Greentech: Fuel Cells at Center Stage

In Tokyo on Wednesday, Toyota was the first automaker in the new season of international auto shows to reveal its fresh take on this headline-grabbing technology, quickly followed by Honda and Hyundai in Los Angeles. All three automakers unveiled new design studies intended to signal that fuel-cell vehicles, which produce zero tailpipe pollutants, are ever so close to production. Each concept vehicle demonstrated progress in the efficiency and packaging of their fuel-cell systems, which generate electricity onboard by combining hydrogen and oxygen and emit only water vapor.

What these automakers failed to deliver in terms of specifics they offset with lofty promises of a real and rapidly approaching hydrogen-based future. 

Before you file this news with reports of the imminent arrival of flying cars, consider this: For the last four months, I have been living with fuel-cell technology, logging more than 2,500 miles at the wheel of a Toyota Highlander FCHV-adv test bed. And I took two short test drives of a sedan that the company said would be ready for volume production in about 24 months.

The all-electric Toyota technowonder that visited my driveway was based on a 2008 Highlander midsize crossover. It offered nearly 300 miles of driving range and five-minute fill-ups — a combination that no battery-electric car offers. I drove for days without tailpipe emissions and without depleting the tank. Multiple round-trip journeys from my East Bay home to San Jose or Sacramento were no problem.

Those trips are a challenge for the Nissan Leaf E.V. that I usually drive, which offers 80 miles of real-world range and charging times measured in hours.

“Toyota made a decision — the fuel-cell car is going to be a big part of our future,” John Hanson, a Toyota spokesman, said. “That’s the direction we’re going, big time.”

Toyota is not alone. Four other carmakers — General Motors, Hyundai, Honda and Mercedes-Benz — are also promising fuel-cell cars in the next few years. They must satisfy California’s zero emission laws, essentially requiring that by 2025 about 15 percent of new cars refuel by plugging into the grid or filling up with hydrogen.

For me, the transition from an E.V. to a fuel-cell car meant trading one refueling limitation for another. My Leaf offers less than a third of the range of the fuel-cell Highlander, but replenishing it at home is as easy and accessible as charging a cellphone. When the tanks in the Highlander were nearing empty, I needed to make a 15-minute drive to the only accessible hydrogen station in Northern California, six miles away in Emeryville.

My first visits to the station, on the block where Pixar makes movies, were a scene you’d expect from one of the studio’s hapless characters. Even after training, my first tries ended with the heavy connector being ejected and falling to the pavement. That was user error; soon enough, I figured out the problem, and topping up with hydrogen gas became routine.

A kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of hydrogen contains nearly the same amount of energy as a gallon of gasoline. To top up, I added about 4 to 5 kilograms of gaseous hydrogen into tanks at a pressure of 10,000 pounds per square inch. The Highlander traveled about 55 miles on a kilogram. In Emeryville, I paid $12 to $13 a kilogram.

Measured against a baseline of a 2008 Highlander Hybrid, which carried an E.P.A. rating of 27 m.p.g. in the city and 25 on the highway, that’s roughly equivalent to paying $6 for a gallon of gasoline. According to Toyota, full-scale production of hydrogen is projected to drop the cost below the current price of gasoline, but for now E.V.’s that charge from the grid and store the energy in a lithium-ion battery pack operate at a cost-per-mile expense that’s commonly one-third that of filling up a fuel-cell vehicle with hydrogen.

Some aspects of the 2008 fuel-cell Highlander are by now outdated, so Toyota gave me two turns, once in May and again in September, in a test vehicle that it says is more representative of the sedan it will offer in 2015. This mule, which had its fuel-cell powertrain installed in the body of a Lexus HS 250h — a hybrid model that has been discontinued — used zip ties and gaffer’s tape to hold together prototype parts and diagnostic equipment. But it gave a sportier drive than the Highlander. The production car will carry a Toyota badge.

All electric cars, whether drawing their energy from batteries or fuel cells, offer impressive low-speed response and near-silent operation. An unexpected exception in a fuel-cell car is the hiss of an air compressor, which pumps oxygen from the atmosphere to the fuel cell.

The main challenge facing Toyota engineers, however, is the vehicle’s price.

