by Tim Falconer
Deserved or not, San Franciscans are saddled with a reputation not just for their wicked liberalism but also for their smugness. In a famous episode of South Park called “Smug Alert!” Stan writes a song called “Hey, People, You’ve Gotta Drive Hybrids Already” that convinces all the drivers in town to switch to the Toyonda Pious. They soon feel so virtuous about how much they’re doing to save the planet that a menacing dark mass of toxic gas called “smug” forms over South Park. Soon the town’s smug problem is second only to San Francisco’s. Worse, as the two smug masses begin to merge, a “perfect storm of self-satisfaction” threatens to destroy both places. San Francisco completely disappears “up its own ass,” but the people of South Park destroy their hybrids and switch back to their SUVs. They know a better solution would be to keep the hybrids and stop being so smug about it, but admit, “It’s simply too much to ask.”
Gas-electric hybrids such as the Prius may not represent the future of the automobile, but they prove there’s a market for another approach. And despite South Park’s savage satire about environmental self-righteousness, at least California—led by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who drives Hummers—is actually standing up to the car companies (something the politicians in Michigan or any of the other states that woo auto manufacturers with grants, tax holidays and infrastructure improvements would never have the guts to try). California plans to impose more stringent guidelines to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases than the federal government’s Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards, and to do it sooner. States have a right to set their own standards, but need to get a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency. (Late in 2007, the EPA denied the waiver request, and the state is now suing.) The prospect of tougher rules has Detroit worried. It’s not so much that automakers don’t want to make cleaner cars, if that’s what their customers want—GM even created a hydrogen Hummer prototype that Schwarzenegger uses—but they want to do it on their own timetable, not one set by California, which is the biggest auto market in the country and an influential trendsetter.
The search for alternative fuels to power our cars is far from just another left-coast fad. Automakers have trimmed tailpipe emissions that contribute to smog and now like to boast that burning a cord of wood in a fireplace produces more particulate than driving a new, properly tuned SUV around the world 3.7 times. But they haven’t eliminated emissions altogether, and the only way to deal with the greenhouse gases that cause climate change is to stop burning fossil fuels. As human-generated global warming increasingly appears to be a real threat rather than a wild theory spread by ecological Chicken Littles, even some politicians agree that something must be done. In addition, while only a small portion of the country’s oil comes from the Middle East, many Americans are tired of getting tangled in conflicts over there because of oil. And the prices—which are unlikely to drop below seventy dollars a barrel in the foreseeable future, and threaten to stay well above that level, especially with soaring demand from China and India—provide another incentive to kick the oil habit. But while possible alternatives abound, each of the technologies comes with its own trade-offs.
Most engines can handle up to 10 percent ethanol in gas, and some new cars can operate on E85, a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. In the United States, ethanol is most often made from corn, which is great for American farmers and one reason politicians are so gung-ho about it. But growing corn sucks up both lavish government subsidies and so much oil that some critics argue that the amount of fossil fuels required to produce ethanol—to make the fertilizers and pesticides, harvest the corn, transport it and then distill it—actually exceeds the amount it replaces. Even a U.S. Department of Agriculture study showed that ethanol yields only 34 percent more energy than it takes to create, so it hardly seems worth the effort. Biodiesel, usually made from soybean oil, creates the same problems. So-called “second generation” biofuels made from non-food crops may offer a better energy balance but are still probably not a viable long-term solution, especially because devoting arable land to fuel crops is already pushing up food prices. There has to be a better way.
BEFORE LEAVING LAS VEGAS, I visited the Center for Energy Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. A yellow shack sat under solar energy equipment, and atop the building was a sign that proclaimed “Net Energy Produced” above a digital readout showing the rising total. I found Julian Gardner and Ron Fifield— who were developing a way to use hydrogen in existing vehicles— working on an ATV. In a fuel cell car, no combustion takes place, only a chemical reaction that produces power to run the electric motor and a small amount of heat and water. Gardner and Fifield’s system uses hydrogen in the combustion process, and they hoped to reduce the drop-off in horsepower by injecting the hydrogen straight into the cylinder, so instead of the air and the fuel mixing during the intake stroke, it mixes after the intake valve is closed. They’d spent less than two hundred dollars on the parts needed to retrofit the ATV.
