Part of the Thinking Behind Hybrids: People May Actually Buy Them
Japan is setting the pace in California in the race for “greener” cars, but its auto makers are keeping an eye firmly on the rearview mirror as Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler draw closer.
Honda Motor Co.’s Insight, an ultra-low-emissions hybrid car that uses both gasoline and electric motors, is being delivered to buyers now through its U.S. dealers; Toyota Motor Corp.’s Prius hybrid will enter the market this summer.
And Nissan Motor Co. later this year will begin selling a conventionally powered Sentra in California with a special 1.8-liter, four-cylinder gasoline engine, dubbed the CA (for California or “clean air”), that is cleaner when running than other gas-engine cars are while parked in the driveway with the engine off.
On the domestic front, each of the Big Three U.S. auto makers is promising a marketable hybrid vehicle by 2008. Ford Motor Chairman William Clay Ford Jr. said recently that he believes hybrids could account for 20% of all vehicle sales in the U.S. by 2010.
GM displayed the Precept, a futuristic concept hybrid passenger sedan, at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit last month. It seats five and averages 80 miles per gallon with a combination of a diesel engine and an electric motor.
Ford Motor showed a potential competitor at the same show--a diesel-electric car, the Prodigy, which offered a much more conventional exterior than GM’s (some industry watchers say it is a model for the next-generation Taurus) and a mere 70 mpg because it sacrifices spaceship aerodynamics for marketable styling.
DaimlerChrysler’s U.S. operation--the former Chrysler Corp.--is expected to unveil its hybrid concept at either the Chicago Auto Show next week or, more likely, the New York International Auto Show in April.
And while others are focusing on traditional passenger cars--a segment of the U.S. market that has shrunk in recent years as sales of pickups, minivans and sport-utility vehicles have soared--DaimlerChrysler’s Dodge division has developed a hybrid version of its Durango.
The gas-electric SUV, which Dodge says it can sell in 2003 if a proposed $3,000 federal credit for alternative-fuel vehicles is approved, employs a conventional gasoline V-6 engine to drive the rear wheels and a pair of electric motors that kick in to power the front wheels when four-wheel drive is demanded.
Industry watchers insist that virtually every other serious auto maker on the planet is furiously developing its own hybrid--although, in Nissan’s case, there’s such elation over the CA engine that a spokesman at the company’s U.S. research and technology center in Michigan said officials are “wondering whether, if we can expand the marketing of that type of engine to other Nissan vehicles, we really need a hybrid before we get into things like fuel-cell cars.”
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Why all the fuss?
The cars--and, ultimately, trucks--have come out of nowhere to take on a key role in the auto industry’s efforts to meet tough California and federal mandates to green itself up.
They achieve tremendous fuel economy--Honda’s two-seat Insight gets 70 mpg--while reducing tailpipe emissions. More important, they are perceived as vehicles that consumers will actually want to buy, unlike battery-powered electric cars.
“Hybridization is the logical next step,” said Vince Fazio, director of Ford’s Prodigy program for the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, or PNGV, a joint program of the Big Three and the federal government.
“Clean and efficient vehicles are essential for society,” said Larry Burns, GM’s vice president for planning and research and design. “But consumers also want cars that are stylish, functional, fun to drive and affordable. The challenge now is affordability.”
The drive to produce functional hybrid vehicles is being looked at as a great technology race, Burns said.
“But the real race is to figure out how to do high-volume, affordable applications so that we can really benefit society” by increasing the availability of the vehicles, he said.
PNGV’s goal is for each of the Big Three to produce five-passenger, 80-mpg vehicles. Concept versions are due this year, commercial prototypes in 2004 and full production models by 2008. Participants say they are on track.
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‘Hybrid” means different things to different thinkers, though.
While most Asian and American auto makers are focusing on coupling electric motors with gasoline or diesel engines, at Bayerische Motoren Werke of Germany and Mazda Motor Corp. of Japan, a hybrid power plant is an internal-combustion engine that burns pure hydrogen.
A hydrogen-fueled engine isn’t able to achieve zero-emissions status, because of the traces of carbon monoxide produced when engine lubricants are vaporized and the oxides of nitrogen that are a product of any combustion process. But the engine’s basic byproduct is distilled water and steam, and proponents at BMW argue that it produces no more pollutants than would a stationary power plant that is generating the electricity used to recharge electric-car batteries.
Mazda is working on a hydrogen-fueled version of its rotary engine; BMW is already running a quartet of 7-Series luxury sedans with hydrogen-burning V-10 engines as shuttle vehicles between its Munich headquarters and the international airport there.
“We believe it is a better system, more efficient and cleaner, to use hydrogen,” said BMW technical division spokesman Wieland Bruch. “We are building 20 more of them.”
