New York international auto show 2010: F-word is gaining momentum

Well, some disambiguation is probably needed: in this context F-word stands for Fuel-Cell, which is rather promising, efficient electric energy storage technology. Hopefully in the near future, due to the proliferation of electric vehicles, such disambiguation will no longer be required :)

Missed opportunity

The history of automobiles reflects the true clash of two technological titans: internal combustion engine vs electric motor. Essentially, there are three types of the cars currently in the market, classified by their power train: internal combustion engine (typically using gas/ethanol, or hydrogen), pure electric (utilizing electric energy only) and the hybrid ones, which is just a combination of previous two. Electric cars are the absolute champions in terms of mileage and energy efficiency, followed by hybrid vehicles; internal combustion engine is an absolute looser in this competition, though it by huge margin outnumbers all other types. This is exactly what could be viewed as missed opportunity of epic proportion: the entire history of mankind could be rather different, provided that all creative thinking and engineering geniality invested in gas powered vehicles was instead aimed at creation and proliferation of electric vehicles en mass. Traced back to their origin, electric and gasoline cars stand just next to each other on the time line, though their paths into the future were dramatically different, resulted in almost complete domination of the internal combustion engine on the automotive market for more than 100 years. It would be a rather interesting experience to put both technologies in their historical prospective, as it’s done in the next chapter.

Internal combustion engine vs electric vehicles: historical prospective

It could come as a big surprise that the first internal combustion engine, built by Swiss inventor François Isaac de Rivaz in the early 1800s, was actually powered by the mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. It’s hard to imagine a hydrogen car that was built more than 200 years ago, just in beginning of XIX century: back to the future, indeed!

German engineer Karl Benz is credited for the invention of the gasoline-powered automobile. In 1885 he was granted a patent on his four stroke cycle gasoline engine. In the same year he has built his famous Motorwagen and a year later he was awarded a patent on this invention. It is relevant to mention that several other German engineers (Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach) were concurrently working on the similar set of technology and have made a tremendous contribution to the initial stage of automobile design and manufacturing. Here, in the United States, the debut of automobile industry is tightly linked to the names of two great inventors/entrepreneurs: Ransom E. Olds (Oldsmobile factory started in 1902) and Henry Ford (credited for a legendary Model T in 1914). So, that’s how things started in regards to gas engine automobiles.

The roots of electric cars could be traced back to mid 1880s. From those old days to the modern time, electric cars demonstrated tremendous advantages over their gasoline counterparts: no emission, no vibration, low noise. In addition to this, electric vehicles have the ability to recuperate energy while breaking, resulting in tremendous competitive advantages over any type of internal combustion vehicles in terms of energy efficiency.
It is just amazing, that in 1897 New York City already got its first electric cars taxi service. Ironically, 100 years later (in mid 1990s) the author of this article proposed an idea to develop a taxi service in NYC based on the pure electric vehicle EV-1 from GM; the idea did not get approval because of numerous procedural technicalities, pertinent to taxi/limo regulations; in particular, it was pointed that EV-1 is relatively small and did not have enough room for passengers to fit the taxi requirements.

State of technology

From historical passage back to modern days: there are more than 800 million cars and tracks worldwide, and most of them are using internal combustion engine power train. Market share of hybrid and electric cars is still relatively small, though the plethora of hybrid/electric vehicles, demonstrated at NY international auto show 2010, clearly indicates that movement in that direction is definitely gaining momentum. Practically all world major car manufacturers presented some sort of either hybrid, or pure electric vehicles: Nissan Leaf 100% pure electric, zero emission, Fuel Cell powered Mercedes, Chevrolet Cruz Eco and Lincoln MKZ hybrid just to name a few. Refer to the video recorded at NY international auto show in 2010 for detailed view of the cars (listed in reference section).

Afterword

Pure electric cars are the absolute champions in terms of energy efficiency. Proliferation of electric vehicles is heavily correlated with advances in the energy storage technology: fuel-cells, Li-Ion batteries and ultracapacitors. This particular area is strategically important for the US technological leadership and competitiveness on the global auto market.

References