<a href="{data}/news/old_attachments/images/fuelcell_p101_f.jpg"><img src="{data}/news/old_attachments/images/fuelcell_p101_f_tn.jpg" class="frame" align="left" alt="fuel-cell turbine"></a><a href="http://wired.com/wired/archive/10.08/fuelcellcars_pr.html">GM's Billion-Dollar Bet</a> on <a href="http://wired.com/">Wired.com</a> is about GM's bold plans for a fuel-cell vehicle by 2010, long before other major rivals expect to be forced by oil shortages to change their fleet. In short, GM sees opportunity in fuel-cells because it allows them to design a car that requires far less tooling, less design and fewer moving parts than the internal combustion dinosaurs we think are advanced now. The car itself will be quite different from cars today simply because the move to fuel cells frees up a lot of space and removes limitations imposed by designing around a parts required by an internal combustion engine. <iq>It dispenses with just about everything that makes a car a car, such as the engine, transmission, steering wheel, and gas tank.</iq> The smaller number of moving parts means it will last a lot longer and may be able to absorb customer reluctance at higher initial prices (though high prices don't seem to slow the SUV market much at all, but that's for buying land-crushing gas-guzzling statement of American pride, not a water-spitting, <i>electric</i>, quiet, environmentally friendly concession to the tree huggers). <a href="{data}/news/old_attachments/images/fuel_cell_chassis_2.jpg"><img src="{data}/news/old_attachments/images/fuel_cell_chassis_2_tn.jpg" class="frame" align="right" alt="fuel-cell chassis"></a>GM's design <iq>looks like a giant skateboard, with motors in the wheels and the power supply and controls built into the 6-inch-thick chassis</iq>. With the engine gone from the front, the floor flattened into a layer of cells, with no transaxle or transmission and the gas tank removed as well, the GM design forms a platform for a complete divergence from conventional automotive design. <iq>Seats don't have to lie in rows. The trunk can run the length of the car. The driver can choose where to sit.</iq> This is all acheived with a radical rethinking of automotive design, tooling and assemby lines. GM plans to <iq>replac[e] most of the hardware in today's cars with wires and circuits that will be standard across multiple models</iq>. That move alone will <iq>streamline its production system and drastically cut costs</iq> to make fuel-cell vehicles more competitive on price and bring them closer to reality within <iq>eight years instead of 30</iq>. On top of the new choices for design, it's <i>clean</i>. <iq>Rather than spitting out carbon monoxide and other smog-causing gases, it emits nothing but water because it runs on hydrogen.</iq> It's <i>quiet</i>, dead silent because <iq>[e]lectric motors, located in each wheel, propel the vehicle.</iq> It'll last longer because <iq>[w]ith few moving parts, it will last for decades.</iq> It will also make driving easier than before, because it has independently controlled motors in the wheels, which will make it much more maneuverable and agile than cars today. <bq>The AUTOnomy will accelerate like an F-111 because its electric motors will deliver instant torque to the wheels. It will be silent. The wheels will be controlled independently, allowing the car to swivel and move sideways, doing away with the cumbersome three-point turn.</bq> On top of all of that, <iq>[i]t will generate more electricity than it uses and be equipped to apply the surplus to power the owner's house.</iq> What's not to love? It's an uphill battle best expressed in the U.S. car-industry tenet, <iq>The Amount of Sacrifice Americans Will Be Willing to Make to Drive a Nonpolluting Car Is Exactly Zero</iq>, is it possible to sell such a radically changed car to the U.S. public? Probably not. This sounds far more like a car that will be enthusiastically embraced by Europe first. It's quite obvious what Americans want, or what they have been effectively brain-washed to want. Automakers, with the full complicity of the public: <bq>...have been using their muscle to keep federal fuel-efficiency standards exactly where they were when enacted in 1975. Freed of stringent regulation, the Big Three have reaped billions selling high-profit, gas-guzzling SUVs. Look at the window stickers on GM's current crop, arrayed in the Renaissance Center lobby - Chevrolet Avalanche: 13 city, 17 highway. GMC Denali: 12, 15. Cadillac Escalade: 12, 15. My Pontiac GTO got better mileage than this 33 years ago. Individual engines have become more efficient, but because "light trucks" (SUVs, pickups, and minivans) constitute half of all vehicle sales (54 percent for GM last year), national average fuel economy is at its lowest since 1980: 20.4 mpg.