The Growing Field of Technological Choices for Green Vehicles

August 13, 2006 – Vol.11 No.21

A GROWING FIELD OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHOICES FOR GREENER VEHICLES.

Ford announced this week that it will cut vehicle production from now to the end of the year by 21 percent - the biggest cut for the company’s North American operations in 20 years. The reason? Slowing demand for its most fuel-hungry vehicles: its trucks and SUVs. Of the 188,000 vehicles that won’t be built, 155,000 will be trucks.

Ford, as with the other slowing auto giant GM, seems to be wandering aimlessly on its direction for future, more efficient vehicles. Ford said earlier this year that it would cut back on hybrids, then turned around and said it would invest in hybrid and efficient vehicle research in Europe. Not long after that announcement the company decided that cleaner, greener vehicles were OK for the North American market and would invest here as well.

GM is in the same unfocused mode. It’s investing in hybrid technology, while touting ethanol as the fuel of the future but continues to pursue hydrogen and fuel cells. The company has just completed putting a working fuel cell engine in its Sequel concept car, but gave no indication that it would ever become a production model.

With both Ford and GM their refusal to introduce numerous product lines of high fuel economy vehicles in North America has hurt them.

Perhaps the aimlessness of Ford and GM is caused by bad management or the wishful thinking that gas prices will drop to 99 cents a gallon. But perhaps they simply don’t know in which direction to go because of the wide range of technology options for future vehicles that are becoming available.

--- Plug-in hybrids are on the options list, particularly as battery technology improves. Lithium Technology of Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania already makes a rechargeable lithium-ion battery system that helps power a hybrid electric vehicle to achieve 50 miles per gallon in gasoline consumption. A next generation battery under development should push the mileage envelope to 60 miles per gallon and allow a four passenger, standard production line vehicle to travel 60 miles in electric-only mode, according to the company.

Lithium Technology is working with an automotive manufacturer with development of the new battery but isn’t specific as to whom.

--- Eaton Corporation and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are jointly developing a hydraulic hybrid diesel urban delivery vehicle. The technology is achieving a 60 to 70 percent improvement in fuel economy as well as a 40 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions in initial laboratory testing.

The vehicle uses a diesel engine, a hydraulic drive motor and hydraulic fluid accumulators which capture the energy of braking for reuse. Eaton also builds now-conventional hybrid electric vehicle drive systems

--- The Scuderi Group of West Springfield, Massachusetts is developing an air-hybrid engine that, instead of capturing the lost energy of braking with hydraulic fluid or batteries, captures lost energy in the form of compressed air, or rather, compressed exhaust.

The company says its technology is considerably less expensive than hybrid electric systems needing only a few hundred dollars in controls and compressed air tanks to achieve significant improvements in fuel economy.

--- Hydrogenics Corporation, a Mississauga, Ontario fuel cell developer, has joined the growing Plug-In Hybrid Development Consortium to explore how fuel cells could be integrated into the plug-in hybrid architecture.

The company thinks a battery-dominent plug-in hybrid would allow a small, less expensive, hydrogen fuel cell to be installed instead of an internal combustion engine.

(Presumably the vehicle could be fueled with hydrogen at a pump or connected to the grid for battery recharging; hydrogen could be generated at the same time.)

Global electric power generation company AES Corporation also joined the Plug-In Hybrid Development Consortium this week showing that electric utilities are interested in the idea.

--- Alchemy Enterprises of Phoenix, Arizona thinks that hydrogen and electricity could be generated at the same time through power derived from the oxidation of magnesium. (In essence a metal-air fuel cell that also makes hydrogen.)

The company has developed its Electric Power Cell (EPC) and is testing it at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, California. JPL is a research and development partner with Alchemy.

Alchemy is moving forward with a 100-kilowatt unit and plans to install it in a bus in 2007.

--- And to make things more interesting Steorn Ltd. of Dublin, Ireland, claims it has developed a free-energy, over-unity device that could power just about everything on the planet. In running an ad in The Economist magazine the company has offered a challenge to verify the technology by inviting a jury of scientists from around the world to test their invention. So far over one thousand have offered their services. The company will pick twelve.

As nutty as it may seem, what’s the harm in at least testing the device?

Visit Lithium Technology at http://www.lithiumtech.com/

Eaton at http://www.eaton.com/

Plug-In Hybrid Development Consortium at http://www.hybridconsortium.org/

Hydrogenics at http://www.hydrogenics.com/

The Scuderigroup at http://www.scuderigroup.com/ and their blog at http://www.airhybridblog.com/

Alchemy Enterprises at http://www.alchemy-energy.com/

Steorn Ltd. at http://www.steorn.net/