Still trying to save the car...
Fill 'er up. But with what?
In the fevered search for the fuel of tomorrow, a team of mit scientists has a surprising solution that just might be the most realistic one of all.
By Keith O'Brien | April 22, 2007
About two years ago, Leslie Bromberg began retreating to his basement in Sharon every night to sit at his computer and analyze data, to try to determine if he and two colleagues at MIT had found a way to help save the world. Bromberg, 56, and fellow scientists Dan Cohn and John Heywood believed they had an idea that could revolutionize the way we drive, making cars as much as 25 percent more fuel-efficient than they are now. And they thought this could be done with a relatively simple adjustment to the old-fashioned gasoline-powered internal-combustion engine. The key: a squirt of ethanol. But first they needed numbers. They needed proof.
Down in his basement, Bromberg set out to find it. He assembled a computer model to mimic a car engine. He tinkered with code for months so it could predict behavior under various circumstances. “And then,” he says, “I let the code go.” The men knew what they were doing. Bromberg, Cohn, and Heywood are considered giants in their field. By the summer of 2005, the data proved their theory correct: By injecting ethanol directly into the cylinders of a car, they could not only improve fuel efficiency but also reduce emissions. All they needed, they figured, was a separate, smaller tank for ethanol, which would have to be filled only once every couple of months. This could be done on the cheap. The type of engine required would be just $1,300 more expensive to build than a typical engine, the scientists estimated, and three to five times less than what it takes to build a hybrid engine. And with the help of a supportive automaker, this could be manufactured for new cars right now. The ethanol-boosted engine, as it came to be known, wasn’t like the ethanol-powered cars already getting so much attention. It would run on the fuel Americans already know: gasoline. And it didn’t require new technology, merely a different use of existing technologies. This was what pleased the MIT scientists the most. Their idea – though not sexy – was today, not tomorrow. It wasn’t futuristic, but it was real. What if your car got 40 miles to the gallon instead of, say, 32? Those $30, $40, or $50 fill-ups would come a lot less often. Now what if everyone could do that? Gasoline consumption for US motors could fall from 384.7 million gallons a day to 288.5 million. That would be 35.1 billion gallons saved annually – roughly enough to fuel Germany, Russia, Mexico, and the United Kingdom for an entire year.
“This has really enormous potential,” says David Cole, the chairman of the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “This is a big deal. It’s not a sure thing; nothing ever is until it’s executed. But when you’ve got guys of this capability, it’s different than some guy coming in off the street and saying he had a dream during the night about some new technology. This is potentially very special.”
These are bewildering times for the auto industry. With public pressure mounting to reduce our dependence on oil and many people increasingly concerned about climate change, carmakers are scrambling to find the eco-friendly yet still affordable gas-alternative Car of the Future. There are a slew of ideas out there: hybrids, plug-in hybrids, clean-diesel cars, cars powered mostly or entirely by ethanol, and cars that run on hydrogen, the ultimate green technology.
As confusing as all these ideas can be to consumers, the hype behind each is even more so – ethanol included. Depending on who’s talking, each of these technologies is the best or the worst idea ever conceived. Hybrids will save the world! (Only about 1.5 percent of US cars sold last year were hybrids.) Plug-in hybrids are the answer! (The estimated cost of a plug-in hybrid battery is $17,500.) Cleaner diesel cars will hit the market next year! (Americans historically don’t like diesel.) The future is ethanol! (It gets less mileage than gasoline, and we can’t yet produce enough ethanol for it to be the primary fuel in every car.) Hydrogen! The US government is spending almost $200 million this year to research it. (We may not see hydrogen cars in serious numbers for at least two decades.)
“There’s nothing – not one thing – that’s emerging as the clear front-runner,” says Jeff Schuster, executive director of global forecasting for the consumer ratings and research organization J.D. Power & Associates. There’s no “This is it. This is the technology that’s going to take us the next 50 to 100 years,” he says. What he and other analysts see is a transitional decade in which the auto industry creeps toward change like, well, like a car that’s just about out of fuel. For all the hype, there’s just no getting around the reality: The gasoline engine is here to stay for the next few decades, at least. Technologies will improve fuel economy to an extent. But many people, including some environmentalists, believe automakers need to spend more time focusing on improving what they’ve already got and less time dreaming about a fleet of hydrogen cars.
“In the near term, these kinds of discussions are moot,” says Don MacKenzie, a vehicles engineer at the environmental group Union of Concerned Scientists. “In the next 20-year time frame, the biggest difference we’re going to see is getting more miles per gallon out of gasoline. Looking at hydrogen and other alternative fuels are discussions we need to have. But we need to start taking action today.”
Bromberg, Cohn, and Heywood share this belief – “ ‘Let’s get real’ would be our view,” says Cohn – and that’s why they think their ethanol-engine could succeed. They have formed a company, Ethanol Boosting Systems, around the idea. They have brought in two former Ford Motor Co. executives and a former US senator to round out their board. The team has a combined Rolodex that includes just about every name in the auto industry. It has Ford exploring the idea. It has the data to back it up. And perhaps most important, it has John Heywood. “He’s like one of the revered fathers of the field,” says Chris Rutland, the director of the Engine Research Center at the University of Wisconsin. “He is, I think, a thoughtful, perceptive person. And when he says things, people seem to listen, because I think what he says often has a lot of truth to it.”Continued...
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