George Jetson, Meet the Sequel
By DANNY HAKIM January 9, 2005
NYTimes.com
ETROIT
THE Sequel is totally cool.
General Motors' latest hydrogen car prototype, called the Sequel, will be unveiled today at a press preview of the North American International Auto Show here. It is a car unlike any other and a glimpse of a possible, very different, automotive future. Most important, it runs on a hydrogen fuel cell, so its only tailpipe emission is water vapor, not the smog-forming pollutants and greenhouse gases that come out of gasoline-powered cars.
So why do environmental groups see the Sequel not as a panacea for cars' environmental shortcomings but as G.M.'s latest Trojan horse?
G.M. has trotted out impressive hydrogen-fueled cars before - most recently the Sequel's predecessor, the Hy-wire. G.M. says it will theoretically be able to mass-produce fuel cell vehicles affordably by 2010 - even though most competitors, which are also working on the technology, say it will be decades before such vehicles are viable.
And G.M. hardly screams green in the present. In the 2003 model year, the average fuel economy of G.M.'s cars and trucks fell to its lowest point in two decades. And the company has lobbied vigorously to block more stringent fuel regulations and has taken major roles in lawsuits against California's antipollution rules.
"There's no sign by General Motors that they have any inclination to act in the here and now," said David Doniger, policy director of the climate center of the Natural Resources Defense Council and a senior Environmental Protection Agency official in the Clinton administration.
Lawrence Burns, G.M.'s vice president for research and development, says G.M. makes many vehicles that are the most fuel-efficient in their class. It also makes many laggards, though, and its Hummer is Detroit's least fuel-efficient brand. But Mr. Burns says the fuel cell can end gasoline's grip on the industry.
"It could flat-out reinvent the automobile," he said in a recent interview. "The environmentalists who think we're doing a head fake with this, either they're not listening to that part of the story or believe we've made it up. But the engineer in me says this is the greatest opportunity certainly in my career to truly come up with a better machine."
Hydrogen fuel cell cars are not to be confused with hybrid electric cars, which were brought to the United States in the late 1990's by Honda and Toyota. A hybrid vehicle uses an electric motor alongside an internal combustion engine. Hybrids work pretty much like regular cars; drivers just have to go to the gas station a bit less often. And hybrids are already here: more than 80,000 were sold in America last year.
By contrast, a fuel cell represents an entirely new way of propelling a car. A single cell is a waferlike device that separates hydrogen atoms into electrons and protons, using the electrons to generate a current. The byproduct of the process is water vapor, formed when the leftover hydrogen protons are combined with oxygen from the air. A whole stack of these wafers - 372 in the Sequel - is required to generate enough power for a car. The Sequel's stack is stored in a steel case a bit larger than a VCR.
Fuel cells have been around for more than a century. They provided power for the lunar landers, conveniently spitting out water for astronauts to drink. Back in the days of lunar landers - in the 1960's and 70's, when G.M. was dominant among American corporations - the company built the first automotive fuel cell prototype. The system, however, was clunky and filled an entire van, called "Electrovan," and was sort of a cross between the Hindenburg and Scooby Doo's Mystery Machine.
More recently, G.M. and other automakers have been able to wedge fuel cell systems under the hoods of conventional vehicles, and the companies are convinced that riding on top of a tank of compressed hydrogen is no less safe than riding on top of a tank of gasoline.
But G.M. also sees the technology as an opportunity to reimagine the automobile. All of the Sequel's essential components are housed in a surfboardlike platform under the car. While G.M. has displayed a similar idea at previous shows, the Sequel has been engineered to be a real car that complies with crash test regulations.
G.M. says it has been able to double the range of fuel cell vehicles in less than three years, to the point that the Sequel can travel 300 miles before refueling, making it the first hydrogen prototype that can go as far between fill-ups as a conventional car.
At a glance, the Sequel looks like a modern blend of an S.U.V. and a station wagon. Because the fuel cells used in cars would operate at about 180 degrees Fahrenheit, they require more cooling and thus about twice the radiator space of a conventional car, so honeycombed radiator surfaces are nestled around the front taillights, in the back and on the sides.
Under its skin, if it is not quite "The Jetsons," the Sequel is at least a car for the digital age. Braking, steering and other control systems will operate electronically, more like the systems on a modern jet than the mechanical and hydraulic controls on a conventional automobile - though there will be backup conventional braking and steering controls. As a result, the Sequel will have far fewer moving parts than a normal car.
"We've taken advantage of the fuel cell to electrify the automobile," said Chris Borroni-Bird, the G.M. engineer who was director of the Sequel project. "It's an instant response, like turning the light on." G.M. estimates that the car can decelerate to a stop from 60 miles an hour in about one less car length than a conventional vehicle can - and that it can get moving much faster.
Mr. Burns called it "a sequel to the first hundred years of automotive transportation" - hence the name - and a car with the potential to "remove the automobile from the environmental debate."
Environmentalists, however, have wearied of G.M. trotting out whiz-bang prototypes. After all, the company toured the last hydrogen prototype, the Hy-wire, to every continent but Antarctica. If G.M. has been the industry's boldest visionary on hydrogen power, environmentalists also see it as the industry's chief obstructionist.
For instance, when the Bush administration proposed a 7 percent increase in fuel economy for sport utility vehicles and pickups in 2002, G.M. submitted a 330-page rebuttal - an argument that dwarfed the combined filings of its competitors - that said the change would hurt the company.