As they explained their project to me, their professor, Robert Boehm, rode up on his red bike. Tall and thin, he reminded me of Christopher Lloyd’s character in Back to the Future, except that instead of a shock of wild tresses, the little hair on Boehm’s head is close-cropped and he has a thin, white beard. And unlike the eccentric Doc Brown, who obsessed about the flux capacitor and the other components of the time machine he’d built out of a DeLorean, a sports car with gull-wing doors, Boehm is a mechanical engineer who specializes in solar energy.
We went inside the shack, found chairs amid the jumble of equipment and computers and sat down. He moved to UNLV from the University of Utah in 1990, reasoning that either Las Vegas or Phoenix would be the nation’s solar capital. Both places were—and remain—fast-growing cities with soaring energy demands and plenty of sunshine. And yet, when he arrived, Boehm was shocked to see so little solar power: other than water heaters for swimming pools, there was nothing. In 1995, he created the Center for Energy Research to develop solar and other renewable energy projects, and today he’s a bit more encouraged by ventures such as a sixty-four-megawatt solar thermal power plant going in near the Hoover Dam.
Despite his work in sustainable energy and his habit of commuting the three miles between his home and the university by bike, Boehm is a car guy. A long-time Corvair owner, he said, “I won’t count how many I’ve had because they have not gone up tremendously in value, so it’s fairly easy to get in and out of them. Easier to get into than get out of.” Today he still keeps one Corvair. He and his wife also own a Prius, which they bought because they were impressed with the gas mileage and because “it’s very big on the inside and not so big on the outside.” When a local paper did a story on hybrids, most owners talked about buying the car for environmental reasons; none mentioned the improved torque that comes with an electric engine—except Boehm’s wife, who told the reporter she loves her Prius because it gets off the line so fast. “She’s serious about that, she just loves that part,” admitted Boehm, “I said, ‘If you’d ease up on that foot a little bit we’d probably get even better gas mileage than we do,’ but electric cars really scream. It’s really neat.” His third set of wheels is a Pontiac Solstice, but he was a little ashamed to own up to that. “It’s the most beautiful car I’ve ever seen, so that’s why I got it,” he said. “But I work in energy conservation and sustainability, and the Solstice isn’t really built for sustainability. Gas mileage is the pits on it. But it’s such a good looking car, I gotta have that baby. I just love it.” He’d have more cars if he had more room: “If I had garage space for ‘n’ cars—‘n’ could be any number—I’d have that many cars.”
He’d also love to help solve the environmental problems posed by the automobile and thinks hydrogen is promising, but still a ways off. Some of his colleagues, though, argue vehemently that hydrogen is totally the wrong way to go, and tout electric vehicles that run on solar-generated electricity.
ELECTRIC CARS origi
nally outsold gas-powered vehicles because they were clean, quiet and easy to operate. Unfortunately, the electrics were also slow, so cars with internal combustion engines invariably won the races (further evidence, as if any were needed, that speed is an essential attraction in driving). The electrics also developed more slowly, while Ford’s Model T made gas-powered cars affordable, and Cadillac’s introduction of the electric starter removed the hassle and danger of getting them going, which had been a major advantage of the electrics. In an era of cheap oil and few cares about the environment, the internal combustion engine was the winning technology. Fast, cheap and reliable was all American drivers ever really wanted.
That’s too bad because even cars that ran on electricity generated by coal-fired plants would be cleaner than cars with internal combustion engines, to say nothing of the possibility of using electricity generated by renewable energy sources such as solar or wind. And since most of us would plug our wheels in at night, when power demand is lower, we might not need a huge increase in our electricity-generating capacity. But no one has yet overcome the battery’s drawbacks, including making them affordable, finding ways to extend their life and, especially, increasing their range between rechargings. “The battery is always the Achilles heel,” Boehm explained. “We’re still using basically the same batteries as my grandfather used, so it’s not like it’s something that we haven’t had time to think about.” Despite years of research on traditional lead-acid batteries or the nickel metal hydrides used in the Toyota Prius, that technology is still not where it needs to be, and many people doubt it ever will be. Lithium-ion technology—common in consumer electronics such as laptop computers, cell phones and iPods—may be the solution, though for now it has the same problems.
