Pillars of Salt: Inflatable Roof Pillars Could Aid Future Design

It’s a pity the retro design craze seems to be petering out, because an enabler is just now emerging that would allow designers of the next generation of Camaro, Mustang, Challenger, T-Bird, Beetle, and others (a latter-day Citroen DS, please!) to recreate a key detail that has been impossible to achieve while meeting today’s roof-crush and offset frontal-collision standards: those delicate, easy-to-see-around roof pillars. Fat pillars lend a cartoonish, brutish mien to every retromobile out there.

The solution comes from an unlikely source — Swedish airbag supplier Autoliv — and, in fact, it leverages airbag technology. But instead of inflating a cloth bag, it inflates a folded steel tube that is integral to the vehicle’s body structure. Up until now, the only way to make a car capable of supporting one and a half times its weight on the roof (as required in 2012) was by giving all the pillars a thick, beefy section, and/or incorporating ultra-high-strength steel or carbon-fiber tubes in the pillars. But until you threaten to turn turtle, holding the roof up doesn’t require any more strength now than it did in the 1950s and ’60s.

Autoliv’s idea is to provide a slim, minimalist pillar until an accident is detected, then inflate a pleated steel tube so it expands to a large, strong section. This expansion pops the interior trim off, but should leave the outer surface and windshield undisturbed. The inflator uses a nitrogen-rich salt or chemical like those used to fill airbags, but generates an order of magnitude more force — 300 to 450 psi. The tube is made of 0.06-inch-thick steel that’s typical automotive-grade strength (58 kilos/square inch yield–high-strength steel is too brittle for this type of application). It’s welded closed on each end and weighs 3.5 ounces, representing a 10-percent weight savings. Cost is little more than the price of the inflators. Within 10 milliseconds of crash detection, the A-pillar expands from within its dainty 0.9-inch-wide pillar (a third the size of a typical modern pillar) to a stocky 2.9 inches wide. This increases the pillar’s stiffness by 45 percent. The unit will be replaceable after a crash.

Before inflation, visibility is said to be 25 percent better than in the average car. According to Dr. Bengt Pipkorn, project leader in Autoliv’s active body structures department, this research has been conducted in conjunction with Saab. He reckons the technology could be in production by 2020, but notes that (naturally) it has to be designed into the body structure from the outset–there’s no retrofitting such a gizmo into an existing design.

Body pillars are not the only potential applications for this technology. Mercedes-Benz displayed an inflatable side-impact door beam concept at the 2009 Frankfurt motor show that expanded into the space the door glass ordinarily drops into to increase door strength during a side impact. Another intriguing use Dr. Pipkorn described is a tunable front-end crush structure that would provide softer crash-rail performance in low-speed collisions, but inflate to become stiffer in high-speed collisions. This could be a boon for the coming wave of short-nose electric vehicles.

Here’s hoping this promising new technology helps usher out the hunkered-bunker era in favor of retro Futuramic visibility.

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Is there still a future for hydrogen-fueled fuel cell cars?

Is there still a future for hydrogen-fueled fuel cell cars? Hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicles, electric vehicles or EVs, gasoline powered engines all come to mind when we think about a clean energy future. Let's find out where hydrogen fits in the mix with the many all electric cars and hybrid electric vehicles offered by car manufacturers.

Dear EarthTalk: Not long ago we were reading a lot about hydrogen’s role in a clean energy future, with cars transitioning from gasoline-powered engines to hydrogen-powered fuel cells. Where does hydrogen fit now in the mix with electric cars now coming on so strong? -- Amanda Jenkins, Troy, MI

It is true that just a few years ago everyone was talking hydrogen fuel cells as the future of petroleum-free automotive transport. Fuel cell cars can run on infinitely renewable hydrogen gas and emit no harmful tailpipe emissions whatsoever. A 2005 Scientific American article bullishly reported that car company executives “foresee no better option to the hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle in the long run.” Likewise, the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggested, also in 2005, that some 30 percent of the global stock of vehicles—700 million cars and trucks—could be powered by hydrogen fuel cells by 2050.

But high development costs and implementation hurdles have kept fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) out of the mainstream for now. And in the face of competition from a new crop of all-electric and hybrid-electric vehicles lately, some analysts wonder whether the fuel cell’s future is as bright as once thought.

