This blog is about things that interest me and may or may not include, but will probably not be limited to: US politics, Texas GOP politics, fantasy football, sports news, cool web stuff, geeky science and technology items, movies, philosophy, religion and humor. Wait, don't leave--it'll be great!
My last post was about the bazillion-dollar efforts of a multinational corporation to build a new kind of hydrogen-electric car; this one is about a sixteen-year-old who built a plug-in electric pickup using 20 regular car batteries, an '88 Mazda, and $6K from his part-time job.
Taken together, I think that this is just another thing that's great about America. You've got a backyard do-gooder kid contributing to this effort (to create cleaner cars) because he believes it's the right thing to do, and a giant company doing the same thing--not because some government bureaucrat came up with an appropriate incentive to induce them to do so, but because it will be good for their bottom line. That's the kind of green innovation I like to see.
(thanks for the link goes to Carlos, the Official Brother-in-Law of the Brink)
Today's automaker produces tons of models, and each model may be available with several combinations of transmissions and engines; plus there are countless electrical, mechanical, and computer systems, each with thousands of parts; making each different model means combining tens of thousands of components together; each model then has to be tested, etc. This is all very difficult and expensive.
GM is trying to revolutionize the auto industry with their hydrogen projects, and I've been keeping my eye on them for several years now because the whole concept is so cool. The idea is this: instead of the situation above, you can produce a single chassis that looks like a giant foot-thick skateboard and contains the motors (small electric motors near the wheels), the fuel storage (it runs on hydrogen), and the fuel cell (to convert the hydrogen to electricity). The steering will be electronic so there's no need for a steering column connecting to the wheels, so pretty much all of the working parts are in the chassis--to choose between a sedan, a pickup or a minivan you simply bolt the body you want on top. Since it's electric there's no transmission, so there are extremely few moving parts (which means very few possible things to break down). Theoretically, the cost and time required to develop new models could be a fraction of what it is currently; cars might eventually begin to last much, much longer as airplanes do (small planes routinely last for decades--they have very few moving parts outside of the engine).
Of course, there have been huge obstacles to overcome, some major ones being the safe storage of notoriously unstable hydrogen (remember the Hindenberg?), the efficient operation of the fuel cell (especially in cold weather), and fueling issues (consumers expect to be able to fuel quickly and to be able to carry enough to drive 300 miles on a fill-up).
Anyway, it seems that things are getting fairly close to production now, as apparently GM is still planning to have production models on the road by 2010. Below is a video of a British show driving GM's second-generation hydrogen vehicle the Hy-Wire.
And here's a link to photos and info on the third-gen vehicle, the Sequel, which is pretty obviously less futuristic and more acceptable to today's consumers than the Hy-Wire, which incorporated more futuristic ideas like controlling the acceleration and braking on the steering wheel instead of via pedals.
If you'd like to geek out about this stuff like some people, check out these links: Here's a blow-by-blow of the engineering and politics behind the beginning of GM's hydrogen projects between 2000 and 2003; here's a 2004 road test review of the Hy-Wire; and finally here is a science/engineering-heavy look at the Hy-Wire from HowStuffWorks.
Other auto companies, notably Honda and Toyota, seem to be advancing rapidly with similar technology, but info on them seems much harder to come by. I don't know if they're behind or if they are way ahead and are just waiting to spring their cool new stuff all at once. Honda's new FCX, which is supposed to enter limited circulation this summer (to the rich and famous?), seems to focus more on the hydrogen but still uses a more conventional setup with a large single motor and a transmission; still cool, but not the quantum leap in manufacturing simplicity and flexibility that GM's initiative promises.
As I attempt to return from some months of overwork and undersleep, this article is of particular interest. It seems that DARPA (the Department of Defense's Research and Development arm) might have found a drug that will eliminate sleepiness. The military has long been interested in technology to help keep humans awake, for obvious reasons--they gave pilots amphetamines as early as WWII.
This new stuff, still in early testing, is a nasal spray and seems to pretty well mimic natural sleep. Of course science doesn't seem to understand sleep very well at all, so who knows how this will turn out. These kind of things never seem to work quite as well as you'd think, and I speak as someone who has ingested way more caffeine than is really healthy of late.
