O.T. - NYT article about new hybrid (both gasoline & electric) powered cars.
(Some of this is long and boring. I have highlighted a few parts).
****************************************************
May 29, 1999
Makers of Hybrid Vehicles Add Fuel to Electric Mix
By MATTHEW L. WALD
ALBANY, 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.
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company |