Greentech: Squeezing More From Ethanol

The effort to untangle itself from this sticky situation is part of a larger proposal by the federal government to make the most sweeping changes in gasoline since lead additives were banned.

Tucked inside the E.P.A.’s March announcement of a plan to cut the amount of sulfur allowed in gasoline was an audacious suggestion that sought to solve all three ethanol challenges at once. The proposal, for a fuel that is 30 percent ethanol, could reduce tailpipe emissions and improve fuel economy — and even encourage drivers to use more ethanol.

“You make the dog like the dog food,” said William H. Woebkenberg, senior engineer for fuels policy in the United States at Mercedes-Benz.

The idea is that while today’s typical pump blend — E10, which is 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline — has drawbacks, a blend of 30 percent ethanol and 70 percent gasoline could take advantage of ethanol’s strengths. Unlike a flexible-fuel vehicle that can use E85 formulations but offers little financial or performance benefit, an engine tuned specifically for E30 would perform better on that fuel than on the standard E10, creating a market incentive.

The idea has widespread support among technical experts.

It also has another appealing aspect: current ethanol policy is probably unsustainable, because Congress has ordered the oil companies to use ever-larger amounts of ethanol. To comply with the mandate, ethanol levels would have to exceed 10 percent of each gallon of fuel, yet many automakers advise against using higher concentrations unless the car is equipped for it. With a declining demand for gasoline, the problem becomes more acute.

The 30 percent idea is laid out deep in the 938-page text of the proposed Tier 3 rule, which would lower the amount of sulfur in gasoline by two-thirds, to the level required in California. In the proposal, the E.P.A. asked automakers to comment on E30.

Like other efforts to introduce new fuels, it would require big investments at gas stations for blending pumps and storage tanks.

Still, there is a powerful incentive in the E.P.A. plan: offering automakers the option of having their cars certified on E30. Before a new car can be sold in the United States, the company must submit data on the vehicle’s pollution output and fuel economy to the E.P.A. Certifying with E30 would call for engines optimized to take advantage of the blend’s octane rating of 93 or perhaps higher.

Using high-octane premium-grade gas in an engine that does not require it offers no benefit. But in engines designed to squeeze the fuel-air mixture to very high pressures before igniting it with the spark plug, high-octane fuel burns predictably and can produce more horsepower. (On the other hand, burning low-octane gas in an engine tuned for premium grade can cause erratic combustion, or knocking, and result in severe engine damage.)

Ethanol contains only about two-thirds as much energy as gasoline, gallon for gallon. But if it is burned in engines designed for high cylinder pressures, it will produce competitive horsepower.

In general, the oil companies have opposed using higher concentrations of ethanol. The oil industry is trying to get Congress to change federal rules so they can use less ethanol, not more.

But various engine and fuel experts like the idea, because the E.P.A. is inviting the auto companies to take advantage of the good characteristics of ethanol, including an octane rating that is well over 100.

“That’s getting smarter,” said Margaret Wooldridge, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan. The way ethanol is used now, she said, “if anybody does notice there’s any ethanol in the fuel, it’s always in a way that is negative.”

The trouble with the flexible fuel vehicles on the market now, which can run at blends of up to 85 percent ethanol, is that they are still mostly optimized for gasoline, not ethanol, she said. While there are millions of such vehicles on the road, they run mostly on E10 because that is a better bargain for the driver.

Higher concentrations are no better, and ethanol companies are struggling for acceptance of E15 with drivers, who show little enthusiasm.

“E15 is the answer to the question nobody asked,” said Mr. Woebkenberg of Mercedes-Benz. “It is a detriment.”

But an E30 blend in an engine designed to use that fuel would be attractive to car buyers, he said, with “ridiculous power and good fuel economy,” and owners of those cars would seek out the fuel, unlike owners of flex-fuel cars.

“I hope that the E.P.A. agrees to do it,” said C. Boyden Gray, a former aide to President George H. W. Bush who is now a Washington lawyer representing energy clients. In coming years, Mr. Gray and others say, more cars are going to be engineered for high-octane fuel so they can get better fuel economy as automakers move to double economy, and high-octane fuel with 30 percent ethanol is cleaner than blends relying more heavily on gasoline.

But Mr. Gray and other experts said that the E.P.A. would probably have to do more than just give automakers the option to certify vehicles on E30; it would probably have to mandate its availability to give car shoppers confidence that they would be able to refuel such vehicles.

