Conversation with GM's fuel cell technology director, Chris Borroni-Bird
Chris Borroni-Bird is the director of Advanced Technology Vehicle Concepts at GM. He's leading the effort at GM to make fuel cell vehicles, based on a "skateboard" style chassis called AUTOnomy that incorporates the fuel cell, motors and electronics control.
GMnext kindly invited me to visit with Dr. Borroni-Bird and have a discussion with him about "innovation, technology, energy, the environment, and their impact on the future of the automobile." He's a fascinating innovator with ideas that could change transportation around the world. I hope he succeeds.
Here's the first video from our conversation. (Note: GMnext compensated me for my video appearance.) Link
the latest
latest episodes
When you wrote that GM compensated you for your appearance I initially thought that they had somehow photoshopped your image--put you in a suit or something. Heh.
We could have an electric car now.
we've got them. Anyone seen a golf cart legal to drive in your downtown core? Why not,do you suppose?
Well, um, now that you mention it, they're legal here. But you can go grocery shopping in a thong here, so we might not be a good example.
Hydrogen cells and electric cars are both incredibly oil dependent. Neither are suitable or realistic solutions.
do you have to wear eye protection?
Hydrogen cells and electric cars are both incredibly oil dependent. Neither are suitable or realistic solutions.
Usually, when someone makes a sweeping statement like that, we strongly encourage them to back it up with some facts. Otherwise it just seems like political posturing.
do you have to wear eye protection?
I just stare at the floor and quietly chant mantras.
"Hydrogen cells and electric cars are both incredibly oil dependent. Neither are suitable or realistic solutions. "
Wrong and wrong. Nuclear, wind, hydroelectric, solar, geothermal, and any other process that generates electricity would work.
I don't know where you are Antinous but my introduction to standards different than those here in the midwest was on Halloween eve in the Castro district. That was... interesting... the food was great though.
Switching to a hydrogen economy will not change anything. The same players will just re-tool. Maybe that's the point.
Yes, but the production of nuclear plants, wind turbines, solar panels, etc, is very energy intensive, and at this point still very dependent on cheap oil.
my introduction to standards different than those here in the midwest was on Halloween eve in the Castro district.
One Halloween in SF, my roommate got tired of hopping in his mermaid costume, so he just took it off and hitchhiked home naked. Nobody cares. The Naked Guy went to Berkeley for four years wearing nothing but a backpack. Truth in advertising, unlike New York's Naked Cowboy. None of the grocery stores here in Palm Springs have any of those no shirt/no shoes rules, so people show up in bathing suits.
This is defeating my video-fu on Linux (usually I can figure out a way to watch most windows-specific formats).
Can anyone suggest a procedure to get access to this? Right now, I can't even find a source URL for the stream/file.
where was the video?
there is no functioning lnk I can find.
I am presuming that the skate board car iss the same as the HI-wire GM were working on a couple of years ago.
DRM bribery, gasoline car bribery...
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5giTlv1BmPsT8iV36G5ws-TDSqFHA
>Usually, when someone makes a sweeping statement
>like that, we strongly encourage them to back it
>up with some facts. Otherwise it just seems like
>political posturing.
actuall if you count how much energy we use in one year from oil you will understand. Going even 80% nuclear for cars (all electric, hydrogen) would mean we run out of fuel for the plants in 10 years.
actuall if you count how much energy we use in one year from oil you will understand. Going even 80% nuclear for cars (all electric, hydrogen) would mean we run out of fuel for the plants in 10 years.
That sounds more like a prophecy than a statement of fact. Would you care to quantify some of your points.
Takuan "DRM bribery, gasoline car bribery..."
This sounds like the big bad gub'ment is against them for no reason at all...
...until you get to this...
They aren't safe at normal roadgoing speeds. That's a pretty good reason to keep them off the road, eh? If the example in your link was at least as safe as a Geo Metro convertible, then maybe.
At least there's this...
It will be interesting to see just how an all-electric runabout copes with a Quebec winter (not to mention coping with Quebec drivers).
vehicles made of lightweight metals and plastics are not safe to drive on Canada's open roads, and would not stand up in a collision...
...with a Hummer. How about with a comparable vehicle? When do we start letting the future, rather than the past, determine our choices?
antinous "...with a Hummer. How about with a comparable vehicle?"
Have you ever seen two subcompacts after running into each other at 50km/h a piece? And that's the shakey end of "safe". If a car does worse than that at the same speed, it should not be on the road.
"When do we start letting the future, rather than the past, determine our choices?"
So, if we let them on the big-boy roads, these electric cars will only get into accidents in the distant future? Or will it be more like:
"Well, honey...sorry about your broken neck. Just remember that at some undefined point in the future, this accident wouldn't be quite as bad."
"That's all right, dear. I am glad that future-me would be in better shape than present-me, if present-me was in the future and crashed into a car being driven by future-somebodyelse."
