In light of Toyota's hybrid vehicle announcement

does anybody besides me find this statement by GM a bit disingenuous? It almost strikes me as an excuse not to do what they should have been doing for years - finding alternatives to low mileage internal combustion engines, and now they're using fuel cells as an excuse to not do anything in the future except claim they're "in development".

Believe me, I'm looking forward to the day I can get a FC vehicle, but somehow I don't think GM will be the first to offer it.


Fuel Cell Cars Will Make Hybrids Obsolete, GM Says
Mon Oct 6, 5:58 AM ET

By Chang-Ran Kim, Asia auto correspondent

TOKYO (Reuters) - Less than a week after its biggest Japanese rival touted the economic and ecological benefits of hybrids, General Motors made a case of its own on Monday: only hydrogen-fueled cars will survive in the endgame.

As the debate heats up over what the car of the future will ultimately look like, auto makers are staging a loud public relations battle to play up their strengths and justify the huge spending on developing the technologies so far.

Just last Thursday, Japan's top auto maker, Toyota Motor, invited journalists to tour the production site of its new Prius hybrid to demonstrate how cheaply they could be built by sharing an assembly line with conventional mass-market cars.

But Larry Burns, GM's vice president of research, development and planning, said zero-emission fuel cell vehicles (FCV) will eventually make gasoline-electric hybrids obsolete, rejecting Toyota's view that hybrids will remain on the road even after FCVs become affordable for the average consumer.

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Fuel cell cars would keep us dependent on fuels from corporations rather than on alternative energy sources, some from public facilities, that could be less expensive and less polluting.

You are right to be skeptical.

American Automakers are causing the destruction of this planet by pushing out so much exhaust from Detroit.

As for the Hydrogen Fuel Cells, won't your car explode if you get hit?

Now this is coming from a person who survived a rear-ender while driving a *Pinto*, mind you!
(on empty headed to get gas, actually)

Nah, if you read up on the FC technology, hydrogen isn't *that* much of a problem.
Certainly no more than your current vehicle and probably safer given that hydrogen evaoprates much more quickly than gasoline and won't pool after a leak.

You're undoubtedly thinking of the Hindenberg going up in flames.
That wasn't caused by the hydrogen, but the substance used to treat the canvas covering the frame.

Mojo

...when you're rear-ended?

:evilgrin:

Hindenberg project? Research was well on the way to develop hybrid cars when Bush was selected. He stopped the project which was maybe two years from production, and replaced it will a system that would extract hydrogen from gasoline.

didn't one of guys in the Ford family recently take the helm with the promise of fuel efficient cars?

Ford will have the first SUV hybrid on the road in America late next summer. It's my plan to buy one.

given the infrastructure requirements.
And what will we be driving in the meantime?
More gas-guzzling SUVs?

No thanks.
I'd far rather see hybrids while we wait.

I did see something recently about a combustion engine burning hydrogen directly, which I thought was an interesting transition solution.

The sad thing is that this will *have* to happen one way or the other given that in roughly 20 years the price of gas will climb prohibitively.
If nothing else, our transportation industry will have to switch over or we'll be paying $8 for a loaf of bread.

Mojo

...for hydrogen to compete.

VW already sells a 95 MPG four-passenger car that can run on biodiesel, which is plentiful and actually less expensive in Europe. Here in the U.S. I pay $2.40/gal for the highest-grade biodiesel, which is about what you pay per-mile for a gallon of gas.

Even some of the most optimistic projections for hydrogen use cannot compete with that in terms of cost, usability and environmental impact. When hybrid technology is added, the efficiencies will be so high that hydrogen will be left in the dust.

The first generation internal-combustion automobile, which I will cite as the Model T Ford, since anything before that was only available to the very well-heeled and were therefore experimental in nature, had a 4-cylinder engine of 2 liters displacement that made 20 horsepower, had a top speed of about 35 MPH, and got about 20 MPG.

Hybrids have only been around for a couple of years, and get around 45-50 MPG. Let the enginers tinker with them for a few years, and you'll see them get in the 70-80 MPG range while making faster 0-60 times.

