News Item. Take a look at the engine FORD says they will be concentrating on. CHRYSLER is also going with the DIESEL for their
prototype. Looks like they are all going in the same direction as BAAT as far as engine application
.
Mobil , Ford join hunt for cleaner fuels
By David Chance
NEW YORK, March 5 (Reuters) - Mobil Corp and Ford Motor Co (F - news) on Thursday joined forces in the latest venture between an oil major and an auto company to search for a cleaner fuel to reduce pollution.
However, both companies stressed that this announcement, which comes 112 years after Carl Benz produced the first vehicle powered by the internal combustion engine, did not spell the end of cars and trucks powered by fuels derived from oil and other hydrocarbons.
''There is a high probability that fossil fuels will be the fuel of the future...because of existing infrastructure and economics,'' Mike Ramage, chief technology officer at Mobil, told a conference call after the venture was announced.
The two companies plan to invest some tens of millions of dollars to cover research and development of vehicles using direct-injected diesel engines, which the companies say are popular in Europe, but not in North America, and in the longer term fuel cell technology.
Mobil, the second largest U.S. oil company, and Ford, the second largest automaker, believe that a direct injection diesel engine, based on existing technology, could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide -- a key contributor to the ''Greenhouse Effect'' -- by as much as 30 percent.
The venture between Ford and Mobil will tie in to an existing research program between Ford, Germany's Daimler-Benz AG (NYSE:DAI - news; DAIG.F) and Canada's Ballard Power Systems Inc (Nasdaq:BLDPF - news; BLD.TO - news).
Already, General Motors Corp (GM - news) and Amoco Corp (AN - news) said they will collaborate on alternative fuel solutions for next-generation high-mileage vehicles, as are Exxon Corp (XON - news) and Atlantic Richfield Co (ARCO) (ARC - news), which have tied the knot with Chrysler Corp (C - news).
While stressing that all fuels will eventually have to meet standards of performance and the economics of existing gasoline driven cars, Mobil and Ford said that the development of more environmentally-friendly engines and fuels would require the initial support of the government, partly in the form of commitments to purchase environmentally-friendly vehicles.
According to research from the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental lobby group, the first fuel-cell vehicles could cost as much as $4,000-$7,000 more than cars using existing technology, and $1,000-$3,000 more if they went into large-scale production.
At the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January, GM introduced five new alternative propulsion vehicles, including a new version of its EV1 electric car; two different hybrid-electric cars, an electric car powered by a fuel cell, and an EV1 powered by a small compressed natural gas engine.
Ford said that it expected to be able to introduce a vehicle powered by a fuel cell by 2004 once key research on the technology needed to develop a viable fuel processor to extract hydrogen from hydrocarbon fuels had been developed.
Mobil and Ford stressed that the largest reduction in carbon dioxide and other harmful emissions from existing fuel sources and engines would be achieved if the fruits of research were widely shared and new fuels were interchangeable, being made available at filling stations. |