So, then, why are motorcycles legal? Are you arguing in favor of tanks?
I have no idea why motorcycles are legal. I've never been a fan of them, myself. There's a reason why ER doctors call motorcyclists "organ donors". I don't, however, know what that reason is. Hopefully, it's a punchline of some sort. To a joke, probably.
As for tanks, that's just silly. Have you ever tried changing the tracks on one of those?
New cars for real streets should be at least as safe as current cars. Taking a step back, safety-wise, only makes sense when it's somebody else's kid sitting in the passenger seat.
I think that you've failed to factor the Iraq War into vehicle safety. Maintaining the flow of oil costs many lives.
The attention given to fuel cells, I fear, takes from what should be spent on battery R&D for plug-in hybrids, which are a far easier transition. The US gov't is spending $100 million on fuel cells, which don't actually power any cars yet that people use, and there's no infrastructure in sight for hydrogen-to-the-pump, while plug-ins, of which are thousands (Prius conversions and Renault Elect'roads) actually in use by consumers, are getting $30 million. It's enough to make you think that someone with buddies in the oil industry is in the White House.
I think that you've failed to take into account that making an electric Civic isn't much tougher than making an electric golfcart.
I have spoken with the survivor of a "Smartcar" accident. She bounced down the road like a beachball, but the roll cage did its job.
lowering downtown core speed limits to 20mph would change little in travel times for congested areas and would make the flimsiest vehicles safe.
oh the smart is superb in a crash.
It really is that car makers are lazy and greedy.
I will bring your attention to the inertial seat belt.
It was patented by Volvo who said Any one who makes cars can use them fee of charge as it would be immoral to profiteer from human safety.
The Big 3 didn't bother with them for a couple of decades. Because they cost a little more and entertained the idea that cars might crash.
Now they need an elecric Smartcar, rather than a golf car with doors.
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/02/18/move-over-tatas-nano-taras-electric-tiny-is-now-the-worlds-c/
error404 "the inertial seat belt...patented by Volvo...The Big 3 didn't bother with them..."
You can see their logic, though, right? Volvo is Swedish. You know what's in Sweden? That's right: Swedes.
"for a couple of decades...Because they cost a little more and entertained the idea that cars might crash."
That's a good comeback whenever someone says something like "what's good for GM is good for America" or "the market will decide" (because business is in business to maximize profit, and the market is stupid. I'm somewhat of an expert in the latter. I'm a part of the market, and I'm an idiot. Perhaps "stupid" is the wrong word. "Ignorant of the possibilities"? "Not aware of the things that they don't know because the people that are in business to sell them things don't really want them to know the dirty details"?).
Love Canal works, too.
How can we expect GM to build a gas free car when they can't even build a website that works right in firefox? ;) The videos don't load in firefox3 for me. Had to bust open the ol' IE.
Gas free? Hardly. We get most of our hydrogen from either water (plus a lot of energy) or...dun dun-dun! hydrocarbon fuels. As such, like the battery-powered electric car (which gets its electricity from any number of yummy coal or tasty gas powerplants...plus a smattering of nuclear and "other"), it just moves the pollution elsewhere (with the additional addition of it taking an assload of energy to break hydrogen away from whatever it's attached to).
The hydrogen economy looks like a pipedream; a good place to throw away money. Also, I would love to be proven wrong.
It would be much simpler, in my view, to just tax the hell out of the suburbs to discourage the sprawl that leads to the half hour-plus trips to everywhere that the 'burbs cause, and encourage people to live in small boxes in the city. My view is in no way coloured by the fact that I despise the modern suburb. Less distance travelled means less gas used, hopefully to the point that something called "walking" comes back in vogue.
Personally, I'm sticking with the starch economy. I only feed potatoes to my rickshaw driver.
Modusoperandi: "Gas free? Hardly. We get most of our hydrogen from either water (plus a lot of energy) or...dun dun-dun! hydrocarbon fuels. As such, like the battery-powered electric car (which gets its electricity from any number of yummy coal or tasty gas powerplants...plus a smattering of nuclear and "other"), it just moves the pollution elsewhere (with the additional addition of it taking an assload of energy to break hydrogen away from whatever it's attached to)."
Yes. Thank you. These "alternatives" do nothing about the real problems we face, but simply make their users feel good about themselves. Finding ways to continue using the same amount of energy will get us nowhere. We need to be thinking about ways to use less energy in general, rather than ways to maintain our current lifestyles.
Everyone with firefox/having trouble viewing the video: Click "back to stories" in the linked article, then the video should be in the video list.
chelapods crossed
http://www.nanosolar.com/
To those that are taking the term "skateboard car" literally, it's not a plank you ride on top of, it's a plank that you snap the chassis on top of. Think those hotwheels cars that you can change the bodies on. So maybe you don't feel like driving the red coupe, you can go get it changed into a black sedan while keeping the enginey parts the same.