Imagine what a VW Jetta diesel hybrid could do. Can you say 90 MPG? 100 MPG?

One big problem I see is that once this happens, the price of gasoline will drop to under a buck again, and there will be no more sense of urgency to develop more efficient hybrids. I hate to say it, but the answer to this problem would have to be a floor on gasoline prices at the retail level. We don't have to get nuts with it like Europe, but a price floor of $2/gal. would dissuade people from buying gas hogs. Problem with this is, you'd have the Limbaugh conservatives howling, so it would take the sort of courage not prevalent among US politicians - the courage only a crisis could inspire.

Each penny is worth about a billion a year.

If the extra 100 billion from a 1 dollar tax is used to offset the payroll tax - rather than to finance a reduction in rich man rates in the FIT - this makes sense to me.

Believe it or not.

I own a Civic Hybrid, and if you drive it carefully, you can get a bit over 50mpg with it.

But did I buy it to save trees? Nope. Cleaner air? Ozone layer? Better mileage? Nope, Nope and Nope. (All those things are great, of course, I just don't have the extra $7,000 laying around to buy a hybrid for those purposes).

Why did I buy it? Pure capitalism/greed/selfishness! Virginia lets you drive them in the HOV lanes and it cut my commute by better than 20min each way. That's worth cold hard cash to me. And apperently to a lot of other people too because they sell like hotcakes up there and I haven't seen another one in the state since I moved to NC.

Maybe if more states (with traffic problems) did the same thing we would sell a lot more hybrids. With the dual positive effects of reducing gas consumption/polution and finally using all of those empty HOV lanes.



And you know what? It wouldn't have bothered me a bit is the price of gas dropped back under a buck.

So the state imposes restrictions on that highway lane, and you call that a capitalistic solution? ROFL! :)

That self-interest argument doesn't work. The closest it comes to working for the environment is NIMBY-ism and trifling measures like HOV lanes (redirecting self-interest). We need to temper that self-interest with our national/global interest working for our long-term survival.

I wanted something (selfishness) and I was willing to pay for it.

What else can I call it? At it's core, the concept of capitalism is that money flows in the direction of "enlightened" self interest. "Build a better mousetrap" and all that.

And it absolutely CAN help the environment. My car puts out somethnig like a quarter the pollution of the average car (VA doesn't even do an emissions check on me because they haven't come out with equipment to measure it).

They're talking about repealing the HOV exemption because it looks like too many people are taking advantage of it (stupidity at work if you ask me). Just think, those lanes that have been pretty much empty for all of the years I lived up there are now being filled with cars that put out a small fraction of the polution they would have been putting out otherwise sitting in traffic. And, of course, the larger number of cars in the HOV lanes (up until the point they get clogged) reduces the traffic in the other four lanes and improves everyone elses commute (and cars traveling at a reasonable speed to work put out a lot less polution than idling in traffic keeping your AC going).

Lastly - along the capitalism lines - Honda loses money on each of these cars... and will continue to do so until they sell a heck of a lot more than they do right now. The more we can sell, the more likely they are to continue to improve the technology.

Your logic would seem to predict that people would abandon their inefficient SUVs en-masse (more dangerous, more costly, more time wasted at the pump, etc.). Well, they're not since a large minority of people drive them... and for irrational reasons. Also, the HOV isn't of much further use if it fills up and slows down: The politicians achieved their goal of popularizing efficient cars and carpooling, and from there you can only remove the HOV program or expand it to provide an incentive to even more people. Self-interest and personal priorities alone do not translate into good decisions for long-term survival.

You'll also notice that hybrids scarcely have a market in Europe, where diesels and biofuels are popular. The larger (partly state-owned) car companies like VW have taken the lead in clean diesel engines because their countries had the political will to ensure that diesel was the better choice at the individual level (gasoline is highly taxed there, because they identified it as their worse achille's head in terms of environmental cost and dependency). VW did not lose money in the short-term (and raking it in long-term), and the new diesels now account for over 60% of new car sales in some places and the market share is growing. It also represents an increase in overall fuel efficiency that completely dwarfs the impact of hybrids on the U.S.

