Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 29, 1990 TAG: 9004290202
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It doesn't have one.
The Impact is powered solely by batteries. But this is no golf cart: Quicker than 95 percent of the cars on the road and less polluting than 100 percent, the only smoke in its wake is likely to come from its tires. The car accelerates from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 8 seconds, enough to beat the Mazda Miata and Nissan 300ZX.
Because it's also sleek and comfortable - and has a range of 125 miles between battery charges - many consider the Impact to be the first truly practical electric car.
Others see it as a "platform" - a series of design advances that could be incorporated into a wide variety of vehicles whether they ran on electricity, gasoline or something else. One industry analyst speculates that if an Impact (which on electricity gets the equivalent of 86 miles per gallon) were fitted instead with a small gasoline engine, it might achieve 100 mpg - maybe even 130.
A U.S. auto fleet composed entirely of Impact-like cars could cut automotive pollution - and the fuel consumption that causes it - to about 30 percent of current levels, according to an analyst at the Office of Technology Assessment.
If even a substantial fraction of our rolling stock were electric, it could dramatically reduce oil imports and improve the balance of trade, all without sacrificing performance. Moreover, the Impact employs technology which, though new, is virtually "on the shelf" already. When the car made its debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show in January, GM executives said it could be rolling off the assembly line within five years.
However, because future production of the Impact will depend almost entirely on its profit potential - not concern over smog, acid rain, greenhouse gases or energy independence - it may never be built.
Some states, notably California, are moving toward requiring electric and other alternate-fuel vehicles, but they lack sufficient clout to influence the Big Three car makers to gamble corporate money. And Congress, despite all its hand-wringing talk about global warming, seems in no mood to support innovative auto technology.
On the contrary, the first page ripped from the current Senate clean-air bill was a provision to encourage electric and other high-efficiency, low-pollution cars by regulating tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide, one of the gases that causes global warming. One of the next deletions was a requirement that "alternate fuel" vehicles - cars and trucks that run on fuels cleaner than gasoline, whether that's electricity or alcohols - be put on the road in large numbers.
In fact, Senate leaders not only dropped the CO2 standard but announced that they would oppose any attempts to reinstate it on the grounds that it would be, in the words of Max Baucus, D-Mont., floor manager of the amendments, a "deal-breaker" which might shatter their agreement to control virtually every pollutant other than those that cause global warming.
The Impact's remarkable performance derives in part from its electric power system and in part from super-efficient materials and design.
A conventional gasoline engine operates at 18-percent efficiency when idling and 28 percent under full load. Electric power plants convert fuel to electricity at an average of 34 percent efficiency. And electric engines don't run while they're sitting at stoplights or stuck in traffic.
Realistically, of course, most American cars may never have the Impact's design advantages. Nonetheless, depending on whether your analysis is conservative or optimistic, the United States could reduce total net vehicular emissions of carbon dioxide by 20 to 50 percent - even when pollution resulting from producing more electricity at existing plants is factored in.
Analyses conducted by the Electric Power Research Institute, the research arm of the U.S. electric-utility industry, conclude that powering some vans electrically would cut their net tailpipe emissions of CO2 by 54 percent and smog-forming oxides of nitrogen by a third. (EPRI concedes that emissions of sulfur dioxide, the pollutant that causes acid rain, would increase 14-fold unless stringent controls were installed on generating plants. Congress seems extremely likely to enact such a program.)
James MacKenzie of the World Resources Institute in Washington calculates that converting the average U.S. delivery van from gas to electricity would reduce its net CO2 emissions by roughly 20 percent.
All this assumes that electricity is made at current power plants, which operate at roughly 34-percent efficiency - thus wasting two-thirds of their fuel. But companies such as General Electric, Siemens and Mitsubishi market systems that can boost plant efficiency above 50 percent.
Other engineering innovations exploited in the Impact include:
\ Body design Probably the sleekest car built to date is Ford's Probe V, with a drag coefficient (a measure of wind resistance - the lower the number, the less the drag) of 0.14. That compares with 0.15 for an F-15 fighter jet.
Impact's coefficient of 0.19 is the result of a sculpted front end, an aerodynamically efficient "belly pan" (because there is no drive shaft or exhaust system, the underside can be smooth), "skirts" over the rear wheelwells and a ducktail shape in the back. One industry analyst, skeptical of the overall importance of the Impact, nevertheless calls the drag coefficient "the real story."
\ Batteries Impact relies on lead acid batteries - superficially similar to those found under the hood of virtually every car made in the last half-century. "This isn't a K mart battery," says AeroEnvironment's engineering director Alec Brooks, though "it's probably the cheapest electric vehicle battery yet conceived."
Sealed for life, Impact's lunchpail-sized batteries, rated at 42.5 amp-hours each, need no maintenance and produce no dangerous gases during recharging. Thirty-two of them nestle inside a tunnel running between the two seats which doubles as an arm rest, providing 13.5 kilowatt hours of electricity, which is roughly enough to power the average U.S. home for half a day or a hair dryer for 10 hours.
The batteries can be recharged in six hours on 110-volt household current or as little as two hours on the 220-volt circuits frequently used for electric ranges, hot-water heaters and furnaces. A 50-percent recharge takes only 20 minutes.
\ Power Two basketball-sized electric motors, one mounted inboard of each front wheel, provide "virtually instant" response with so much power that "within milliseconds you're pushed into the back of the seat," according to engineer Paul MacCready, whom many consider to be the inspirational genius behind the car.
