they modded this post down I would have greater faith in humanity. But hey, it's Slashdot after all were morons roam (myself included).
Wired posted an article about this in August.
It's an impossible upgrade, but if the PTO could be privatized, with a cap on its income based on inflation, the world could be better off.
Imagine registering a patent, and being given a per-licence royalty dependant on inflation. That royalty would be worth, say $99 today.
The PTO would then license patents out at $100, again dependent on inflation.
The licenses would be on a per-product basis, making its cost almost an afterthought on behalf of the designers. This would make technology cheap for the consumer, and economical for all but the very smallest (as in, custom jobs on 5$ trinkets) businesses.
By privatizing it, you're cutting as many ties with the government as possible.
What's this Submit thingy do?
> The IC engine, over a hundred years old and horribly inefficient, needs to go the way of bustles and button-up corsets.
A cotton-panties guy, eh? You need a vacation in Paris.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Whether it's worth it depends on how the "new Iraq" turns out, and whether you believe the "old Iraq" is a real threat. In other words nobody knows for sure.
Problems with mass transit, as it now exists:
...
1) Individuals need to go to separate destinations in separate timeframes and current mass transit doesn't have fine enough granularity in delivery times or delivery destinations
2) Some public vehicles are filthy and unsafe due to litterbugs/taggers and criminals.
3) Different people have different sound/social requirements: Joe Businessman wants privacy and quiet for reading the paper while the Joe Hooligan wants to argue (loudly) about football and stuff.
Now if mass transit were centally powered, centrally controlled light rail that could handle both public and private vehicles with spurs to all mail addresses, we might have a winner.
Imagine a light rail system (maglev/monorail/slot car) where:
The grid handles all driving tasks. No more drunk or incompetant drivers, no more gridlock and hopefully no more collisions.
The grid handles all the vehicle power tasks. With centrally powered electric vehicles, air pollution can be reduced.
Private vehicles are allowed on the public grid and for those that can't afford/don't want a private vehicle, public vehicles are available.
A public vehicle can be summoned like a taxi for immediate pickup, or pickup at a predetermined time.
Both humans and packages can be delivered. Shop from home!
Destinations could refuse delivery of people and packages based on the destination's security criteria.
Children/packages could be safely loaded into a locked private car and only preauthorized people could unload them: emergency personnel and the designated unloader.
The size and carring capacity of the vehicle can vary by the delivery task. Sample vehicles include:
a) privately owned custom cars with all the ammenities of home.
b) cars with a full service bar escorting drunks to/from the big game in complete safety.
c) cars with desks and other classroom resources for the school field trip.
d) specialized delivery vehicles for delivering everything from fresh milk to refined plutonium.
e) Car carriers for interoperability between the light rail grid and paved roads.
Various routes could be selected by type: fastest (time), fastest (velocity), scenic, most G forces
Light rail vehicles could load onto current heavy rail vehicles like intermodal containers do for cross country trips between light rail grids.
What would be ideal for me is to use GM's concept (in wheel motors, drive by wire, etc.) for everything but the fuel cell and designing it so the fuel cell (and supporting infrastructure) can be bolted on later. Then come up with a way to bolt on an engine design for the interim. I know that fully serial hybrids have not yet shown themselves to be practical, but perhaps they could get close with this vehicle. Then, you can upgrade (with more cash flow into GM - a plus for them) to a cleaner, quieter, solution later.
I would love to be able to design my own body for this chassis - I have lots of ideas on my ideal moderate clearance/minivan/camper/4wd vehicle. Even though I'll never do it, if there is an after-market for bodies that give me more choice than the current market, that would be better.
Dara (my bumper sticker currently reads: I'd rather be driving a direct methanol fuel cell vehicle)
Multiple entire farms will fit easily in the back seat after activating the Dr Who(tm) space transformer.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Disclaimer: I work as a contract employee for GM. The points made in this posting are my own, based upon my own observations and opinions. In no way do they (or I) represent General Motors or my direct employer.
With regard to the Insight -- It's a Honda. I really doubt that any of the "American" car companies have anything to do with its relatively poor sales. I seriously considered purchasing one (ignoring my GM employee-discount) and abandoned the idea. They cost too much, and I'm leery of the diminished tire width. Less tire = = less control, which is a consideration in Michigan winters.
With regard to the EV1 -- amazing vehicle. Not yet ready for primetime. The battery life is simply not there; 90 miles does not a commute make. In my opinion, it would be better to regard these vehicles as very advanced prototypes. I believe they were as much about testing consumer acceptance as they were about battery technology. (Incidentally, if battery technology is so artificially expensive, why are the batteries on the Insight and Prius just as expensive as those on the EV1? I don't buy market-dominating conspiracy theories. I think it has been proven by the drug companies that profit-generating IP rights pale before consumer outrage. Li-ion batteries are not as necessary to life as AZT, but they are expensive enough so that somebody would break from the cartel and go into production, alone.
