Long article on hybrids in today's NYTimes by Matthew Wald who has been no particular friend of pure electrics. Article is at:
nytimes.com
By MATTHEW L. WALD
LBANY, N.Y. -- The annual showcase for electric cars, the Tour
de Sol race, was so crowded this year that organizers were forced
to turn some entrants away.
But the crowded field was not so much a result of electric vehicles finally
catching on as of the new emphasis on another class of vehicles invited to
join. These cars, known as hybrids, use batteries and electric motors, but
also depend on gasoline or diesel engines as well.
In a change that might have horrified the purists who ran in the first race
11 years ago -- when there were only 5 participants and not all of them
could finish the course -- the event was held in conjunction with a major
conference on hybrid vehicles, organized with the Society of Automotive
Engineers.
Hybrids are now the subject of intense efforts by almost every major
automaker. Toyota and Honda even plan to begin selling them from
dealer showrooms in the United States within the next 12 months.
While electric cars have so far failed to catch on, burdened by high cost
and weak performance, a genuine market is about to emerge for clean,
peppy hybrids that can go twice as far as a conventional car on a gallon
of gasoline.
Bill Van Amburg, a spokesman for Calstart, a private nonprofit group
that is trying to develop a clean-vehicle industry, contrasted the choice
facing buyers interested in helping clean up the environment: Toyota
Motor Co.'s Prius, a hybrid already available in Japan and scheduled to
go on sale in the United States next year vs. General Motors Corp.'s
battery-electric model, the EV-1, which is available in California.
"Toyota is selling a hybrid for $16,000 in Japan, a four-seater with an
800-mile range, or you can buy a two-seat EV-1 for $32,000, with a
60-mile range," Van Amburg said in a telephone interview. "That's an
easy choice for most consumers, I think."
As a result, electric car advocates are going through something of a
reality check. Nancy Hazard, organizer of the Tour de Sol, told an
audience of more than 200 experts gathered here that during the first race
11 years ago, "we debated which electric technologies would be the first
to receive market acceptance."
"Hybrids," she said, "were not at the top of the list. They seemed too
complex and too costly."
Now, she said, people who have refined electric drivetrains, including
motor controllers and charging systems, "need to embrace the hybrid at
this point," because it will give them a mass market for their components.
"We are on the brink of an automotive revolution," she said.
Electric cars have always been hand-built, often by hobbyists, and
expensive. But Toyota is selling 2,000 of its assembly-line produced
Prius model every month in Japan, with a gasoline engine that turns the
wheels and charges the batteries for an electric motor, which also turns
the wheels.
Moreover, when the driver wants to slow down, the motor absorbs
energy from the wheels and puts it back into the battery. The car drew
plenty of stares running through the streets of Albany.
So did DaimlerChrysler AG's slick-looking Dodge Intrepid ESX 2, with
a three-cylinder diesel engine, 133 pounds of lead-acid batteries and an
electric motor. Chrysler has not committed to selling that car, but has
other hybrids in the works, as do nearly all the major manufacturers.
Last month, Honda Motor Co. said it was giving up production of its EV
Plus, a battery-powered electric, after selling only a few hundred. But
from the same factory in Japan, it plans to build a two-seat,
70-mile-per-gallon hybrid for sale later this year; it hopes to sell 5,000 a
year in the United States.
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, meanwhile, is
running six diesel-electric hybrid buses on city streets and is
contemplating the purchase of hundreds more, because they seem better
suited than straight diesel models for stop-and-go traffic.
Plus, they are a lot cleaner; the diesel-electric bus has an engine that runs
at a nearly steady state, with none of the moments familiar to every
pedestrian near a traffic intersection, when straining diesel engines dump
clouds of soot.
Officials of Allison Transmission, a GM division that makes one of the
buses now in use in the city, told experts at a conference in Indianapolis
recently that preliminary tests on that bus, which is equipped with a trap
to capture soot, showed no measurable release of the smelly and dirty
particles.
The New York MTA is "very, very near" to being comfortable enough
for a large order, Millard L. Seay, the Transit Authority vice president for
buses, said. "We believe hybrids are very close to being a
production-available bus," he said.
This is not unalloyed good news for the people who have championed
electric vehicles. Among their customers, the small group of affluent
environmentalists and "early adopters" who like to have the newest gizmo
first, hybrids loom large. Consequently, they are holding off buying
electric cars.
"Boy, has it been frustrating," said James D. Worden, president of
Solectria Corp., a Wilmington, Mass., company that for several years
bought Geo Metros, junked their engines, and converted them to
electricity. Now the company has a deal with GM to buy the cars without
engines at substantial cost savings, but the potential buyers, he said, are
sitting on their hands waiting for the Toyota and Honda hybrids.
Worden said Solectria now did as much business selling electric
drivetrains for hybrid buses, trucks and cars as selling pure electric cars.
Worden is a perennial winner of the Tour de Sol, but this year, for the
first time, he sent others to drive his company's entries. Instead, he
attended the conference on hybrids.
Still, engineers are far from a consensus about the best hybrid design.
DaimlerChrysler's have big conventional engines with small electric
motors that help on acceleration, giving a modest increase in fuel
economy. Their advantage is acceleration that resembles that of a sports
car. Another design has the gasoline engine run the back wheels and an
electric motor turn the front wheels, giving four-wheel-drive as a bonus.
The more experimental models in the race are far more fuel efficient,
using big electric motors and small gasoline engines to gradually recharge
a battery pack. And while the major automakers are leaning toward
diesel, environmentalists -- who comprise the backbone of the racers --
say diesel will never be clean enough.
Cleanliness is a big motivator. California dropped its 1998 requirement
that 2 percent of new cars sold in the state should produce zero
emissions. But it still has a 10 percent quota on the books for 2003. The
California Air Resources Board's chief deputy executive officer, Thomas
A. Cackette, told conference attendees that the state would give partial
credit toward the electric car quota for hybrids.
But the benefits of hybrids to the environment could be small, warned
James A. McCargar, a senior policy adviser at the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency.
The auto industry, he said, is "caught up in a size and performance arms
race."
"Will hybrid technology prompt manufacturers to downsize engines and
translate that into fuel efficiency gains," McCargar said, "or will they use
the hybrid technology to get even more performance than we've had in
the past?"
The range of options was clear during the race, which is run in stages by
managers with clipboards and stopwatches. Organized by the Northeast
Sustainable Energy Association, of Greenfield, Mass., with a variety of
corporate and government sponsors, race results are available at
www.nesea.org.
This year, it is being run over a 250-mile route on streets, highways and
country roads from Waterbury, Conn., to Lake George, N.Y.
Everything from single-seat solar vehicles to two New York City buses,
46 vehicles in all, participated. They competed on many factors, including
performance and energy use. Some zoomed, some cruised, but,
reflecting their wonky backgrounds, organizers insisted on no speeding
beyond the limit.
During the race, high school and college teams rubbed shoulders with
corporate entrants. Some vehicles were home built and others were
extensively modified production models. All were covered with decals
advertising component manufacturers and other sponsors.
Race teams carried conventional car tools but the device of choice for
monitoring their vehicles and making last-minute tweaks was the laptop
computer, jacked into a port on the dashboard or under the hood.
In the next few years, it could become a more frequent sight in the
garages of America.
|