That’s not to say the technology isn’t impressive, and still potentially very promising. The concept was first developed by NASA some five decades ago for use in space travel and has since been implemented in a wide range of other mobile and stationary power applications. In an FCV, a stack of fuel cells under the hood converts hydrogen stored on-board with oxygen in the air to make electricity that propels the drive train. While automakers have been able to make fuel cells small enough to fit in and power a conventional size car or truck, the price per unit is high due to the need to incorporate expensive, cutting edge components. And the lack of widespread demand precludes cost-saving mass production. Also, the lack of hydrogen refueling stations around the country limits the practicality of driving a fuel cell vehicle.

According to Richard Gilbert, co-author of the book, Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight without Oil, another big issue for hydrogen-powered fuel cells is their energy inefficiency. Creating hydrogen gas by splitting water molecules via electrolysis ends up using up about half of the energy it creates. Another half of the resulting energy is taken up by the conversion of hydrogen back into electricity within fuel cells. “This means that only a quarter of the initially available energy reaches the electric motor,” reports Gilbert. (Making hydrogen by reforming natural gas is also highly inefficient and relies on a fossil fuel from the get-go.) Such losses in conversion don’t stack up well against, for instance, recharging an electric vehicle (EV) like the Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt from a wall socket—especially if the electricity can be initially generated from a renewable source like wind or solar.

But FCVs aren’t dead in the water yet. A few dozen Californians are already driving one of Honda’s FCX Clarity fuel cell cars. A $600/month lease payment entitles qualifying drivers to not only collision coverage, maintenance and roadside assistance but also hydrogen fuel, available via a handful of “fast-fill” hydrogen refueling stations. General Motors is part of an effort to test FCVs and implement a viable hydrogen refueling infrastructure in Hawaii, currently one of the most fossil fuel dependent states in the U.S. The Hawaii Hydrogen Initiative aims to bring upwards of 20 hydrogen refueling stations to Hawaii by 2015. Other efforts are underway in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.

CONTACTS: IEA, www.iea.org; Honda FCX Clarity, www.automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity.

EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com).

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Bob Lutz To Glenn Beck: “Eat Your Heart Out. Volt Is The Future.”

One of the myths perpetuated by those slavering drones Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh is the Chevy Volt is a product of Government Motors, foisted upon the American public on the orders of President Barack Obama as part of his plan to turn the country into a socialist paradise. Or something like that.

In his new book Car Guys vs Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business, which is due to be released June 9, former GM vice chairman Bob Lutz firmly puts the Volt birthers and their tinfoil-hat-wearing fellow travelers in their place. He says the Volt’s ingenious powertrain concept was the idea of GM vice president Jon Lauckner, who sketched it out on a notepad in his office in late 2005, and that serious development work on a production version was well underway in 2007.

Car Guys vs Bean Counters is mostly a blistering attack on the numbers-driven management culture that blights many American corporations, and for which pre-bankruptcy GM was perhaps the ultimate poster child. It’s littered with examples where common sense has been trumped by statistics. Here’s just one: GM deliberately reduced the sheen in its paint so small defects and imperfections would be less obvious. The result? Fewer paint defects per car than Toyota, according to J.D.Power surveys. And cars that looked drab and unappealing in the showroom.

Lutz, who opens the book with an account of how Ford of Europe’s finance department pointed out fixing a problem with camshafts failing shortly after the 12,000-mile warranty expired would result in a $50 million hole in the company’s profit forecast because Parts and Service would no longer be able to sell replacement camshafts to customers, savages America’s business schools: “The big business schools should be asking how and why it all went wrong. They have produced generations of number-crunching, alternate-scenario-loving, spreadsheet-addicted idiot-savants. They should be ashamed.”

But Lutz also reserves a good helping of scorn for Beck and Limbaugh and their vitriolic attacks on the Volt: “Animosity towards the Obama administration is so intense among the right-wing talk-show hosts that any vulnerability, however tenuous, must be attacked and blamed on ‘socialist influence’, with no regard to truth or to the damage these reckless claims can make to GM, an American corporation, to the dedicated and hard-driving members of the Volt team, and to a now-misinformed public that may be steered away from a transportation solution that would fill their needs perfectly.”

