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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."
Right. Lets just monopolize the market and set insane pricetags, then finally close the division saying it didn't work out. Case and Point
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?
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.
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.
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.
than many new motorcycles, and calling motorcycles fuel efficient is silly today.
> 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.
... and the peace loving people ... Neither of the two have any foothold in the policy makers domain.
I dunno about this, the huge industries behind horses and steam engines could do little to prevent internal combustion.
I hear this conspiracy theory alot, but in the real world, how could they prevent a better technology? Do you actually see a law being written that forces you into a gas combustion engine?
> In the end, the only two winners would be the envrionmentalists
Hmm. Last I checked there was a huge "environmental" lobby spouting FUD and gloom and doom at every corner. Look at the energy crisis in California. We (America) has arguably more oil than the Arab world. We can't tap it because of the environmental lobby.
Same goes for the 'peace loving people'. You have a very lopsided view of government.
The world depends on oil, commuter vehicles are just a portion of that dependency. Millions of us heat our homes with it (more of it goes up my flue than out of my tailpipe), and there are plenty of other transportation technologies where hybrid fuel cells just don't apply, and wont for a long long time (planes, trains, ships, semis, buses). Electric wheels just dont turn as hard as gas-driven ones. (torque)
The dependency on oil isn't going away because of a car that runs on batteries.
This is exciting to me because it seems much more economical. It looks as though it would be less prone to breakdown, and easier to repair when one occurs.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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
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.
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.
Yes, fuel cells aren't "free" they are essentially storing energy that we are generating elsewhere. But the "elsewhere" is what makes it interesting. You are no longer restricted to using oil in millions of tiny internal combustion engines. You can use whatever is most efficient (Nuclear). You can use fuels that we have lying around in abundance (coal) without having to become involved in, and dependent on, the political quagmire of the middle east.
Obviously using coal (which we have in abundance) or using Nukes is probably not what most environmentalists have in mind when they sing the praises of Fuel Cells. Realistically though that is (at least partly) what such a move would mean. Still I think the environmental impact would be a net postive one. Probably significantly so.
The international political impact would also be postive - at least from the point-of-view of the USA. The middle east and all it's problems would shrink in significance. OPEC raises the price of oil? Who cares, other sources of energy pick up the slack. Regional wars in the Middle East? We are free to stay out of it with no ill effects to us no matter the outcome. We can let them sort it out themselves, mediate a dispute or support one side or another without the overriding concern of oil and "our national interest". True in some sense the Middle East would suffer. Their one meal ticket gone they will suffer from poverty & neglect as Africa currently does. But their miseries will be largely self-inflicted (as in Africa) not the result of our machiavelian intrigues in the service of cheap oil.
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.
I think you are misinformed. Crystalline silicon PV systems have efficiencies greater than 20%. Thin film PV technologies have even greater efficiency. There is more than enough sunlight to provide more than enough power. If every roof had PV shingles we would provide a substantial portion of our electric power needs.
PV isn't "the solution," however. The real problems with PV are that the sun doesn't shine on them all the time, and thus batteries (or some other energy storage) are required. Electrochemical batteries are both an efficiency and environmental problem. So, PV cannot supply 100% of our energy. So why does something have to supply 100% to be useful? NOTHING provides 100% of our electicity. Not coal, not uranium, not natural gas, not fuel oil, not wind, not sun.
I maintain a FAQ on solar PV. One of the reasons I wrote the FAQ is that while there are dedicated folks who do get 100% of their power from the sun, I always felt it would do more good for 50% of the pupulation to get 10% of their electricty from the sun than it does for 0.0003% of the population to get 100% of their power from the sun.
As for wind turbines killing birds, this is a problem of early turbine designs. Newer turbines have larger blades that turn much more slowly. They don't kill birds in large numbers.
The point is not that we must find the "one true answer." We need to improve efficiency by moving up the "energy food chain."
You could do as much good as my 50% getting 10% scenario just by getting rid of every refrigerator that is more than 15 years old and replacing it with a new one. Replace incadescent bulbs with CF ones. Use less. Shut off what you are not using. Get rid of "phantom loads" (I think it is ridiculous that virtually every piece of consumer electronics uses power when it is OFF!).
The sun provides 1kW per square meter at the earth's surface. At 20% capture (common for PV) that's 200W per square meter. How many square meters of south facing roof are there? Don't try to tell me that isn't a significant source of energy.
I never tried to say that PV would provide all of our energy -- just that a significant portion can be produced that way.
So why isn't PV everywhere already? Inertia. Subsidies (the grid is everywhere because our tax dollars PUT it everywhere: See the Rural Electrifcation Act). High energy cost for monocrystalline silicon. Low production (economies of scale). Environmental puritanism (nobody seems to be commoditizing PV systems to make them "plug and play" for the average homeowner -- they are highly customized and manually installed, making them less appealing to consumers). Regulation (See article 690 of the NEC). Utility resistance (many local utilties are either ignorant of these systems, or have legitimate engineering and safety concerns that make them resist even well designed and safe systems).
It does not make sense to build massive centralized PV farms. Only utilities want this because they want to maintain a monopoly on energy production. Sunlight is not a centralized resource, and transmission line efficiency is NOT good. It make much more sense to produce the power as close as possible to where it is used, so there need not be "PV farms."
As for orbital PV, well, you may then have the sun shining all the time and you don't lose any power to the atmosphere, but whether you use wires or microwaves or any other possible transmission method, you will lose so much getting it down to the earth that (and I haven't seen numbers, mind) I cannot imagine it would be worth the cost to orbit them. PV will be (and is) heavily used in space, but to provide power for spacecraft, not the earth. (CIS cells were invented for space applications -- high efficiency solar cells are, to a great extent, a product of the space program).
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.