Why internal combustion is dead

Every major carmaker in the world worth its name is now busily exploring avenues other than fossil fuels, and car designs and technology are being amped up to cater to a new breed-the tech-savvy iGeneration

By Kajal Basu

In 1963's From Russia with Love, James Bond, played by Sean Connery, spoke to M, played by Bernard Lee, using a car radio-telephone-a brick-sized handset, thick cord, and a cradle the size
of a 14" computer console. That was the apotheosis of high-technology then. Today, I'd wager that the new 007, Daniel Craig, would be using a Bluetooth ear-button connected to the car audio system of the stonking Aston Martin DBS in the 2006 Casino Royale. And, funny though it might seem in this age of so many driver-aid terminology such as ABS and Traction Control and Tiptronic gearing and head's up display and night vision, many of the building blocks that have brought us this far—Bluetooth, WLAN and UWB wireless communications, GPRS, radar, on-screen graphics, and digital imaging—were hardly originally intended for automotive use.
But, then, that's the future—it surprises you every time.

How likely is it that Craig, who's promised to bring into refocus a refurbished, less-technology oriented 007, likely to play with Q's takes on iPods, media players, PDAs, dashboard pop-up video games and Artificial Intelligence weaponry that is almost intuitive? Extremely unlikely. Even in this day and age, the thought, 'Will my new gadget connect with my car?" remains an afterthought.
For all his daredevilry and, indeed, Zorro-like chicanery, Bond is not a man of the iGeneration that will purchase the cars of tomorrow. The Aston Martin, gorgeous though it is, is as far as he will go. A hybrid or fuel cell car or, heaven forbid, solar-powered put-putter? Nah. Not macho enough, Craig's evident wimpishness notwithstanding. But 007's audience will have left him far behind by the time Lee Tamahori, the director who has the copyright chokehold on Ian Fleming's Frankenstein's monster, realises that the next person that Bond has to ice is the Oil King and Man from Detroit bent upon expanding the ozone hole.

The problem with Bond is that he is stuck in a hardware warp: guns and things that look like military spec X-Boxes he can handle, but he's a software Luddite: he wouldn't know a binary code from base 10 math, which fact places him a few decades behind the latest in automobile design. Today, automobile software development requires three to four times the resources of hardware design. "Telematics" is the new buzzword, which is why all the leading carmakers, not the least Honda, which has also made the world's first humanoid robot, is so interested in Formula I racing, which is all about telemetry that can be translated into making better, more "intelligent" robots.
But imagine Bond at this: behind his Aston Martin DBS, or whatever state-of-the-art Aston Martin he's snarling into a train wreck at 160 mph, his engine management system or the stability control does a mad computer on him. His car's electronic control unit (ECU) goes nuts, for no discernible reason. If only he had been in touch with an astronomer instead of Q, bottled up in his underground mad scientist's lab, he might have discovered that his car had been done in by cosmic radiation. Every ECU is a small, incredibly complicated chip that will increasingly control all aspects of an automobile with an integrated drive-by-wire—much like an aircraft's fly-by-wire-electronic system, which is entirely susceptible to electromagnetic pulses (EMPs), the tight webbing of microwave radiation that now crisscrosses the globe, and good, old high-tension wires.

So, technology decisionmakers are beginning to anticipate sources of failure that might—or might not, but who's to tell?—impact programmable logic systems. While the concept of bombardment of neutrons from space sounds a bit outlandish, neutron-induced errors, however minor, can have a cascade effect on many kinds of electronic equipment. And what is a car today if not an increasingly labyrinthine network of electronic equipment in command of the vehicle's mobility, often in direct opposition to the deathwish of the driver?

But were Bond to come to India, as he did in 1983 camouflaged as Roger Moore in Octopussy, he might find that autorickshaws, even those exported and prepped and high-torqued in Italy to hit a tonne and do wheelies, and then reimported for the movie, might be a problem: we probably won't have autorickshaws any longer; they'll have been replaced by fuel cell/hydrogen/ethanol/soya bean/hybrid vehicles. (I'm dreaming—if this ever turns into reality, I'm selling the plot I bought on the moon.)

In India, developing hybrid cars might be asking for a bit much. While automakers like Ford are training thousands of mechanics at their dealerships abroad to service hybrid cars, India hasn't even begun thinking about it—even though, given the rising oil prices and the abysmal state of its environment, it should.

Bond would find that hybrid cars have high-voltage cables through which the batteries send around 270 volts, while an ordinary car sends through only 12 volts: 270 volts is enough to stop the heart, and given that our mechanics haven't even heard of insulated clothing and gas masks, it's an even chance that they'll be frying like flies in the midst of a Delhi summer.

Alternative fuel cars
Then, again, we have started the Golden Quadrilateral, however iffy it might be to drive on. In conservative India, where a three-box sedan is still considered a sign of having arrived, even though a hatchback might have more usable space in it, should an alternative fuel vehicle look any different from a "regular" car? Honda clearly believes that its FCX (Fuel Cell Xperimental) series of fuel cell technology cars that have reworked automobile design, giving it a distinctive, and distinguished, look. An alternative automobile has to look, well, alternative.

Honda has used this FCX suffix on various fuel cell cars since 1999. The original FCX that debuted at the 1999 Tokyo Show was a methanol-fuelled sedan with a big forward cabin profile—like the current Honda City—that set the proportions henceforth for fuel cell cars from Honda. But the short nose and the extremely overbearing butt, and its curvy, organic styling showed in its static sales charts.