Often wrong, but seldom in doubt. It’s a favorite saying of Lutz’s, and it reveals a surprisingly wry self-awareness. His book is full of digs at socialists and the left-wing media that at times sound like they’re straight out of Karl Rove’s playbook, but foaming ideologues like Beck, Limbaugh and their ilk clearly irritate the hell out of the former Marine, whose own political leanings are, ironically, very firmly to the right: “Those people are damaging the credibility of the Republican Party,” Lutz told me at the LA Show last year, still seething over their loopy attacks on the Volt.

Lutz confidently predicts more of the world’s automakers will develop vehicles with Volt-type powertrains. “The skeptics, the pundits, the GM haters, and those who detest lithium-ion as a chemistry will all be dragged, however unwillingly, to the same conclusion,” Lutz writes. “Volt paved the way; Volt was the first with the extended-range EV concept; Volt demonstrated the will and the technological capability of General Motors.  And to all the doubters, opponents, critics and skeptics… [including] Glenn Beck, I say: ‘Eat your hearts out. Volt is the future’.”

No doubts there, then. And this time he’s probably not wrong, either. GM sources at last week’s New York Show were still buzzing with the news that BMW engineering in Munich had not only bought a Volt, but had also just hired the former lead engineer of the Volt team, Frank Weber, who will report directly to R&D chief Klaus Draeger. It’s been a very long time since one of Germany’s blue-chip automakers took American automotive engineering that seriously.

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Loose report: Buick may have a high-po Regal Coupe in its future

Friday, May 13th, 2011 @ 4:54 p.m.

As some of you may recall, last July Leftlane passed along word that Buick’s marketing chief said GM was giving “very strong consideration” to the thought of adding a coupe variant to the Regal lineup. The marketing chief, Rover McCormack, even went as far as to strongly hint at a convertible variant as well, meaning the coupe and convertible would likely share a new two-door format.

Since then there hasn’t been a peep out of Detroit about either car – and there still hasn’t been – but word out of General Motors Europe, according to AutoExpress, suggests it is still a strong possibility. To be more exact, the document AE claims to have “confirms” the resurrection of the Vauxhall Calibra coupe, based on the Insginia’s Epsilon II platform.

For those of you who follow GM closely, that likely rings a bell as the Epsilon II platform is the very platform that forms the basis for the Opel Insignia sedan from which the Buick Regal was derived. So while the document supposedly obtained by the European site does not specifically outline a Buick variant, it does make for a stronger case as it would help GM spread the development costs across multiple global markets.

In Europe, Opel sells an OPC variant of the Insignia which boasts a 2.8-liter turbocharged V6 good for 325 horsepower, mated to a six-speed manual transmission and equipped with a Haldex all-wheel drive system. When the Regal GS was born in the U.S. it was downgraded to a 255 horsepower, 295 lb-ft of torque, direct-injected, turbocharged 2.0-liter Ecotec engine mated to a six-speed manual transmission that distributes its power to the front wheels through the HiPerStrut system.

If the Regal Coupe and Convertible variants do make their way to the U.S., it is unclear if GM would go for a high-po turbo six like the European counterpart, or extend the use of the 2.0-liter turbo four. Whatever the case, any of these variants are likely two or more years away from market.

References
1.’New Calibra green…’ view

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Is there still a future for hydrogen-fueled fuel cell cars?

Is there still a future for hydrogen-fueled fuel cell cars? Hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicles, electric vehicles or EVs, gasoline powered engines all come to mind when we think about a clean energy future. Let's find out where hydrogen fits in the mix with the many all electric cars and hybrid electric vehicles offered by car manufacturers.

Dear EarthTalk: Not long ago we were reading a lot about hydrogen’s role in a clean energy future, with cars transitioning from gasoline-powered engines to hydrogen-powered fuel cells. Where does hydrogen fit now in the mix with electric cars now coming on so strong? -- Amanda Jenkins, Troy, MI

It is true that just a few years ago everyone was talking hydrogen fuel cells as the future of petroleum-free automotive transport. Fuel cell cars can run on infinitely renewable hydrogen gas and emit no harmful tailpipe emissions whatsoever. A 2005 Scientific American article bullishly reported that car company executives “foresee no better option to the hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle in the long run.” Likewise, the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggested, also in 2005, that some 30 percent of the global stock of vehicles—700 million cars and trucks—could be powered by hydrogen fuel cells by 2050.

But high development costs and implementation hurdles have kept fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) out of the mainstream for now. And in the face of competition from a new crop of all-electric and hybrid-electric vehicles lately, some analysts wonder whether the fuel cell’s future is as bright as once thought.

