Ecology Center

The day I got my driver's license I drove the family station wagon 200 miles into the next state, ecstatic at the prospect of liberation from the parental orbit. I bought a car as soon as I could, tinkered with it on weekends, and subscribed to car magazines. I was a car nut.

In some ways, I still am. I write a syndicated auto column and am accustomed to seeing new test cars in my driveway. But recently I've become disenchanted. Gliding down the empty, sun-dappled country lanes romanticized in car commercials might be fun, but inching to work on crowded asphalt isn't. As I sit in traffic, windows rolled up against the fumes from idling exhausts, I wonder what happened to the freedom I once enjoyed.

I'm also an environmental reporter, and I've learned plenty about the harm caused by fossil fuels as they're extracted, transported, burned, and fought over. Motor vehicles consume half the world's oil and account for a quarter of its greenhouse-gas emissions. The biggest source of air pollution in a majority of the world's cities is auto exhaust. In the United States, fuel economy stagnates while new-car registrations skyrocket and the number of miles the average motorist drives each year rises. China is leading a Third World rush to "modernize" through the use of private cars. According to the journal Geophysical Research Letters, if 400 million Chinese drivers hit the road in gasoline-powered cars over the next 50 years, the plume of tailpipe exhaust would "bathe the entire western Pacific in ozone."

Despite the grim outlook there are reasons for hope. New technologies offer an alternative to tailpipe asphyxiation, fossil-fuel dependence, and the swift onset of global warming. Driven by air-pollution legislation and a suddenly animated international competition, some of the world's carmakers will soon offer vehicles that not only greatly reduce pollution but also perform better, are more reliable, travel farther, and last much longer than anything we've ever seen. Already, carmakers are delivering battery-powered electric cars, and soon two will begin selling high-efficiency "hybrid" cars in the United States that rely on a small internal-combustion engine and an electric motor. In the not-too-distant future they'll bring to market the holy grail of alternative auto technologies, cars whose energy comes from an emission-free fuel cell running on hydrogen.

The Promise and Failure of Battery Electrics

Ironically, interest in the newest car technologies is heating up at a time when public confidence in the alternative vehicles that are already on the streets is extremely low. That's because vehicles like GM's EV1 and Honda's recently discontinued EV Plus are able to travel no more than 90 miles between time-consuming recharges. Their batteries are improving, but not quickly enough to satisfy consumers. Until the cars can travel 250 miles between recharges - the range most drivers expect - battery-powered electric vehicles won't break out of niche status. But they do have passionate fans, including nuts-and-bolts techies, gear-obsessed "early adopters," and a cadre of Hollywood environmentalists.

Could it be that Americans will never like electric vehicles? That's the line in some industry publications, but it's not borne out by opinion polls, which routinely show that motorists' love affair is with the private automobile, not solely with its internal-combustion form. A healthy minority would trade in their present car for an electric vehicle, provided it could perform as well at the same price. A poll of California new-car buyers conducted by the University of California at Davis in 1995 found that almost half would prefer an electric over a gasoline car. But they want it to cover several hundred miles on a single charge and be reasonably priced.

Though battery-car advocates point out that most commuters take round trips of 50 miles or less, the distance limitation is psychologically important. Most sport-utility-vehicle buyers never go off road, but the fantasy of such an excursion is what gets them to write the check. An added sore point is that the luxury extras Americans love - air-conditioning, power windows, and other electrical accessories - depend on power from the on-board batteries, sapping the car's range even more.

Because they're built in such limited numbers and the materials that go into them are so expensive, battery-powered electric vehicles start at $30,000. Automakers offer lease deals so they can hide the real cost of the vehicle, and also insulate the customer from the uncertainty of a looming and costly battery-pack replacement, but even these subsidized rentals are pricey. A three-year lease on an EV1 costs $499 per month, roughly the same as a luxury car.

Still, the fledgling battery-powered electric-vehicle industry is offering something every bit as revolutionary as the first VCR or cellular phone-clean cars, at last. And the first mainstream customers are satisfied. There just aren't enough of them. The battery vehicle is still not convenient enough to capture more than a fraction of the market.

Arrival of the Hybrids

To surmount the limitations of batteries, more and more car-industry executives see the hybrid gas/electric vehicle as an interim step to the truly green and clean car. Hybrid-car experiments go back 100 years, but most were prototypes or stillborn marketing efforts. What's exciting now is that two models, the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight, will be entering the U.S. market in the next few months, backed by the full might of these very savvy auto giants.

There are two types of hybrid electric cars, series and parallel. In a series hybrid, a small gas or diesel engine generates power to drive an electric motor and recharge the small battery pack that these cars usually carry. The fossil-fuel engine, in effect, serves as a mobile charging station. Parallel hybrids have two discrete power systems, gas and electric. Either one can propel the car, but when they work together they provide the kind of power needed for quick acceleration. In one type of parallel hybrid, the car starts out in battery-powered mode, then automatically fires up its internal-combustion engine when the batteries lose 40 percent or more of their charge. Many hybrids also have a "continuously variable" automatic transmission, which cuts down on energy lost during shifting, and "regenerative braking," which captures energy lost in braking and returns it to the engine.

The system in Toyota's breakthrough Prius, which has been a hit in Japan since it was introduced there in 1997, incorporates elements of both the parallel and the series hybrid. The car's fuel-efficient 1.5-liter gas engine delivers its output to an electrical generator and then to the wheels. The engine shuts down automatically when the car is stopped, which means it won't pollute when stuck in traffic jams. All this helps the Japanese-market Prius reach 66 miles per gallon and 870 miles on a tank of gas. The catch? The Corolla-size vehicle sells for $19,000 in Japan (at a loss to Toyota), though the price is expected to drop as volume rises. The Prius will not arrive in the United States until the summer of 2000.

