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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."
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????
Right. Lets just monopolize the market and set insane pricetags, then finally close the division saying it didn't work out. Case and Point
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.
Best Slashdot Co
...case mods for cars. *sigh*
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
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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Why? We have seen one wheel cars before :)
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
Photovoltaic cells would be an excellent source of energy for this process. A great deal of research has been/is being done on the feasibility of a "hydrogen economy." See eren.doe.gov. It sure looks feasible. But this still misses the point. You don't have to have it all worked out before you start. We didn't have a network of filling stations when the autmobile was first produced. These things feed on one another. The PV economy actually exists today, it is just ridculously small. The PV/Hydrogen economy doesn't exist today, but it may soon. When it does, it may not be competetive with the present system. But as fossil fuels get harder to extract (and note, we are not running out of oil, we are running out of oil at current prices. The price of oil will then rise to where more expensive methods of extraction become economical.), the price rises and at some point the PV/hydrogen system will be cheaper.
"It'll never fly, Orville" is a common reaction. Don't be fooled by the difficulty or the poor initial economy. All things being equal, this may be a non-starter, but a look at history shows that nothing stays equal. Ever.
> 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!!!!
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 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?
Simple. It's called our modern, unfair patent system. Go look at how many alternative energy related patents the oil and big-3 auto companies own.
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)
Buzzzz.. wrong. Electric motors have far more low-end torque than IC engines. That's why hybrids available today use electric for initial acceleration. And ever hear of the diesel-electric locomotive? (the most popular design today) Yep, electric motors. Busses? Already been done. Ships and subs? Yep, also using diesel-electric. (and done so for a very long time.. think WW2). Planes? Currently being researched. So the next step is logically to replace the diesel generators with fuel cells.
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).
Funny you should ask that, rumour has it that when the Miss North Carolina dispute reaches the supreme court that they are going to declare George W the winner again.
On the mods for cars theme, am I the only person who finds the pick up trucks with the body jacked up a foot over the axles to look utterly ridiculous?
The whole thing you want to get good handling is to make the chasis center of gravity as low as possible and the turning moment of inertia as low as possible. So sticking the chasis up on dork stilts is only going to make the thing steer like a cow.
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