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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."
By using numbers generated here, you can calculate energy yield of various fuel cells.
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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here.
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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.
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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.
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
That has happened in the past.. the original Volkswagon was very moddable thanks to the fact that the body basically bolts onto the frame.they ended up being used for the basis of other projects and there was/is a hobbiest industry dedicated to providing custom bodies.
I honestly don't think there as much of a diffrence between auto hobiests and computer as first appears. I have noticed that a lot of the traits I have that make me good with computers are the same ones make my father good with cars.
Is it any wonder why we both like to extract every last bit of performance out of our respective platforms and try random mods?
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.
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.
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
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.
Would I trust my life to a cars computer? No way.
Do you ride a bike or a '57 Chevy?
The steering may not be by wire, but pretty much every car made in the last decade uses computers to work the engine, the brakes, the airbags, and other stuff that you don't want going south at 65 MPH.
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
BINGO! The current hybrid technology would really piss of the oil industry because of the higher MPG. There was tons of "chatter" about hybrids late last year when it was shown how well the Toyota Hybrid-Prius was doing. That all stopped, along with government funding for hybrids, and all the attention was turned to fuel cells. Oh, and did I mention they keep saying it'll be 8-10 years before we see this on the road?
If anything, the oil industry wants to make sure they have time to adjust and control the next fuel system that comes available. George Dubya is VERY willing to make sure that happens. His inheritance is at stake. IMHO.
Don't get me wrong, fuel cell research is a good idea but not at the expense of promoting currently available systems. Hybrids already have 80% or so of the technology needed for fuelcell cars. Batteries, energy recapturing, drive-by-wire systems, power management electronics, electric motors, etc, etc. Just not a fuelcell to provide the majority of the power. Hybrids had a very efficient ICE to do that....
Like doublem implied, the fuelcell hype looks pretty fishy to say the least.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
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.
Right....
You do realize that that's like saying Dell's new Dimension is based on the know-how from designing and manufacturing the TiBook, iBook, and G4 Cube, right?
GM nameplates (that I know of, could be incomplete):
Cadillac, Buick, Oldsmobile (RIP), Pontiac, Chevrolet, GMC, Saturn, Saab, Suzuki, Isuzu, Daewoo, Opel, Vauxhall, Holden, Hummer, plus (I think): Fiat and Alfa Romeo
Ford nameplates (same disclaimer as above):
Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Jaguar, Volvo, Aston Martin
And, for good measure, DaimlerChrysler's nameplates
Mercedes Benz, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Mitsubishi
Volkswagen:
VW, Skoda, Seat
Toyota:
Toyota, Lexus
Hyundai:
Hyundai, Kia
BMW
BMW, Rover, Rolls Royce
Renault:
Renault, Nissan, some Brazilian nameplate whose name escapes me