I've been following the internal GM news about AUTOnomy/Hy-Wire, the Parallel Hybrid Truck, and Displacement-on-Demand (shuts off engine cylinders when they aren't needed -- projected to save ~25% MPG). I have a completely different take on this article, and on GM/American automakers' view of these electrically-powered vehicles.
I think the Big 3 (2 1/2, whatever . . . :-) have finally realized that American consumers aren't coming back without a real reason to do so. I also think they've figured-out that Americans will only buy stereotypical "American" cars (read: BIG) from them. Successful econo-boxes (for whatever reason: better engineering, cheaper labor, weak dollar-to-Yen, Consumer Reports bias, etc.) are all imported. That means the only way for American car makers to survive is to change the rules.
That's where I think these vehicles are coming from. Finally, somebody pulled his head from the sand and decided it was better to risk losing the entire company in a hurry than to certainly lose the entire company slowly. That's why the first projects are "American" vehicles, in my opinion. BIG trucks, with better gas mileage. These are designed to be the point vehicles. To get the ball rolling, so to speak. The AUTOnomy is the follow-up.
You make, I think, an excellent point about the car makers losing control of the cars. It's not too difficult for me to see GM making the AUTOnomy chassis, but people buying auto bodies from other manufacturers. I think the people leading this project at GM have considered this, and accept it as the price of changing the rules. I also think (based, not least on what I read in the sciam article) that they aren't worried about it. I read between the lines and see GM trying not to become a resurgent car company, but a major energy company.
Last point -- about losing money from servicing vehicles. I work for the unit of GM that deals with servicing cars. GM doesn't make money on servicing cars. If the vehicle is under warranty, GM has to pay to get it fixed. If it's not under warranty, customers don't take it to the dealership -- they take it to AutoLab and repair it with aftermarket parts.
Spending money does not equate to delivering products. GM has had a long history of holding up really cool concept technology (anyone remmber their one-person commuter vechicle?), but only as hype - never as an actual product.
Of course not. But GM is apparently spending more than just PR/play money this time around. The Wired article pegged the actual number at $1 billion. As a GM exec put it that's not "betting the farm" but it's real money (about what they spend on developing a new model). Failing to ship "cool concepts" is not the result of a conspiracy. As you pointed out it costs a "shitload" of money to to produce cars for the consumer market - every idle idea that makes it to a whiz-bang demo is not going to be developed especially if it is a new or risky. Even a behemoth car company can't blow the $1 billion necessary to develop a product unless they are resonably sure it will sell - alot. I'm sure some people want a one-person commuter vehicle I tend to think that GM was right that it was not enough to be worth the expense of developing the idea.
Superior technology argument is partially true (I'd argue that the benefits of hybrids currencly outweigh any negatives for 40% of the US population)
Just being superior isn't sufficient to suplant an established technology it has to be vastly superior. Just the fact that the "benefits outwieght the negatives for 40% of the population" isn't going to cut it. There can't BE any negatives, or they have to be so marginal as to be outweighed (in a painfully obvious way) by the overwhelming positives for everybody.
The auto manufacturers are dabbling with these new technologies, milking concept cars for good PR but not ever really quite producing a product. I'm more inclined to suspect that this has more to do with the technologies not being ready to suplant the old technology than some conspiracy between the oil companies and the car manufacturers. The car companies have nothing to lose and a lot to gain by producing a superior product. The only reason to fail to do so is if it is "superior" only in the eyes of it's proponents but it is in fact inferior in the eyes of the intended consumers. What is intriguing about this article is that the technology seems to be advancing to the point where the advantages aren't only in the eyes of ideologues but are real enough in the eyes of profit conscious auto execs to actually make a stab of it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Set light to a match and you can give a person heat for a minute.
Set light to the person and you give them heat for the rest of their life
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
The IC engine is not that Horriable, a gasoline engine is about half as efficent as a fuel cell, a diesel is within 66 percent of a fuel cell.
Battery technology didn't just die, it died because there is a limit to batteries, WYSIWYG in battery tech today, its a simple matter of chemistry.
GM did not just kill the EV1 it was a huge flop, The only could lease them in three states since it was impractical in most states. In the time the program was run they only leased around 300 units. This was not keaping the program afloat which cost insane amounts of money. Also when it was found there was a design flaw in the charging port they had to recall the cars which lead to the final demise. For electric cars to work there has to be a large enough market, and the simple matter is there is no market. Also electric cars are impractical, they are not beificial to the Earth, in the big picture G.R.E.E.T. model things like a diesel car are better for the earth.