So, the worm turned: the strange 2003 Kiwami concept, with its squashed multipurpose vehicle profile and nominal tumblehome, nonetheless proved that you could give supercar styling to a four-door sedan FC.

This latest FCX is a classical automotive design-fluid and dynamic, restrained in its detailing, and elegant in a way that the previous FCX and Kiwami concepts never were. The steeply-raked screen and long rear deck shows a profile that is reminiscent of the stunning Bertone Stratos or Pininfarina Modulo showcars of 1970. The steering wheel, instrument binnacle and pedals move fore and aft as a single unit to adjust to the optimum driver biometrics. There are head-up icons for the main functions that recognise the driver's line-of-sight to operate the switches. Who says that the future of unrolling the tarmac has to be boring?

Soybeans give you wind
On February 4, 2006, one of the most impressive cars at the Philadelphia Auto Show came from the auto shop at West Philadelphia High School. Designed and built by the students in the school's Academy for Automotive and Mechanical Engineering, the racy, unmistakably American pony car delivers more horsepower than some Porsches and gets petrol mileage comparable to a frugal Toyota Prius. And it runs on fuel made from soybeans.

Last year, the car was the dark-horse winner of a competition, the Tour de Sol, for eco-friendly vehicles. To comply with the tough Tour de Sol rules, the engine runs on "biodiesel"—it's biodegradable and nontoxic, and has markedly lower emissions than crude-based diesel.
The Attack car—they're students, what else would they call it?—gets 80 km per 3.785 litres and goes 0-96 kmph in 4 seconds.

Nitrogen's all around you
Since elemental nitrogen has a very low boiling point (-195.8ºC), when liquid nitrogen is stored in a pressurised environment, it stores a large amount of potential energy. In the LN2000 liquid nitrogen-powered concept car, being developed at the University of Washington, the liquid fuel is let out of a pressurised tank, and is preheated by an economiser that takes heat from the exhaust before it vaporises, expanding rapidly in an endothermic reaction. This expanding gas is converted into energy that moves the wheels. Since pure nitrogen gas is the only byproduct of the reaction, the car produces no pollution.

The main problem that developers of N2 powered cars had during the expansion stage of the nitrogen, which froze the pipes that carried the gas. The problem was solved by preheating the liquid nitrogen to prevent the ice from forming and then insulating the pipes and nitrogen from the ambient heat.

Although fuel cells are effective at providing zero-emission electricity, the cost of a drivetrain with fuel cell power is 7-10 times that of a petrol engine drivetrain. But an economic problem remains: once the process is refined, the nitrogen will cost per km comparable to standard petrol. So where's the incentive, apart from the "Eureka!" factor?

Hydrogen-powered cars: blown away
How clean is a hydrogen-powered car? Clean enough that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley actually drank the exhaust. Also, unlike an electric car with its unwieldy batteries and limited juice, "hydrogen is a very good energy carrier," says Brad Bates, manager of the alternative fuels programme at Ford Motor Co. A hydrogen car doesn't rely on combustion, and its moving parts are minimal.

Since the technology is fledgling, most commercial hydrogen in use today is a by-product of natural gas processing. And it is about 20 per cent more expensive than a comparable amount of petrol. "You need about 15 pounds of hydrogen to go 300 miles (480 km)," says Bates. "That doesn't sound like much but hydrogen is very light and takes a very big tank." But a big problem is that since hydrogen is a simple molecule, it can easily leak through cracks and seals.

Hydrogen fuel cells combine elemental H2 gas with oxygen from air to create an electric current and pure H2O. The fuel cells, many of which are put next to each other to make a 'stack', each have two semi-porous electrodes separated by a liquid electrolyte. The interior side of the electrodes are coated in a platinum catalyst. When the two elements come in contact with the catalyst and the electrolyte as the seep through the semi-porous electrode, they each ionize. The H+ ion is is then attracted to the 2-minus charged oxygen ion. They combine to form pure water and this is drained from the fuel cell. The electricity created runs through the circuit connected to the electrodes.

Electric cars: rude shocks
The batteries in an electric car are similar to fuel cells in that they use a chemical reaction to generate electricity. But they're emphatically not zero-emission vehicles. Unlike fuel cells, the batteries have a life span, and eventually need to be replaced. Also, batteries are a yawn to charge. Meanwhile, you could fill a tank of hydrogen in about 15 minutes flat. The speeds of electric cars are also limited.

Mainly because of their limited range, electric cars have limited, short-range uses. Over the years, as battery technology has been improving, so has distance commuting for electric car users. The Indian Reva is selling very well indeed in Northern Europe, where pollution norms are strict as they come, and the new Reva, designed by Dilip Chhabria—and costing a small fortune—is even faster, has longer range and short battery-charge duration.

Solar-powered cars: where there's sun…
Solar-powered cars all get their fuel from an unending, abundant source, using hundreds of photovoltaic cells to convert sunlight into electricity, with each cell producing about one-half volt of electricity.

That seems to be one problem solved, but it gives rise to a legion of others. During the 30 year life of one medium-sized solar power station, 120,000 kw of solar electricity is expected to be generated, saving 56,775-75,700 litres of petrol; 51,363.7kg of coal or 1,200,000 cu ft of natural gas would have been required by the power production company to produce the same electricity.
The downside is that when the sun is hidden by a cloud, and if a car is designed to put all of its energy toward driving and nothing in reserve, it will grind to a halt in cloudy weather. If too much energy is diverted to the battery, the engine will run too slowly.