Posted on 02/21/2003 3:04:32 PM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
MESA, Ariz. -- To understand how we might bolster our national security aside from invading Iraq, I'm on a General Motors test track here in Arizona, driving the coolest car you've never seen.
It's called Hy-wire, and it's a one-of-a-kind prototype: a four-door sedan fueled by hydrogen, capable of speeds of 100 miles an hour, whisper-quiet, and emitting no pollution at all — only water vapor as exhaust. It looks like a spaceship, with glass all around and no pedals or steering wheel.
Jeff Wolak, the engineer who travels with Hy-wire and mothers it, explained that it is drive-by-wire, controlled by electronics and computers rather than cables and hydraulics. To accelerate, you rotate the handgrips. To steer, you move the grips up or down.
Then Mr. Wolak tells me to drive the $5 million prototype. He is in the passenger seat and picks up what looks like a computer game console that he rests on his lap.
"It's a second set of controls with an emergency brake," he explains brightly. "We only have one of these vehicles, and we don't want to risk it getting in a crash."
And he hadn't even seen me drive.
On the vast track, the Hy-wire zipped about flawlessly. It turns sharply, brakes smoothly and accelerates easily — all almost noiselessly. It's all you would expect of a $5 million car. And if a driver crosses to England, he could press a button and the driving controls would whirr over to the right front seat.
Likewise, each driver of a family car could have a different steering mechanism. "It could be a joystick for the 20-something generation who are used to computer games, or a steering wheel for the older set used to a Cadillac," said Timothy Perzanowski, a G.M. engineer.
In short, hydrogen fuel cells are not necessarily a distant dream. Toyota, Honda and BMW also are churning out hydrogen prototypes. General Motors is talking about having the Hy-wire in showrooms by 2010 and selling a million hydrogen vehicles by 2015.
"We see fuel cells as the first technology that has come along in 100 years that has the potential of competing with the internal combustion engine," said Scott Fosgard, a G.M. official involved in hydrogen cars. "We're doing this because we're going to make a boatload of money."
Mr. Fosgard says that eventually, hydrogen cars will have significant advantages: "What does it cost in New York for a parking space? Maybe $500 a month? Well, imagine if the parking garage paid you, because while it's parked there it's producing electricity that is sold back to the grid."
This may be pie in the sky, of course. For example, it's true that hydrogen vehicles can generate electricity while parked, but the cost of producing it might be prohibitive.
History is littered with other energy technologies that fell flat: synthetic fuels, biomass, nuclear fusion, solar, electric vehicles. Hydrogen cars still face technical hitches, as well as the central challenge: how to cut costs. Carlos Ghosn, the head of Nissan, has joked that fuel cell cars would carry a sticker price of about $700,000.
Moreover, getting the hydrogen can be a problem and can produce greenhouse gases. Hydrogen does not exist on its own but is locked up in water and fossil fuels. The goal is to use wind energy to pluck hydrogen from water in the ocean, but in the near term it's more likely that the hydrogen will come from natural gas.
The bottom line is that President Bush was dead right last month to offer $1.7 billion to boost hydrogen technology, although it would help if the White House also promoted high-mileage hybrid cars for the present. The government could also do more, by deregulating commercial power supply by fuel cells and by encouraging fleet purchases of hydrogen vehicles.
What does any of this have to do with Iraq?
Hydrogen cars are a reminder that there is more than one way to ensure our supplies of energy in the years ahead, even if invading Iraq and investing in hydrogen address the issue on very different time horizons. Nonetheless, I have to say that waging war seems a reflex, pushing toward a hydrogen economy a vision.
As Mr. Fosgard of G.M. put it only half-jokingly: "I don't want to say that this car will eliminate war, but we might not have wars for energy anymore. We'd have to find different reasons to go to war."
And men will never walk on the moon.
Nonetheless, I have to say that waging war seems a reflex, pushing toward a hydrogen economy a vision.
As Mr. Fosgard of G.M. put it only half-jokingly: "I don't want to say that this car will eliminate war, but we might not have wars for energy anymore. We'd have to find different reasons to go to war."
All I can say is about those sentences is, ah geeeez...
It isn't and no one is saying so.
It might work, but there are a lot of ricebowls being threatened (which is, in part the point). Myself, I shall suspend judgment.
Sounds like a pretty apt description of the market performance of these "alternative fuel" vehicles.
Men never did walk on the moon. I guess you haven't seen the movie, "Capricorn One".
Haven't heard that before, could you expand a bit? It seems to me that it would be less dangerous than propane.
Of course it's about oil. If there were no oil in the middle east we wouldn't be there and they wouldn't have the resources to threaten us. But that's probably not exactly the way the "all about oil" crowd means it.
That's true. The process was one of Germany's main supplies of fuel for its war machine during WW II.
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