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Review Of GM's HyWire Hydrogen Concept Car
SanLouBlues writes "Autoweek has a detailed review of a test drive in GM's HyWire concept (second item). The gas and brakes are both on the steering wheel which may be placed on either the left or the right with little effort. Overall some very positive marks for such a radical car."
As for the drive by wire, brake by wire, does that mean we will finally have real "backseat drivers"?
Ah, so the familiar motion of going for the horn might produce either a burst of acceleration or a sudden stop. Is the horn on the floor?
But why does it have to be so damn ugly?? Is that the company's way of making sure the thing doesn't get accepted??
If it's ugly, the consumers won't like it and thus the whole concept will be proven to be unacceptable... hmmm...
WTF?
How long will take to implement these types of vehicles in America? I'm betting it will be difficult to break the special-interest deathgrip that Big Oil has on America. These new vehicles, while fantastic for the environment (and for many other things), will no doubt eat into the profit of major corporations that depend on America's crippling reliance on petroleum products.
I hope for a speedy incorporation of this wonderful technology, but I prepare for the typical halts to progress that corporations often impose.
Transistors and Beer!!
Using any console racing game will only re-enforce this. Please, oh please don't move the "gas" and brake pedels to my hands. My first thought when I first saw GM's vehical is what happens when I'm crusing down the street then reach to change the radio station? I stop accelerating? Let's just hope that they find a way to get the costs down and then remember to sell it to us in the US.
While I'm pretty sure you're kidding there are a few reasons to do this onthe HyWire car specifically.
First, the controls are really different, twist = acceleration, squeeze = brake. Not terribly different from motorcycle controls when you think about it.
Second, this is probably not going ot turn into a production vehicle. It is sort of a meta-concept car. The fuel cell stuff is all squished into an eleven inch slab centered roughly at the wheel axes. Basically, less the controls, the everything useful but the passengers fits into this tiny space. Next they bolt a bunch of random stuff onto the top. It allows them to design a bunch of body plans without having to remake or remount the engine every time they come up with a new body concept.
The weird controls probably evolved out of this in a way, they wanted a interface module that could be removed easily. Pedals, because of their location relative to the slab thingy would require a commitment on their part as to where a lot of stuff would go. This way they can play around with configuration to their hearts content.
Not entirely unlike a 'skinnable' car when you think about it. I think it would be kinda neat to see in a production car, modular form like this. You go in, choose a chasis power rating or something, then choose a bunch of options (two, three, four, or six seats, truck bed, trunk, seats that recline all the way back, sporty aerodynamics, maximum cargo space, driver seat with a high field of view etc). Then you leave for a few hours while they bolt the thing together. Okay, maybe not, but, it's an interesting concept. Imagine, instead of renting a truck for the weekend to move, you go down to the dealership and rent a truck bed, they hold onto your rear seats until you come back.
As far as the completely transparent front design, I imagine that takes some getting used to, what with the road being that much more obvious as it streams past you.
Uh, yeah it is. Honda's been making cars that'll do 120mph with less than 90hp for decades. 97mph is a joke. Then again, I've never fully understood why cars in the US can go 120mph which is double the old national speed limit.
Because infernal combustion engines and their associated machinery like gearboxes aren't efficient when run near the upper or lower limits of their capability, but in the middle. Upper is defined here as maximum rpm, not torque (which occurs closer to the middle rpm), and lower is the idle rpm. Car gearboxes aren't like aero engines; there is a direct relationship between engine rpm and wheel rpm via the gearbox.
If you want a car that runs well at 60mph, you have to built one that peaks at 120.
Yes, but the honda weighs a lot less. Keep in mind, this thing's the size of a Cadillac DeVille, not a shoebox Honda. Serious room for 5 full sized passengers. And it's a constant torque curve, so it'll accelerate like crazy (which is really the reason I want the 4WD). Internal combustion engines generate torque (and HP) as their RPM's increase. Fuel cells use electric motors, which have the same torque at 10 RPM as they do at 10,000 RPM.
To turn your argument around, I've got a 1 HP engine in a radio controlled car, and it'll do 60. Some others will do 85 with not much more power. So Honda's not living up to that standard! How dare they produce inefficient cars that take 90 HP to get to 120 MPH.
For those of us who haven't figured this out yet.
Obviously, hydrogen is not an energy source when used in a fuel cell. That is not its purpose. Its purpose is to be a replacement for gasoline. Gasoline is not an energy source in the same way hydrogen isn't. Gasoline is millions of years of stored solar energy.
It took millions of years to create the raw materials we use to make gasoline. Once we run out (and we will run out - we are taking it out faster than nature puts it back - it's just a question of when) we will have to either make more gas ourselves or split water to make hydrogen. There's no special difficulty hydrogen presents in this regard - anything we use to run cars is going to be in the end an energy storage device, unless we have nuclear/solar powered cars. Both are impractical, for different reasons. So we have two problems in the future - generate power to replace the huge stored supplys we current are tapping, and store it for use in automobiles.
People seem to assume hydrogen is being proposed as a power generator. FALSE. Hydrogen is being proposed as a way to store energy for use in cars, which can't generate power on site in most cases. Gas is stored power - so is hydrogen when used in a fuel cell. We can't practically create gasoline ourselves - it's much easier to split water and recover the hydrogen. Plus fuel cells are extremely clean and don't give us the byproducts gasoline does. An extra benefit.
That leaves the question of where to get the power to drive this system. That's a completely separate problem, and one of the most crucial. Solar and wind are the two major untapped as far as non-nuclear power goes. Nuclear isn't practical in the us IN ITS CURRENT FORM. Fusion power is under development, and if a power producing fusion plant can ever be created, that will provide lots of power with byproducts that decay in hundreds of years, not tens of thousands. That may be managable. Otherwise, we will have to adjust ourselves to run on only what power we can recover from solar and wind.
It's never popular to say it politically, but we can in fact do a great deal to lower our power consumption. Better consumer habits, more efficient homes and utilities, smaller cars, etc. etc. etc. If we can't solve fusion, the cost of power will force this change to take place. It's not an argument of "we shouldn't develop renewables and hydrogen because they can't deliever our current level of power." Sorry folks, it doesn't work like that. Our current level of power generation is unsustainable unless we shift almost totally to nuclear power. Peroid. We don't know exactly how long it will last, but it WILL come to an end. What is up to us is how we cope with it. I'd rather be prepared with the best we can do in alternatives. Hydrogen might allow us to run cars after we can no longer produce gasoline cheaply. Plus it's a cleaner system when the source power is produced from clean sources. It doesn't provide gluttonous power, true, but it might allow us to sustain the worthwhile parts of our lifestyle. That's why this is a development to be cheered on.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org