Greentech: Compression of gases for a cheaper and simpler hybrid

It is a hybrid Air, an experimental vehicle that the French automaker PSA Peugeot Citroen has been trumpeting as a model of energy efficiency. While some skeptics wonder that if the hybrid Air really is an innovative technology, the Peugeot and Citroen search cars powered by, you might be some of the most intriguing models exposed this week at the Geneva Motor Show. The show opens Tuesday for two days of previews press and runs through March 17.

Peugeot said that a compact as a Citroen C3 equipped with the technology, which combines the hydraulic drive with a conventional gasoline engine, will get about 81 miles per gallon in the city. It would be significantly better than the existing gasoline-electric hybrids like the Toyota Prius can do to stop traffic.

PSA Peugeot Citroen, the second largest manufacturer in Europe, after Volkswagen, said it plans to start rolling the Air hybrid cars by 2015 or 2016.

Like a Prius, the hybrid Air system recovers energy whenever the driver slows down or decelerates. But instead of capturing the kinetic energy of the car of slowdown with a generator that charges a battery, like the Prius, the hybrid Air system uses a reversible hydraulic pump. The pump compresses the nitrogen gas in what looks like an oversized scuba tank which also contains the hydraulic fluid; the next time the driver steps on the accelerator, compressed gas pushes hydraulic fluid, like a syringe, by a gearbox to turn the wheels.

The amount of energy stored in the nitrogen tank is low – equivalent to approximately five teaspoons of essence. While it is just enough to propel the car a few hundred metres until the gasoline engine takes over once again, when repeated during a day of driving in the city, these additional teaspoons of energy corresponds to the great improvement in mileage, said Peugeot.

The idea of using so-called hydraulic hybrid to power a car has been around for years. Peugeot prefers to call its technology 'air hybrid' because the energy is stored by compression of nitrogen gas instead of hydraulic fluid under pressure. In the U.S., Chrysler and Ford Motor each have studied the approach and the Environmental Protection Agency has encouraged research.

The United Parcel Service said dozens of hybrid hydraulic trucks to its fleet of alternative fuels. Other companies apply technology for garbage trucks, which, as vans by UPS are great, make frequent stops and can benefit from the recovery of the energy otherwise wasted in the heat generated by the brakes.

The Indian carmaker Tata has promised to produce a car powered only by compressed air, but uses a different technology, developed by Motor Development International.

Hybrid Air of 200 members team, headed by Karim Mokaddem, a Peugeot engineer, seems to move faster from one to a car manufacturer worldwide to provide this alternative hybrid technology to the production.

"The logic of a hybrid electric is completely different," Andres Yarce, another of the Peugeot project leaders, said at the technical centre of the company in Carrières-sous-Poissy, near Paris. With an electric hybrid, ' you let the car run for a few miles, have the engine cut off, and then click run silently on an electric motor, ' said Mr. Yarce. "It took a long time for people to understand that the hybrid Air works differently, but it gets the same results."

When the car is ready for the market, Peugeot plans to price at about $26,000.

Mr. Mokaddem said that the prize was intended to make the Air hybrid a viable option in emerging markets like China and India, where most gas-electric hybrids were too complex and expensive for local repair and maintenance operations.

Peugeot says it can undercut hybrids existing prices because his car does not require expensive battery and an electric motor, like a Prius, even if the hybrid Air uses a standard car battery. The hydraulic system adds about 220 pounds to the weight of Peugeot or Citroen classic. And because of the heat generated by the process of energy transfer, engineers have had to adjust the cooling system of the car.

The most obvious difference between the hybrid prototype Air and an ordinary car is the presence of two pressure tanks and a special gearbox that handles the transfer of energy between water and the 1.2 litre petrol standard engine. The designers of the system say that the configuration left room to keep a standard size trunk and fuel tank.

The accumulator or reservoir of nitrogen pressure, is about four feet long, with a volume of 20 litres, or about five litres and a maximum pressure of about 3,600 pounds per square inch. Breakage in a steel pressure tank could send metal flying, of course, but the design team said it has shielded against this install the tank under the floor and adding emergency exit valves. They also note that the nitrogen gas, which is nearly 80 percent of the air we breathe is not flammable.