#33 MossWatson says
... these "alternatives" do nothing about the real problems we face, but simply make their users feel good about themselves. Finding ways to continue using the same amount of energy will get us nowhere. We need to be thinking about ways to use less energy in general, rather than ways to maintain our current lifestyles.
That's wrong. Even if we managed to reduce our energy use to 1% of what it is now, we will still run out of oil. Oil is limited in the sense that it is finite, not "if we use less of it, we shall be OK". We need to both use less energy, AND find alternatives to oil.
Hydrogen is OK as an energy carrier. It is just not a fuel source. It takes a lot of energy to get hydrogen from water because it releases a lot of energy when we burn it. High energy density. Which is good. The problem with hydrogen is storage, and it's a technology that will "soon be here", not "already here". We should explore other options too, not bet everything on hydrogen.
I'm in favour of a speed limit of 13mph (about 20kmh), everywhere. Think of all the lives you're going to save. Deaths from traffic accidents would be a thing of the past. Our children will marvel at our willingness to risk getting killed or maimed on a daily basis.
We could fit real bumpers on all our cars, and collisions at that speed will not cause any damage at all. Think bumper cars at the carnival. No more costly repair bills.
But most importantly, this will make our roads safe for bicycles. ;-)
At 20kmh, commuting 50km everyday to work is going to take a very long time. But this is a good thing. It will encourage people to live closer to their workplace, which will lower energy use. Zoning laws could be changed so that houses are not separated from commercial areas.
As for visiting relatives 300km away, driving will take the whole day, but you can take the electric train instead.
Hydrogen, though a "beautiful" idea, is a crummy "energy currency." It's the world's lightest fuel in the world's heaviest tank. (Yes, I have cribbed much from the CBC Ideas three-parter on this--check out iTunes to see if they're still there, unless you're on Linux, then... go... edit some conf files or whatever will actually work in Linux.)
The problem isn't necessarily making the stuff (yes, it's a losing game, but so is using all the energy we do to go from crude to gasoline and then get it to your local petrol station... I think); it's carrying the stuff. To keep it liquid, you have to keep it under intense pressure. That requires a great big heavy tank. In a car with a weak engine. So what do you do? You develop a lighter, say, carbon-fiber or kevlar tank to drop the weight.
But this brings us to the next problem. As the Hindenburg disaster may or may not illustrate, hydrogen has a nasty penchant for taking part in violent fiery explosions. Much more than gasoline. So suddenly a fender-bender could very well mean a tank of highly-concentrated, highly-flammable, explosive gas gets cracked and levels the intersection. I don't want to drive around with a tank of that, and I don't want anyone else to, either. Not out of concern for them, mind you. I work in Japan instead of the lucrative Middle East precisely because I don't want to be around when cars explode on city streets.
I sometimes wonder if hydrogen is just a ploy by Big Oil to waste our time and resources on an impossible solution to the problems they've gotten us into. People have been working--hard--on it for about 30 years, basically without success. The cute little skateboard in the picture above doesn't move. It doesn't have its tank. They never show you that, or tell you that when they do an adorable little presentation of it driving around a parking lot that after that, it's out of fuel.
Hydrogen. Is. A. Red. Herring.
There are a lot of real, actual, here-and-now technologies we can use. We can use more wind, hydro, solar, and even heavy water heat exchanges to generate electricity. We can improve battery technology to get over the reliability problems inherent in some of those. That technology would also help us with electric cars. We can recycle spent fuel rods instead of just sticking them in the ground. It's more expensive than making new ones, yes, but it doesn't pollute the environment, and if we started doing it, it would get cheaper. Nuke has plenty of problems, but it would fill the "always on" gap that is currently filled by coal, etc.
And to the "golf cart" critics: The Tesla roadster is no golf cart. The Killacycle is no golf cart. We can make fast, safe (okay, so the Killacycle is a bad example there) electric cars NOW. Yes, "blah blah blah they aren't perfect so let's continue to do the worst thing in the world," but the point I'm making is that we have to do something and this is something that we can do right now.
For long distance, yeah, I'd love to see the kind of train system we have here in Japan, in the US. But people who posit that there (or in Australia) need to look at a map. Those lines are expensive. Really really expensive. You can get away with paying for them (with government subsidies, still!) in Japan and Europe because of the population density. But try putting a line across the US. The stops are hours apart, and you might pick up one person there. That one person's ticket isn't going to pay for the 2 hours that train ran, or the maintenance on the tracks it ran on. Americans and Australians have embraced the car not because they are reckless hayseeds, but because it is only viable option.
Oh, the humanity.
#37 Dainel: "That's wrong. Even if we managed to reduce our energy use to 1% of what it is now, we will still run out of oil."
my point was not that we won't run out of oil. My point was that rather than trying to find an oil alternative which allows us to maintain our current lifestyle, we need to be thinking about making real lifestyle changes so that we don't need oil (or an alternative on the scale of oil).