Neither Toyota nor Honda can touch the 95 MPG of a Volkswagen TDI 3L, and there are over 1,000 biofuel pumps in Germany alone. This is some of the best of capitalist and socialist motives at work, complementing each other. None of this would have happened with purely individual, or purely collective intentions.

The Honda Civic hybrid has been out for about a year! The other hybrids are only two or three years older than that and had extreemly low production numbers. You can't possibly judge that it "hasn't helped"

Yet they have dramatically altered the commuting landscape around DC. A significant percentage of Honda's production has been routed to this area (they don't sell very well anywhere else in the country - I couldn't possibly sell mine here in NC without a HUGE loss - care to guess why? "Self interest and personal priorities"). My Civic was actually shipped from a Dealer in western KY (and still has their sticker) because it was more profitable to re-ship them cross-country and sell them here (supply demand).

And if the HOV lanes fill up? (not going to happen, of course) that would mean that better than 30% of the cars on the highway here are putting out a tiny fraction of the pollution they otherwise would. And that after only a couple years on the market! That "self interest" would absolutely have had an effect.

And I think the 3L is rated at more like 75 MPG with the Insight pretty close to 70MPG itself and no need for special pumps. The Insight boards have plenty of people claiming to approach triple digits too, but that usually involves VERY careful driving. You won't see it on a morning commute (Heck, I've gotten over 68MPG calculated on a 50 mile trip, but I suspect it was somewhat downhill).

You really can't compare 1:1 with Europe. Their mass transit systems have ours beat cold, and you don't see many regular diesel pumps around here and are unlikely to. That's an enourmous expense that isn't necessary to gain an extra few MPG. And those 3Ls share a lot in common with the Hybrids anyway.

Then what is wrong with capitalism's ability to stimulate demand for these vehicles? And Of course I can judge that it hasn't helped! The ramp-up in demand for SUVs create incredible waste: Hybrids are like a mosquito in a hurricane by comparison. Free-market forces are working against the environment, where state incentives and intervention has ameliorated the effect-- but only just.

The 3L can get over 100 MPG on flat, highway terrain. The Honda still doesn't touch it. VW drove the 3L around the world over varied terrain on an 80-day tour. When it reached Washington, DC, after driving 12,116 miles from Berlin, the cumulative average fuel usage was 95.2 mpg (2.47 l/100 km). That's real milage, not an EPA rating (which doesn't exist). Additionally, any comparison is generours to the Insight because the 3L is a four-seater.

The current crop of diesel cars already meet the Euro-IV emission standards going into effect soon. Here's where you really can't do a 1:1 comparison with Europe, but accurate comparisons are possible with sufficient explanation. The diesel you're familiar with is dirty, but that's because the US still uses the diesel equivalent of leaded gas: Sulfur will not be removed from regular diesel here until 2006, and once that happens all kinds of emission-control possibilies open up as has happened elsewhere. Here are the areas where gas engines have higher emissions than current diesels: unburned hydrocarbons, CO2, CO, and (heavens to Betsy!) even particulates-- that's right, the Euro-IV Diesels have particulate traps, which don't work as well on the lightweight gasoline particles. Diesels are worse in one significant aspect, NOX emissions, and not by a large margin with emission control equipment. CO2 emissions are 50% less than gasoline, and reduce that by another 80% when running biodiesel fuel. Gasoline is more energy-intensive and polluting than diesel to produce at the refinery.

Nice as the hybrids are, it is a dirty little secret amoung clean car buffs that the GASOLINE hybrids you are so proud of cannot very effectively compete with biodiesel in an eco-centric rally (you can ask the winners of the Tour de Sol)! When graded on overall performance, emissions, range and other factors, a 1996 VW Passat TDI on biodiesel trounced a 2001 Honda Insight amoung others and won the competition. Against a mid-sized VW, the Insight is not even close, and there would be an even larger disparity with a 2003 Jetta Wagon.

Now factor in the environmental cost of battery manufacture, and the comparatively high complexity and replacement rate of gas engines, plus the fact that hybrid cars can't use significant amounts of renewable ethanol and you've got something that as a package isn't all that benign. They cost thousands more than a VW TDI. Hybrids play well in the American media though: You can't possibly sell a plant-product here with a sufficiently seductive 'high-tech' appeal. Regardless, biodiesel production has been more than doubling here each year since 1999; The average school board and bus company still knows a good thing when it sees it, and even economic right-wingers (which you seem to be) generally want their kids to have a clean ride to school.