The induction motors (the kind most commonly used in electric devices) together produce 114 horsepower at 6,600 revolutions per minute. By comparison, a Buick Skylark puts out 110; a Honda Accord 125. Both weigh about the same as the Impact - 2,500 pounds. The gearbox is mounted directly on the motor and has only one gear ratio. This means no shifting, and many fewer moving parts.
A gasoline engine operating at peak efficiency - with the throttle open and steady - loses over 70 percent of its energy to friction and heat; Impact's virtually friction-free motors lose only 2 to 6 percent. At a stoplight, electric motors are off, using zero energy. A gasoline engine, however, is running at about one-fifth its peak RPM just to keep the crankshaft turning.
Impact differs from earlier electric vehicles, which generally used bulky motors employing direct current, the kind that flows only in one direction, as in a flashlight. Modern, powerful induction motors, however, require alternating current - the sort that comes out of a household outlet. So "inverters" are used to convert the DC from the Impact's 870 pounds of batteries to AC. Also, the older DC motors rely on internal windings and brushes that begin to fail when speed climbs.
\ Braking and regeneration Impact's motors can also function as generators as well as aiding the car's brakes to slow the vehicle. When accelerating, the motors convert electric current into mechanical energy. When braking, however, the opposite happens: With the current off, mechanical energy from the spinning wheels turns the motor shafts and produces electricity while resistance from the rotors slows the car. In this process, called "dynamic braking," the "regenerated" electricity is fed back and used to charge the batteries.
\ Tires and wheels Those tires that prospective car buyers are supposed to kick gobble considerable energy. According to Deborah Bleviss, the executive director of the International Institute for Energy Conservation, reducing a tire's "rolling resistance" - the energy lost when the rubber meets the road - by 10 percent increases gas mileage by about 4 percent.
Impact's tires nearly halve normal rolling resistance by using specially designed Goodyear radials with thinner sidewalls, less rubber depth and higher inflation pressure - about 65 pounds per square inch compared with the usual 32.
These components yield a car so efficient that, in the words of Tom MacDonald, a vehicle specialist with the California Energy Commission, the Impact "enters the realm of road vehicle utility. To me it illustrates the arrival of the electric car at an efficient, practical point."
Paul MacCready attributes the car's success to the ability of its developers to start "with a blank sheet of paper." Unlike its predecessors, Impact is the first car to be developed from the ground up as an electric vehicle.
"What's unique in the Impact is the systems analysis - a combination of many, many modest improvements to produce a car that is a giant leap forward. It suddenly makes vehicles which seemed fairly pedestrian now look very practical."
The Impact was a joint effort of GM and AeroEnvironment, a small California-based firm founded by MacCready, who was named "engineer of the century" by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. (The two firms had collaborated before on Sunraycer, an ultra-efficient car that averaged 41.6 mph across Australia powered solely by sunlight.)
This investment notwithstanding, GM executives say that to justify production they must be assured of "strong buyer intention," which some believe means annual sales of 250,000 or more.
That's unlikely in the United States at present. But whereas President Bush may believe that not enough is known about global warming for the United States to act, other nations do not necessarily share this view.
In early March, for example, a Japanese government official visiting here described that country's long-range plan to move toward a future devoid of fossil fuels. But even without encouragement from the federal government, many experts believe that America will be driving electric vehicles within 15 years.
MacCready, despite his work on the Impact, says "battery-powered cars are not a panacea for the energy and pollution problems" - but "they can provide substantial improvement and may buy society more time."
Meanwhile, electric cars are just one in a burgeoning series of new technologies ready to be commercialized:
Toyota has developed an experimental prototype, the AXV, said to achieve 100 miles per gallon while seating four comfortably. It uses a direct-injection diesel engine, aerodynamic design and many of the qualities found in the Impact. Yet the only place it can be found is on a pedestal in Toyota City, Japan.
Volvo has built four copies of the LCP 2000, a four-seater prototype that gets 83 mpg (highway) and 63 (city) while designed to meet all U.S. crash and pollution standards. Such cars, according to the head of the Volvo's design team, could be modified to run on virtually anything from palm oil to Kentucky bourbon.
Mercedes and BMW have each built hydrogen-fueled cars. Although the two firms consider such cars to be at least 20 years away from mass production, they are continuing to pour money into their development.
Yet for all this innovation, it seems as if each passing year brings only more talk of what the future may hold, rather than progress toward it. Most industry-watchers blame the relatively low price of fuel for stalling these technologies.
"If you could get gasoline to cost $5 a gallon instead of $1," says MacCready, "the inventive muscle of the United States would be harnessed. What the U.S. needs is an environmental Gorbachev."
GM officials say that in Southern California where gasoline regularly sells for less than $1 per gallon, the Impact would cost about twice as much to operate as its gasoline rivals. The ownership costs, however - i.e., the total of all costs spread out over the car's lifetime - would be only about 15 percent higher than gasoline-fueled models. And in areas where fuel prices are higher - Europe, for example - the Impact might already be cost-competitive.
Because of the long-term commitment required to develop, manufacture and sell vehicles employing advanced or non-standard technologies - especially in a period of fluctuating fuel prices - automakers say they need federal incentives or attractive market potential. At present, American society offers neither, entrusting the fate of our most promising innovations to business executives.
It was Charles Wilson, a former president of GM, who in 1953 said that "for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa."
Some industry observers are beginning to question that sentiment. Even Fortune magazine - not noted for its sharp criticism of U.S. industry - wrote recently: "Customers prefer steak, but Detroit continues to market sizzle."
Perhaps. But if so, the White House and Congress are planning the menu.
by CNB