The lithium-ion battery that General Motors expects to use in the Chevrolet Volt, the plug-in hybrid it’s developing, will mean a range of only about forty miles. While it’s true that most trips by most people are shorter than that, everyone wants the option of going farther. So for longer drives, the Volt will also have a small internal combustion engine that can recharge the battery. Unlike the Prius and other traditional hybrids, though, the Volt’s gas engine won’t power the car itself—it’s really just a standby generator for the electric motor.
Smaller companies are hoping to take advantage of the industry giants who’ve been more leaden than lead-footed. Phoenix Motorcars has its electric pickup. And Tesla Motors, of San Carlos, California, claims its roadster, which uses lithium-ion technology, has a range of 245 miles per charge while the electric motor’s torque means the car, which has a two-gear clutchless transmission, can go from zero to sixty in just four seconds in first gear and hit a top speed of 125 miles per hour in second gear. But as a sports car with a price tag of ninety-eight thousand dollars, the Tesla Roadster is not about to end up in every driveway.
GM hopes to start selling the Volt to a much broader market for about thirty thousand dollars as early as 2010. Some people dismissed the unveiling of the concept car in January of 2007 as a publicity stunt perpetrated by a company desperately in need of some good news; others argued that the battery technology wouldn’t be ready by 2010. But a year later, the company said it was right on schedule, and the Volt has an influential champion in Bob Lutz, now the vice-chairman of GM. A design guru with more than four decades in the industry, and known for fast and powerful cars such as the Dodge Viper, he’s now pumped about the Volt. “This is now what I’m more excited about than I was about the Dodge Viper,” he told The New York Times. “I think this can bring about the revolution and really make us independent of foreign oil and solve all the other problems.”
Later, “Maximum Bob” Lutz dismissed global warming as “a crock of shit”—an embarrassing gaffe considering the fate of the EV1, an electric car created in the wake of California’s shortlived Zero Emission Mandate, which dictated a growing percentage of vehicles sold in the state produce no emissions. Introduced in 1997, the EV1 was available only in California and Arizona and proved to be popular with Hollywood celebrities. GM can argue that demand for the EV1 was insufficient to make it a profitable product, and there were also battery problems, but the lackluster marketing and the fact the company forced lessees to return their cars, refused to sell them to willing buyers and then crushed the vehicles in 2003 is reminiscent of O.J. Simpson proclaiming his innocence after his jaunt in the white Bronco. Chris Paine’s documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? argues that the auto and oil industries, aided and abetted by the Bush administration, overturned the Zero Emissions Mandate and stopped development of the EV1. I’m always skeptical of conspiracy theories, figuring that most bad decisions are due to incompetence or greed, but whatever the reason, GM’s move to end the EV1 program meant sacrificing its lead in electric vehicle technology. Already, Toyota has also announced plans to have a plug-in hybrid powered by lithium-ion batteries on the road by 2010.
If GM had been prepared to swallow the EV1’s short-term losses, the payoff—not just in long-term sales but also, more crucially, in technology development—would likely have been worth the investment. Instead of scrambling to create a practical and affordable Volt, the company might already have an even better and cheaper electric car on the road. But it’s just that kind of thinking that has the Big Three in such trouble these days.
ELECTRIC CARS FACE technological, political and economic hurdles, but at least the power infrastructure is already in place. That’s a huge advantage over the hydrogen fuel cell car. Hydrogen has the potential to be used where electricity can’t—in planes and powerboats, for example—and might be the best solution for automobiles. A hydrogen car is similar to a battery-electric one, except that instead of a battery—or a battery of batteries—it has a fuel cell and a hydrogen tank. Rather than plug it in, a driver fuels it up. The car has a regenerative braking system that saves energy when driving in cities, but can be switched off on highways to increase speed.