Here is a tip I'll let you in on right now: People on this board do not take kindly to the suggestion that government (and therefore democracy) ought to avoid resolving potentially catastrophic problems of this magnitude. We have a term for it: Free-market Fundamentalism. It is an extremist position in the same way that communism is extreme, so do not be surprised if your messages are not received warmly.

Diesels in general are more polluting than gasoline engines (depending on what pollutant you want to look at). The BioDiesel literature I've found claims a 65%-75% reduction in some pollutants over standard Diesel engines.

A SULEV (like the Prius) rating requires a 90% reduction from average car levels, which presumably were already markedly lower than your average Diesel.

All without "political will" overcoming individual desires. And at a much lower cost.

is that it requires more energy to extract the hydrogen than is provided when hydrogen is burned as fuel. Hydrogen fuel cells aren't going to be a viable alternative to gas/electric hybrids until that problem is solved. As it is, hydrogen is inefficient, and only someone who's smoking crack would think switching over to hydrogen power is an improvement (especially since the energy for the hydrogen extraction has to come from somewhere, and our biggest energy source is still OIL).

* Warm-up times (yes, folks, you still need to run on batteries while the FC warms up)

* Longevity of components

* Fuel capacity

* Leakage (a big enough problem already with gasoline)

* Energy is mostly non-renewable (fossil, etc.)

* Longevity of components

Planned obsolescence, you go back more frequently for repairs, you buy new models more frequently

* Energy is mostly non-renewable (fossil, etc.)

Oil companies love this

Also to the extent you make alternative fueled vehicles difficult to use, you protect your base of conventional vehicles, and you strengthen the political argument against raising fleet-wide fuel efficiency standards.

some scientists were talking about using the wastage in our electricity grid (there is a LOT of it) and using that to make hydrogen. Thus, H2 becomes a storage system for excess electrical energy - like a battery.

France began doing this last year, in particular storing H2 during off-peak hours. They are trying to take maximum advantage of their nuclear generating capacity.

the fuel cell isn't a source of power, it's a way of storing it. Think of it like a battery. Once the hydrogen in the cell is depleted, you need to electrolyse water to obtain more, which requires electricity.

So you're quite right, our energy problem isn't solved. But consider this - if you get a significant number of fuel cell vehicles on the road, then to make them greener you have to switch your electricity generation to renewable sources - something that will need to be accomplished anyway. You can think of fuel cell vehicles as a potential green improvement simply waiting for our means of electricity generation to catch up.

do not look into the future how the Japanese do!

The Greedy Americans are looking for a short term profit NOW! The Japenese are looking to make their businesses profitable way into the future!

GM is just pussyfooting around the issue of the envrioment! They DO NOT care about the future! It's all fluff!

Is bad for the US.

Seems as if the heads at GM just can't admit they were one-upped by the Japanese, once again! Hybrid cars could be the only cars available if GM/Ford had decided to do so five years ago. Those GM Peckerheads have failed the American Public, just like they did in the 70's. Our only choice for efficiency is an imported car. It could have been different. Screw GM.

For one thing, a full six years after the first Japanese production hybrid appeared, the Big Three have yet to produce anything other than display models and test cars. Ford just pushed back their first hybrid release date by nearly a year, and whenever GM's first hybrids appear, they'll be trucks - big honking trucks like the Silverado. The first two models GM's announced as hybrid models will enjoy efficiency gains of between 1.5 and 2 miles per gallon, whenever they do appear.

For another, it's simply farcical to say that the development of FCV's will (in the words of this article) "take the car out of the environmental equation." Excuse me, but all those hypothetical clean, efficient FCVs are still going to need roads to drive on, places to park and stations to provide the fuel they'll need, along with the attendant refining and transport systems.