That’s not to say the technology isn’t impressive, and still potentially very promising. The concept was first developed by NASA some five decades ago for use in space travel and has since been implemented in a wide range of other mobile and stationary power applications. In an FCV, a stack of fuel cells under the hood converts hydrogen stored on-board with oxygen in the air to make electricity that propels the drive train. While automakers have been able to make fuel cells small enough to fit in and power a conventional size car or truck, the price per unit is high due to the need to incorporate expensive, cutting edge components. And the lack of widespread demand precludes cost-saving mass production. Also, the lack of hydrogen refueling stations around the country limits the practicality of driving a fuel cell vehicle.

According to Richard Gilbert, co-author of the book, Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight without Oil, another big issue for hydrogen-powered fuel cells is their energy inefficiency. Creating hydrogen gas by splitting water molecules via electrolysis ends up using up about half of the energy it creates. Another half of the resulting energy is taken up by the conversion of hydrogen back into electricity within fuel cells. “This means that only a quarter of the initially available energy reaches the electric motor,” reports Gilbert. (Making hydrogen by reforming natural gas is also highly inefficient and relies on a fossil fuel from the get-go.) Such losses in conversion don’t stack up well against, for instance, recharging an electric vehicle (EV) like the Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt from a wall socket—especially if the electricity can be initially generated from a renewable source like wind or solar.

But FCVs aren’t dead in the water yet. A few dozen Californians are already driving one of Honda’s FCX Clarity fuel cell cars. A $600/month lease payment entitles qualifying drivers to not only collision coverage, maintenance and roadside assistance but also hydrogen fuel, available via a handful of “fast-fill” hydrogen refueling stations. General Motors is part of an effort to test FCVs and implement a viable hydrogen refueling infrastructure in Hawaii, currently one of the most fossil fuel dependent states in the U.S. The Hawaii Hydrogen Initiative aims to bring upwards of 20 hydrogen refueling stations to Hawaii by 2015. Other efforts are underway in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.

CONTACTS: IEA, www.iea.org; Honda FCX Clarity, www.automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity.

EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com).

View the original article here

Regulators: Will Future SUVs Compromise Safety For Higher MPG?

It can be argued that through the way vehicles were forced to change in the 1970s and '80s, the federal government turned the American public on to SUVs. Now it's looking for ways to wean us off that addiction—so quickly that it might affect the improvements we've made in safety in recent years.

Automakers are currently reshuffling powertrains and pumping additional engineering resources into development to meet the federal government's 35-mpg fleet-average target by 2016—with the old distinction between passenger cars and trucks slated to dissolve. And one proposal being considered by the Obama administration would require a 62-mpg fleet average by 2025.

At the same time, everyone involved is concerned about how such a rapid change will affect safety. It's especially a concern when we've been making significant progress in reducing highway fatalities; this past year they were at their lowest level since 1949. And a safer fleet of vehicles has much to do with it.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), along with others analyzing injury and fatality figures (like the non-profit Informed for Life) have indicated that vehicle weight and size indeed play a role in survivability. As we pointed out in a recent piece highlighting what you should know about star safety ratings, the overall ratings don't compare across weight classes. And if you place your own safety above all else, the recommendation, from top safety experts, has been to choose a larger sedan or crossover that weighs around 4,000 pounds or just above that.

The chief concern is that, if newer vehicles were to be made considerably lighter while millions of much heavier vehicles remained on the road, it's possible that even loaded with newer safety features, occupant protection could suffer for those in the newer vehicles.

In 1999, federal data showed that SUV occupants in an SUV were three times as likely to die in a crash involving rollover than those in a passenger car. Overall, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the fatality rate for SUVs was halved from then to 2009.

Although rollover is still a key concern for SUVs, electronic stability control and other safety features—along with the migration to car-based platforms, in many cases—have steered the numbers in a much safer direction. Considering only vehicles one to three years old, SUVs are now safer than passenger cars overall.

With vehicles like the 2011 Ford Explorer, with its soon-available 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine, we've seen that automakers can manage a 30-percent or better improvement in the fuel economy of mainstream models without affecting performance, at only a somewhat higher cost. To do better in such a tight timeframe might require more advanced lightweight materials like carbon fiber or aluminum—which would drive up prices.

Either that, or somehow more of us will agree that small cars will do just fine. Right.

[Wall Street Journal]

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