The only by-product from a hydrogen-power engine is water. (Converting an internal combustion engine to hydrogen provides a quick shortcut to the technology, though it will mean producing a small amount of nitrogen oxide.) But there’s no infrastructure in place: we will need a distribution of hydrogen fuelling stations similar to—or even more widespread than—what we now have with gasoline, and that could be decades away.
The car isn’t ready either, though not for lack of trying, as I discovered when I visited the California Fuel Cell Partnership (CaFCP). Backed by oil giants, technology companies, governmental agencies and eight major automakers, it operates out of suburban West Sacramento in a low-slung industrial building. The front atrium includes explanatory displays and a cutaway model of a fuel cell car; the automotive members use the service bays in the back, and the rear parking lot has a fuelling station. Juan Contreras handed me the keys to a small, light blue fourdoor car with a Mercedes-Benz logo on the front and “F-Cell” in big letters and “DaimlerChrysler” and “driving the future” in smaller type on the side.
I drove around the parking lot behind the building and was surprised at how unlike a traditional car it was: it wasn’t just that it was so quiet and the acceleration was smooth and immediate, but the feel and sound were different. Instead of the engine revving up and the gears shifting, I heard just the whir of the compressors in the fuel cells, a sound that changed pitch when I stepped on the accelerator. After I’d tired of driving around a parking lot, Contreras took the wheel and we headed to the freeway. “It’s fun to drive,” said Contreras, who owns a Hyundai Sonata but takes his turn with the F-cell car. “It’s exciting to get in a vehicle, press on the pedal and get this constant power flow.” The range is around eighty miles and the top speed is about eighty miles per hour—a pace that’s easy to hit unintentionally. “Sometimes you’re driving and you’re enjoying the constant flow and the smoothness so much that you forget your foot is putting way too much speed on the car,” he admitted. “You look at the speedometer and you’re going eighty and you
have to ease off on the pedal.”
The participating companies use the CaFCP primarily for demonstration and testing, as well as for servicing the 150 cars and 9 buses being used by organizations such as government agencies, local utilities and the University of California, Davis. But they do their primary research and development in their own facilities in other parts of the world—the partnership notwithstanding, it’s a competitive business. As executive director, Catherine Dunwoody has to keep all the players working together, even though they all have their own priorities, have committed varying amounts of effort and money, have different ideas about what problems need to be addressed first and have individual timetables (the governmental members are a lot more impatient than the corporate ones). It’s a job that must make her feel like a kindergarten teacher on some days, and she looks the part: tall and slim and conservatively dressed in a black-and-white top, grey pants and small hoop earrings. When Dunwoody arrived at the CaFCP in 1998, one year before it officially launched, some people thought fuel cell cars would be available by 2003, the original end of the mandate. With the technology still far from perfected, a second phase kicked off to take the project to the end of 2007. In the fall of 2006, the partnership announced a third phase that will last through 2012. Dunwoody compared the first phase to a science experiment to determine if the technology worked, saw the second stage as a process of getting some cars on the road and expected the third step to be about building the foundations for a market. That’s assuming that the technology continues to develop—by improving the durability of the fuel cells, bringing down the price and finding a way to store enough hydrogen to give vehicles a range of at least 300 or 350 miles—and fuelling stations proliferate. “So,” she admitted, “it’s by no means a slam dunk.”
At least one partner grew tired of waiting. Late in 2007, Vancouver-based Ballard Power Systems sold its automotive fuel cell assets to Daimler and Ford so it could concentrate on adapting its technology to other markets where the costs weren’t so high and the timeline not so long. Still, if the remaining companies can get everything sorted out, fleet sales could begin as early as 2010 and some models might start turning up in showrooms by 2015. Once the public accepts F-cell vehicles, which could take several years, replacing all the existing cars on the road could take another two decades. Even then, the technology won’t be environmentally benign unless the hydrogen comes from a sustainable source. Currently, most hydrogen is generated using natural gas, a nonrenewable fossil fuel. Electrolyzing water to split it into hydrogen and water is a possibility, but the process requires electricity and is, for now anyway, too expensive. In its favour, though, hydrogen can be generated locally—unlike oil, which often must be transported great distances—and by using whatever process makes the most sense: natural gas in one place, nuclear power in another and wind or solar technology in a third.