"They tend to be the ringleader of the opposition," said Mr. Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We'd like to see the hydrogen cars," he added. "But we'd like to see something real, real improvements achievable with current technology now."
Daniel Becker, the Sierra Club's top global warming strategist and a persistent critic of Detroit, said: "Their first and last reaction is, 'It can't be done and shouldn't be done,' and only when forced, kicking and screaming, do they tell the engineers to go to it. And then they do it."
Mr. Burns said such criticism "gives us zero credit for what we've done." One problem, he says, is that Americans haven't had an appetite for fuel-efficient vehicles, though demand for hybrids has outstripped production. Toyota and Honda have sold hybrid cars for five years, and the Ford Motor Company began selling its first hybrid, a version of its Escape S.U.V., last year.
Today, Ford will announce a plan to sell five different hybrid models by the fall of 2008. While G.M. has been selling hybrid buses to cities and has a modest version of hybrid technology in a few pickup trucks, it will be three years behind Ford in offering a hybrid comparable to the Escape. That said, Ford has the lowest overall fuel economy of the major automakers - 18.8 miles a gallon, on average, compared with 19.9 for G.M.
"Are we late on hybrids? Mm-hm," Mr. Burns said. "Do we wish we had made some of those calls differently? Most likely. Is that game over? No, not at all."
EXECUTIVES at G.M. say that if the United States wants to become serious about reducing oil consumption, it cannot impose improvements solely on industry. They say that speed limits, which affect consumption, need to be lowered, that drivers need to be urged to take better care of cars and that the United States needs to do what Europe and Japan do - slap far higher taxes on gas. "If you want people to consume something less, the simplest thing to do is price it more dearly," G.M.'s chairman and chief executive, Rick Wagoner, said in an interview last year.
In Germany and Britain, oil consumption has fallen since the 1970's. In the United States, where fuel costs less than half what it does in Europe, consumption has risen by more than a third since 1970, to 20 million barrels a day from 14.7 million. Are higher gasoline taxes likely? No. During the presidential race, each campaign accused the other of having once supported such an idea.
G.M. is also hamstrung by its obligation to provide health care to 1.1 million Americans, a large number of whom are retirees. The obligation makes G.M.'s own health no small matter for the United States, but the nation's medical system puts G.M. at a disadvantage. Rivals in Japan and Germany, countries with socialized medical systems, do not have to bankroll retiree health care. G.M. has estimated that it will spend more than $60 billion on health care for its retirees and current workers after they retire over the next several decades. By contrast, Toyota has said in financial filings that its retiree health care liability is not even large enough to require disclosure.
But against the backdrop of war in Iraq, instability across the Middle East, growing debate about the world's oil supply and the threat of global warming, environmental groups say that there are several reasons for the United States to require cars and trucks to burn less gasoline. Not only is the number of automobiles growing with the population, but the fuel economy of the average vehicle has declined - to 20.7 miles a gallon in the 2003 model year from 22.1 in 1988. Over that time, leaps in engine technology have been offset by swelling sales of S.U.V.'s and vehicles with faster engines. Some financial analysts also say Toyota's and Honda's aggressive environmental strategy could be an advantage as regulations increase in major markets like China.
A recent study, financed by the Hewlett Foundation and included in a report by the National Commission on Energy Policy, showed that the fuel economy of cars and trucks sold in the United States was the worst among all the major car markets.
Are fuel cells the answer?
Making the fuel cell a mass-market product faces any number of hurdles. The nation would have to spend billions of dollars to retrofit thousands of gas stations to dispense hydrogen. Huge amounts of hydrogen would have to be supplied cleanly and cheaply, or there would be little reason to use it. And it would be no small feat to persuade American car buyers to be guinea pigs in the industry's science project.
Finally, hydrogen cars have to become a lot less expensive to make. Two years ago, at the Detroit auto show, Carlos Ghosn, Nissan's chief executive, said that "today a fuel cell car probably costs about - I'm going to be optimistic - $700,000." He added, "We're far from sticker price, eh?"
The biggest cost hurdles are in cheaply manufacturing the fuel stack and the hydrogen tanks, which use an unusual carbon fiber. "I think we're saying it's roughly 10 times too expensive," Mr. Borroni-Bird said.
Mr. Burns says that most fuel-efficiency technologies will only delay issues like global warming, particularly as the number of cars and trucks grows around the world. "Let's say we could wake up today and magically the 220 million cars and trucks in the United States were 25 percent more efficient," he said. If the goal was energy independence and reducing greenhouse gases, he added, "well, you bought yourself about six years" - that is, those vehicles, over their lifetimes, would save six years of oil. The fuel cell, he argues, offers a cure, not a Band-Aid.
THE auto industry is littered with promising technologies that did not materialize but seemed good bets at the time, from steam-powered cars to those powered by gas turbines.
A decade ago at the Detroit auto show, Jack Smith, then G.M.'s chairman, told reporters that battery-powered cars would be profitable in less than 10 years. Two years later, before another battery car demonstration at the Detroit auto show, he said that "regulation can divert an automaker's resources and attention from fully exploring the range of technologies like those we are showing today." G.M. has since abandoned its battery-powered vehicle program.
Mr. Becker of the Sierra Club said the world could not afford to dither. "Making a car go further on a gallon of gas is the biggest single step we can take to curbing global warming," he said. "G.M. keeps saying wait 20 or 30 years. We can't wait."