Finally, Detroit admits that it will be between 15 and 20 years before their FCVs achieve significant market penetration. What are we supposed to do in the mean time? Keep on driving Excursions, Suburbans and Durangos while waiting breathlessly for the fuel cell cars that are "just around the corner" - like Detroit's hybrids?

Most SUVs have a high drag coefficient, and hybrid tech doesn't reduce that energy waste; they mainly reduce the waste of starting and stopping the vehicle.

It will be a very simple hybrid system, basically an idle-stop/restart system, and will be years behind Toyota's "full" hybrid design. It's simpler even than the less complicated systems Honda uses on the Insight and Civic hybrid.

Besides, as you point out, a big chunk of the efficiencies in the Japanese hybrids comes from aerodynamic frames and low-rolling-resistance tires, coupled with engine design.

Big boxes on wheels will never be terribly aerodynamic compared with these, and converting them to light hybrid drives can't do much to change this.

I've been waiting for these since '99.

I expect these things to be as good as my '96RAV.

KOW-the main problem w/ my RAV
has been burning a qt every 4k miles
and the brake light comes on.

if we continue on our path of urban sprawl and treating the private vehicle as a Great God King that must be accommodated at all costs.
Free parking is considered a basic human right, as are roads wide enough to accommodate everyone who was silly enough to move to the edge of the cornfields because they think that they have to own not only a house, but a trophy house.

In other words, people create their own traffic messes by moving to the sprawl areas, which have no alternatives to driving.Indded, sprawl suburbs are built on the assumption that everyone over 16 has a car and will use it for all trips over 100 feet.

Then suburbanites demand that not only their own areas but the core cities as well provide them with wider freeways (at the expense of urban neighborhoods) and free parking. That's how things have worked for the past fifty years. We're so accustomed to this way of life and the primacy of the private automobile that we don't even see how wasteful and selfish this approach is.

The sad thing is that wider freeways fill up to capacity almost immediately, since they attract more people to move "out." (There's a distinct anti-city bias in contemporary America, and I think it was given a boost by racism, as people claimed that they were leaving the city to escape what they called "crime and drugs.")

The result is loss of farmland, loss of wildlife habitat, disruption of bird migrations, polluted water due to the runoff from parking lots, and the loss of human-scale communities.

Switching from gasoline to hydrogen may solve the problem of runoff from parking lots (and then again, it may not, but I don't know the chemistry involved), but it will do nothing to mitigate the other social and environmental costs of having private cars as our dominant mode of transportation and distorting everything to make sure that drivers suffer as little inconvenience as possible--even if it means greatly inconveniencing or even endangering pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders.

Private cars have their uses, but having them as the only feasible form of transportation for any purpose is both environmentally and socially irresponsible.

If we used cities like Venice (THE Venice) as a starting point, we could make cities virtually car-free... not to mention gorgeous. The idea of having your needs within walking distance, and an outdoor-mall-like atmosphere everywhere you go is incredibly appealing:

http://www.carfree.com/

Newsflash to Detroit: I can't wait around to buy your fuel cell car in 12 years... so I bought a hybrid Prius now...and love it.

And my teenage kids love it...allowing yet another generation of Americans to grow up with the stereotype (justified?) that if you want a quality, cutting- edge car, you have to look for an import.

(Union guys: my first car is a union made SUV which will be replaced with Ford's Explorer Hybrid when/if they come to market)

They great!!!

They drive 0 to 60 in a heart beat and can turn on a dime.
The only problem I have is to remember to go to the Gas station.

I am tempted to buy the Prius this time because it gets
5 miles to the gallon more than the Honda.

I recommend it to all!!!!

:bounce:

I like the civic (I own one), but the Prius (particularly the NEW Prius) has a better hybrid design. The Honda probably has beeter fit & finish, but what's under the hood of the Toyota is half a generation ahead.

Parallel hybrid (like the Prius) is much more efficient than the series hybrid. I love my Prius; those new ones will be great if they're any better.

The new Prius has more power AND better gas mileage AND it looks more like a regular sedan with better interior room.

No offense, but the reason I drive the Honda is that your car is just plain UG-LEE. :-)

My little boy (6 year-old) calls it "Mousey".

The only thing I don't like about the style is the spoiler.

