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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."
I don't know about anyone else, but personally I don't consider adding to the number of tasks performed by my hands to be an engineering acheivement. Why don't they work on steering with your feet? Then I could have both hands free while driving.
-- Adam
As for the drive by wire, brake by wire, does that mean we will finally have real "backseat drivers"?
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!!
As hybrid vehicles go, the Gas/Electric hybrids like Toyota's Prius are cool. They also feel like you're driving a cardboard box.
Diesel has made much more progress in the past few years as far as an efficient fuel than gas. Try on the Turbo-charged VW Diesel Jetta for a great drive w/ superb miles to the gallon.
A marriage between these technologies is a great deal for the auto industry, the environment and everything else. The one question is $.
Will the manufacturers be able to bring the price down far enough to entice Soccer Moms everywhere that their SUV can be environmentally friendly and fuel efficient?
Governments could offer serious incentives to consumers in the area of tax credits for purchasing such vehicles. Hell, I'd buy one if the deal was sweet enough.
And more importantly, where's the hydrogen-distributing power stations? And even more importantly, where's the cheap and plentiful hydrogen production mechanism?
Hydrogen hybrid cars are all well and nice, but they don't get us anywhere. At the moment the only ways to produce hydrogen are expensive and inefficient, and end up costing more "regular" energy (usually provided by fossil fuels or nuclear power) to produce. Electrolysis is good to play with in the physics labs at school, but when it comes to produce very large quantities of Hydrogen for mass consumption it's worth practically zero.
I read a while ago in New Scientist that some group in Japan was trying to use a solar-pumped laser in a satellite to convert large quantities of salt water (in a big tank on an island) with an added catalyst, into hydrogen. That's the sort of news which are worth noting when it comes to cleaner fuels. Once hydrogen is available in every gas station, oil will die off naturally. Until hydrogen can be produced cheaply and in very large quantities, there's not going to be hydrogen in gas stations, and all these hybrid efforts are just lip service to make Sunday Ecologists feel better about themselves, so presenting this sort of news as a notable even in the move towards cleaner fuels is like saying "Microsoft issues a new patch for IIS, saves the internet from script kiddies".
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Another brilliant bit of motivation. Not!
I was already concerned about having the "pedals" on the steering wheel but, now you want me to face a roadway full of people that learned to drive by playing Vice City?????
God help us all.
I've been following this thing from some time.
Quick points:
- You can't really 'skin' it. Yes, the shells are interchangeable, but at the factory. A home user bolting on one of these in his/her garage is opening up all sorts of safety concerns.
- Yeah, it's Hydrogen, but it's not gonna blow up. Certainly not as dangerous as the tank of gas in your car. Go read the Wired article if you want details. It's not a rolling Hindenberg.
- The wheels can pivot in any direction, which is why the steering is different. No more parallel-parking mishaps, hopefully.
- They are still more expensive than regular cars, price- and energy-wise, but the trend is looking quite hopeful.
- The space-savings inside the car itself are remarkable, and allow for all sorts of kooky things, such as a floor-to-ceiling windshield. (how weird would that be on the highway?)
- The HyWire is a concept. They won't all be 'ugly'. The whole thing is still a good 10 years away.
GM has gone on the record saying that, because of the elimination of most of the moving parts, these cars could realistically last 20 years. Which is a big concern for GM, obviously having a 20-year-turnover on cars is going to nail their bottom line... until you figure in the savings on engine parts, assembly lines for those engine parts, etc. Suddenly the AUTONOMY is a lot more attractive, as they might eventually cost a fraction of what regular cars do. GM recoups the lost turnover sales from the other 80% of the planet who can now afford a vehicle. And we get cool pivoting space-cars that cost $5000 and go for 2 decades.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
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.
I am not an expert on fuel cells or hydrogen, but it is a viable alternative. Fuel cells are steadily increasing in wattage and will soon reach the 200Kw range. Now all fuel cells use hydrogen. The question is where does it come from. The 3 most common ways are compressed gas as was used in the article, gasoline, and methanol. Methanol and Gasoline both require a reformer to break the hydrocarbon chain an mahe H. Gasoline is a complex hydrocarbon, has an excelent energy density, but is complicated to reform than methanol. It is also supported by a large infrastructure. Methanol is a simple hydrocarbon that is easily reformed into H. It has approximately .5x the energy density of gasoline. One very large benefit is that it can be generated from local
renewable resources.
Anyway the H is made, there will be side efects. Reforming does produce carbon as waste. It can be captured as a liquid or solid rather than a greenhouse emission. Methanol from plant byproducts has all of the nasty issues of industrial farming.
As a side note: Why is that vehiclo so damn ugly. There are some very exciting EV prototypes out there. At least one does 0 to 60 in 3 seconds.
I think that you aren't completely understanding where the gas and brakes are going to be located. They will be adding them to the Swiss Army Blinker(tm) that we've all come to know and love. Hmmm... Lessee... Gas... No, thats washer fluid...
Actually, if they were to replace the steering wheel with a set of handlebars (ala motorcycle), then they might be able to pull this off. Of course, then you've just invented the four wheel version of the Tron Light Cycle.
Hmmm...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
That rollover was faked for Dateline NBC( By Stone Phillips I believe). The Flintstones car was really quite stable, and generally can handle any size Brontosaurus ribs you can find. Damn liberal stone age media.....
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