Also electric cars are still very complex, they have a small percentage less of parts. Yes the service aspect of cars is important to companies, especialy GM who designs cars to be hard to work on. But EV's still have service issues like Battery packs. Also having extremely reliable cars helps improve sales. You can't expect Auto companies to ditch current designs and go for things like EV's which the puplic does not want. Not everyone lives in the inner city driving a few miles a day. To make a normal car economicaly viable a car company needs to sell in the neighbor hood of 20,000 units a year. There is not the market for EV's to maintain this. The production EV's out there survive by being options from current models. Want an EV , buy a Electric Ford Ranger, Chevy S10, toyota Rav4, honda "something i saw in LA, don't know model" and others they are factory option packages. But are cost effective by reusing parts.
Also the fed does give universities money for such research, guess what the non-industry universities concluded EV's are not the way to go ether, hybrids are example www.futuretruck.org
if you want a EV's to happen, develope a energy storage devise that I can pull enough electrical energy out to power a 4 passenger car with nice features, and acceptable performance/safety for 500 miles and have this device be less than 2 cubic feet (IE box 2'x1'x1') In other words have then energy storage of a conventional cars liquid fuel tank.
Point is, they didn't make an alternative to their IC cars because, well, it's suicide for them!
Except that us Californians just changed the rules.
Basically, auto emissions are going to have to come down. Honda is about the only automaker that won't have to do something drastic to meet these requirements, and Toyota is a close second. We can probably kiss Excursions and Ferarris goodby (I won't miss the Excursions, but I get to see a Ferarri at least once a day, and I'll miss that) and the SUVs will either need to go hybrid, fuel-cell, or hack themselves back so badly nobody will buy one who doesn't really need it.
Why is CA doing this now? Well, in part because the air quality issues here, though that's been steadily improving over the last 20 years to the point that LA barely even ranks for bad air quality these days. Personally, I think the state got so soundly fucked by Enron last year while Bush and the rest of DC sat back and watched that this is an opportunity for CA to drive the rest of the nation for a while.
California is unique among states in having the ability to set pollution standards for cars. Automakers won't make two distinct cars for the US market, so CAs rules become the nations rules. I don't expect that CA is going to back down on their timelines either - the automakers are going to have to make some changes. Time to stick it to the Texans, I suppose...
please
How about:
The US might get better access to Iraqi oil?
Distraction from economic problems (see wag the dog).
George Bush is an idiot?
Anyway things will definitely if US attacks Iraq. Coz you'd piss off lots of people and throw up more potential terrorists against your own country.
The nuclear/chem/bio thingy is nothing - Iraq has no launch capability that can reach US. They can reach Israel though, so that could be another reason.
Whereas to attack US you don't have to sneak weapons in. US is full of weapons, you just have to sneak in. Which is easy.
I dont think the IC engine is obsolete, we just use obsolete fuel - powered by methanol it actually runs more efficiently and has little or no harmful emissions. Its also a replenishible resource, but seems the oil industry would rather push electric because of the patents they have on the fuel cells that were being used
Actually, you make a pretty good case for the idea that California's legislative whims affect interstate commerce. That means Congress can step in and modify California's rules, perhaps invalidating them. The Supremes will probably make the ultimate decision if it comes to legal blows.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
I think the key to this whole thing is the fact that they feel that if they can produce a car cheap enough, they can penetrate China and the 3rd world economies, where currently no one can afford a car..They want to sell billions more at a reduced price raising their overall profit in a currently stagnat market.
Even if the battery problem was solved the charging problem wouldn't be. The power grid was not designed to allow the recharging of thousands of automobiles. I worked on a GM hybrid vehicle (battery/fuel cell) 10 years ago so they are hardly just jumping on the bandwagon.
wow, 10 years ago and still nothing. I guess my main piont is that hybrid gasoline/electric systems exist today and can reduce our fuel consumption considerable while also using technologies needed for next generation propulsion. At the same time, fuelcell based home generation( and others ) should be addressed before they try to put these things in moving vehicles. At a point were we have distributed and clean power generation, we can work on both shrinking the system for vehicle use AND/OR use it for a more electric use in vehicles.
Shooting for the moon all at once is dangerous and will most likely fail. Then again, I still feel that failure is what they want because anything less than failure would mean less oil use.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
It's been a while but I believe Standard Oil purchased the patent from Ovonics and then British Petroleom ( BP ) purchased it from Standard Oil.
I forget who started the legal proceedings against Toyota and Panasonic but it was mentioned last year in the Toyota eGroups ( now Yahoo Groups ).
The thing about Ovonics was that they only could make a very few NiMH batteries work enough to show to investors and customers. When customers attempted to make the licensed batteries, they didn't work and only when the Japanese fixed the problems did the market for NiMH take off.....
IIRC
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I don't see the Sierra Club and Environemtnal Defense Fund offering $2500.00 subsidy to each purchase of a hybrid vehicle.
They are all too willing to spend millions of dollars to lobby the government for 'protecting the environment' but don't directly help hybrid vehicles get on the road via a cost subsidy.
they have no credibility on the environment until they spend 5 percent of their annual budgets actually purchasing hybrid vehicles.