The Prius looks great and no mistake, but I don't understand why they have apparently designed it so that you CAN'T go electric only. They say that driving the Prius without gas in the tank could cause serious damage to the engine... but at the same time if you DO have gas in the tank you can drive around fully on electric without USING any of that gasoline - provided you don't try to accelerate too fast or completely discharge the battery.

Why couldn't they have designed it so that if you try to accelerate quickly and there is no gas you just don't pick up speed as quickly as you wanted rather than switching over to the combustion engine which fails out without the gasoline?

For that matter, why don't they allow you to plug the thing in to recharge the batteries? They are very happy about the fact that you never HAVE to do so... but what if you WANT to do so?

I'd be MUCH happier about hybrids if they were being built as electric cars which use gasoline for extra acceleration and range... instead they are being made as gasoline cars which use electricity for minor cruising support.

The technology is there. Pure electric cars and the Prius have proved that. They just don't seem willing to APPLY it.

Plugging in to household current would require additional power-conversion and electronics that the car doesn't have. I read through a "white-paper" on the topic on a Honda board and it just doesn't make sense to do it. You add weight (and a great deal of cost) to the car without any real benefit to anyone.

Think about it this way. These cars "charge" from the energy produced while decelerating. This is often energy that would just be "wasted" as heat out of the brakes. Getting that power, instead, from household current would involve using electricty that would NOT otherwise be wasted. It probably costs more to produce that electricity at the power plant (with it's attending pollution) than you could possibly save by running on electric-only mode. Also... those batteries drain AWFULLY fast. They are truly an "assist" to a very efficient gas engine. You couldn't do much of a commute (perhaps a couple miles) on batteries alone.

They're costly to the environment. Each one pollutes about 450,000 gal. of water, and uses about 12% the amount of the energy used by the car during its life. Car manufacture is also CFC-intensive.

Buying a well-running used car, or just hanging onto your new car for a long time, cuts down on the pattern of consumption and is better for the environment.

My current car, a 2001 Golf TDI, was bought new... and I think I would buy used if given the choice again.

Personally, I couldn't be happier with the way things are shaking out. You've got lots of different people trying lots of different things--fuel cells, biodiesel, hybrids, etc. Sure you can speculate about which one will end up replacing the traditional gasoline engine, but the reality is no one knows for sure which will be best. I would hate to see government declare a winner this early in the game and dump all our eggs into one basket. Let the different automakers all try something different and the market will reward the one with the best solution.

:D

...because they will have only one type of motor: electric.

People will think of them as just hydrogen cars with large batteries.

You're right. Fuel cell cars are not combustion engine cars so they won't be hybrids.

However, IMHO, the lessons learned from designing and building gasoline-electric hybrid cars will be used in electric fuel cell cars.

GM will be behind the curve (in a decade or so when fuel cell cars start to come out) due to their decision to put hybrids on the back burner.

GM is missing the boat. Japan will continue to pick up market share Fuel cells are years away.

They've taken a leaf from IBM's old playbook: 'when we don't have a product to offer the customer, play on their Fears, Uncertainty, and Doubt'.

Might have to trade in our 98 Honda CRV for a Hybrid one. It's only getting 24mpg with it's 2L 4cyl.

“FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering products.” Gene Amdahl, who left IBM to start his own company.

It only makes sense that Microsoft would become more associated with the term, though, as it fits their business model: copying the successes of others. :-)

Seems like there's a lot of that in politics these days, as well as in the car business! ;-)

this is news from end Feb 2003

----------------------


Toyota to install hybrid engine in 50% of its vehicles

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0224/p11s03-wmcn.html


excerpt -

"This will be a landmark year," for fuel-efficient vehicles, says Thad Malesh, J.D. Power's director of alternative-fuel research. Ford, General Motors, and Lexus each plan to sell new hybrid versions of certain SUV models over the next 18 months, in part to lower their fleet fuel- efficiency averages. Toyota also plans to install hybrid drive systems into about half of its vehicles over the next few years.

Hybrid cars on the road today can get up to 55 miles per gallon - even in city driving. Consumers currently have a choice of three: the Honda Insight and Civic, and the Toyota Prius.

...........more