</bq> There's a commercial right now showing the new Ford Excursion (Expedition? I can't tell, what's the difference?) with 4 or 5 people staring into the back of it as <i>it folds its own seats down in the back</i>. Wow. Now you can free up those precious seconds of seat-folding for more important things, like calling someone on your cell-phone or cramming more cheese doodles into your face while swigging a mountain dew and wondering if Dad's going to notice the ding in the fender. Plus, there's all the saved effort: bending over and pulling a handle can be <i>so</i> tedious. That appears to be the entire point of the commercial, and, perhaps, that's a good example of just how stupid they (corporations, marketers, the auto industry, etc.) think the customer is. Whereas the commercial should be insulting and offensive, no doubt it more often inspires people to think "I wonder if Bob's truck does that? I bet it doesn't. He's going to be soooo jealous!" <bq>Consumers aren't in any way motivated to buy anything but the vehicle they want," Wagoner says, "and if you don't sell them what they want, they'll buy somebody else's.</bq> I think that statement flys in the face of reality and vastly underestimates the power of advertising. People buy what they're told to buy. People <i>buy</i> because they're told to buy. Do you think someone wants to pay 20% of their monthly income on a car payment for a car that does nothing more special than one that would cost 10%? No. They're putting their money into a car because it has been drilled into them that having the most expensive car possible is the highest priority. A lot of people are accepting lease arrangements so big, they could work one day less per week or take more vacations if they just got a less expensive car that does the same thing. But having a fancy car is a higher priority than working less. If you ever mentioned that they express that opinion through their actions, most people would deny it vehemently. They'd say: 'no way, I hate working...I'd love to have more time off'. Then why did you buy that expensive car that you don't need? Because you're trained to want it, trained to want to buy as much stuff as you can because that neoliberal economy needs growth to survive. I think the statement above should be modified to 'Customers will buy the car they're told to buy, or the one their friends or boss bought'. The trick is to convince them that this is the car they want to buy. For some, it's not a fact that it <iq>must be able to go at least 300 miles between fuelings and take no longer than five minutes at the pump.</iq> Those would be nice, but for some of us, it's more important that our vehicles don't simply make us mobile hypocrites, eschewing all principles of conservation and ecology simply for convenience. It's just that very few of us live in the States. So, if not in America, where the fuel-cell car is doomed to failure (at least in the short term), regardless of how exciting this all sounds, where could these cars be sold? America is the largest <i>established</i> market, but <iq>Just 12 percent of the world's population can afford to own a car or truck</iq>. That's a pretty large untapped market of people without personal vehicles. GM says you <iq>couldn't do it with the internal combustion engine [because of] emissions and affordability.</iq> The fuel-cell car, though, with a smaller assembly process and no emissions problems, may be perfectly suited to this niche, once initial prices come down. <bq>AUTOnomy's greatest untapped market might be in China, where there isn't already an entrenched gasoline network. In GM's dreams, the AUTOnomy becomes ready to debut at about the time China's billion-plus people are economically ready for car ownership. China builds a system to deliver hydrogen without ever having one in place for gasoline, the way some African countries are leapfrogging telephone cables and moving straight to cellular. Chinese farmers are given the chance to use a single chassis for both tractor and market truck, and, if they hook up to their houses at night, they make wiring rural China for electricity unnecessary.</bq> That would be pretty cool. A leap over the oil economy and over pollution. One billion people using personal vehicles that spit out water and electricity. It's so cool, you just want to help make it happen, don't you? If you're interested in how a fuel cell works, there's a decent article on <a href="http://www.howstuffworks.com/">How Stuff Works</a> called, predictably, <a href="http://www.howstuffworks.com/fuel-cell.htm">How Fuel Cells Work</a>. (There are a lot of articles on How Stuff Works, just search on 'fuel cells'.) <a href="http://www.howstuffworks.com/fuel-cell2.htm">Page 3</a> covers the chemistry behind the reaction of a <iq>Proton Exchange Membrane</iq>, the simplest type of fuel cell, and the one used by GM. <bq>H_{<small>2</small>} is forced through the catalyst by ... pressure. When an H_{<small>2</small>} molecule comes in contact with the platinum on the catalyst, it splits into two H+ ions and two electrons (e-). The electrons are conducted through the anode, where they make their way through the external circuit (doing useful work such as turning a motor) and return to the cathode side of the fuel cell. ... on the cathode side..., oxygen gas (O_{<small>2</small>}) is being forced through the catalyst, where it forms two oxygen atoms. Each of these atoms has a strong negative charge. This negative charge attracts the two H+ ions through the membrane, where they combine with an oxygen atom and two of the electrons from the external circuit to form a water molecule (H_{<small>2</small>}O).</bq>