Honda, which marketed and then killed a battery-powered car in California, was obviously trying to steal some of the thunder from arch-rival Toyota's Prius by getting a hybrid on the market first. In Honda's two-seat Insight an electric motor/generator acts as a booster for a small gas engine, which does the main work driving the wheels. The result is an impressive 70 miles per gallon. If the gasoline engine has a future, it's in efficient power plants like this one. The Insight, with a very lightweight 1,740-pound aluminum body, went on limited sale worldwide at the end of 1999.

The car, which has stylish fender skirts like GM's EV1, looks something like the sporty, two-seat Honda CRX. The Insight has obvious youth appeal, but it isn't a road rocket. I drove the Insight on a 140-mile round trip through some picturesque Maryland countryside. If the car had been battery-powered, I would have had to stop and recharge halfway through. Instead, I barely dented the gas gauge.

The Insight won't win any stoplight drag races. Acceleration is roughly comparable to a stock Civic's, around 12 seconds to 60 mph. Because the gas engine is always engaged (unlike the Prius, which can switch between gas and electric modes), there is no steep learning curve in getting behind the wheel. When the battery motor engages on hills, it's only detectable through a dash-mounted gauge. Much more noticeable is the Insight's gas-saving "idle-stop" ploy of shutting down completely when stopped at traffic lights. The car can restart in a 10th of a second, and does so as soon as the driver's foot hits the clutch.

The Insight is a very small car, whose diminutive size was particularly apparent when I pulled up alongside a Chevrolet Suburban at a traffic light. But it's not spartan, and it makes allowances for the long-distance traveler. There is standard hatchback storage under the rear deck, which also covers the advanced nickel-metal-hydride battery pack. Will the kids care that their coupe gets more than double the gas mileage of dad's Oldsmobile, and meets California's ultra-low emissions standards? Environmentally concerned consumers are more likely buyers.

On a parallel track, Honda is trying to make the gasoline engine socially acceptable. It has produced a "Z-LEV" version of the 2.3-liter, four-cylinder engine found in the Accord that, it claims, is nearly pollution-free, with emissions of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide down to 10 percent of California's very tough standards. "In some high smog areas like Los Angeles, the Z-LEV's tailpipe emissions can be cleaner than the surrounding air," says Honda.

With a gallon of gasoline costing $4 in Japan, it's no surprise that its automakers have led the development of hybrids. Nissan and Subaru will soon introduce hybrids in Japan. While U.S. companies are all working on prototypes, none have firm plans to sell such vehicles.

The Quest for Fuel Cell Vehicles

Within five years, carmakers hope to mass-produce vehicles that dispense with gasoline altogether. Hydrogen-burning fuel cells could usher in an entirely new energy economy. Far from being a limited resource, hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, constituting 80 percent of all matter. But it is rarely found in elemental form, and must be separated from other substances, such as natural gas or methanol, before it can be used as a fuel.

A fuel cell is an efficient and clean generator that chemically produces electricity from hydrogen and oxygen. It splits hydrogen into protons and electrons, creating electric current. Unlike a battery, a fuel cell never discharges, and produces power as long as fuel is supplied.

If the fuel cell's hydrogen is produced using renewable energy sources, such as photovoltaics or geothermal power, it can be a perfect zero-emission loop, with drinkable water the only by-product. The fuel-cell car would be an electric vehicle with none of the drawbacks of batteries. The promise of fuel cells can be compared in importance to Thomas Edison's invention of the electric lightbulb, and progress has been rapid. In March, DaimlerChrysler unveiled its prototype Necar 4, which seats five, reaches 90 miles per hour, and can go 280 miles before refueling. The company plans to mass-produce it by 2004. Other automakers are not far behind.

The hurdle confronting engineers in both industry and government is the fuel itself. Will fuel cells run on pure hydrogen? In that case they'll have to carry a high-compression tank of this very flammable gas on board. Or will they require (at least as an interim step) a "reformer" to extract hydrogen from a fossil fuel such as gasoline or methanol?

Although many environmentalists favor the "direct hydrogen" approach because it's cleaner, the auto industry is leaning toward familiar liquid fuels, and the first fuel-cell cars will probably run on them. If fuel-cell cars run on gasoline or methanol, we don't have to change the local service station. But to turn the trickle of hydrogen we produce for industrial use into a national network could cost billions. The Necar 4 runs on liquid hydrogen now, but DaimlerChrysler expects the finished product to rely on methanol.

While a fuel cell that runs on pure hydrogen emits only water vapor, one that uses methanol also produces carbon dioxide (though only half as much as an internal-combustion engine). A reformer adds weight to a car that must be as light as possible, and it's a complicated, miniature chemical factory. What's more, "reformed" hydrogen is not pure and isn't likely to deliver the same performance as hydrogen gas.

One thing that none of these new cars will do is end gridlock. Only public transportation can do that. But even if we doubled public-transportation ridership, the problem wouldn't be solved. And as America sprawls ever farther from city centers, where public transit works best, we only add to our auto addiction."The car will not vanish," writes Hank Dittmar, executive director of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, "so we must clean it up."

Jim Motavalli is editor of E Magazine and author of Forward Drive: The Race to Build the Car of the Future (forthcoming from Sierra Club Books). This article, and the article "Will Detroit Go Green?" were excerpted with permission of the author.

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