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The Car of the Future
President Bush recently urged the U.S. to kick its ‘addiction to oil.’ But that would require automobiles that don’t rely on gasoline. Are such cars on the way?
About 70 percent of oil consumed in the U.S. is used in transportation-four-fifths of that in cars and trucks. Americans consume nearly 21 million barrels of oil a day, a figure that has risen steadily in recent decades, as more of us have embraced heavy, low-mileage SUVs. If Americans truly want to achieve "energy independence" from foreign oil, we'll need cars that don't burn gasoline.
What's the alternative?
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One already exists'”electricity. Cars that run solely on electricity aren't practical, but hybrids such as the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight get around those disadvantages by combining electricity with a conventional, gas-powered combustion engine. When you start up a Prius, its electric generator cranks up the conventional engine. But an electric motor actually powers the car until it reaches about 15 mph, when the internal combustion engine takes over. So a driver who stays at low speeds is effectively driving an electric car, with no gas being used'”and no greenhouse emissions. A Prius gets an estimated 60 miles per gallon. If everyone in the U.S. drove a hybrid, says the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, we would save more oil than we now import from the Middle East.
So why aren't more hybrids sold?
Hybrids cost $2,000 to $3,000 more than similar cars their size, and aren't as roomy as the big sedans and SUVs to which Americans have become accustomed. They lack sex appeal as well, since their small batteries can't provide the brisk acceleration many people prefer.
What can be done about that?
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One intriguing solution is the "plug-in hybrid." These have a trunk-size, 750-pound battery, which provides more power and can be charged every night in a standard 120-volt outlet. These batteries can accelerate a car up to 30 mph before the gasoline engine kicks in, so a gallon of gas would last 100 miles or more. "If you used it only locally, you would go to a gas station only a couple of times a year," says Felix Kramer of CalCars, a nonprofit that supports alternative automotive technologies. A few demonstration models have already been produced. Cost is a real problem, though. Experts say the plug-in batteries could add $10,000 to the price of a car.
Doesn't that make it cost-prohibitive?
Not necessarily. The price would drop once these cars were produced in large numbers and economies of scale came into play. The higher cost also would be offset by huge savings on fuel'”the typical driver could save $100 a month or more on gas. For society as a whole, there would be incalculable savings from the reduction in pollution and the ending of the nation's dependence on foreign oil. James Woolsey, the former CIA director, says that for the sake of national security alone, the government should provide incentives to auto companies to take the financial risk of producing plug-in hybrids. Others, though, say the U.S. should place its bet on technologies that would completely replace oil as the source of power for cars.
What other fuel sources could be used?
Hydrogen, for one. The most common element on earth, hydrogen can be used to produce electricity in a device called a hydrogen fuel cell. Functioning similarly to a battery, a fuel cell takes hydrogen gas and combines it with oxygen gas from the air to produce an electric current. The only exhaust is water vapor. Fuel cells have been used as generators in space exploration, and Toyota, GM, and other automakers have already made hydrogen-powered test cars. Currently, hydrogen fuel cells require highly expensive platinum, so they're not economically viable. The biggest technological obstacle to their use, though, is that hydrogen is a highly volatile gas that is hard to store, transport, and use safely. No one has yet figured out how to provide hydrogen to tens of millions of motorists without great risk.
Is there an alternative to hydrogen?
Some hope the answer is ethanol, which comes from sugar-based plants such as corn. Ethanol produces far fewer greenhouse gases than gasoline, but it also is considerably more expensive to make. Lately, experts have been buzzing about an emerging technology by which plant materials such as wood chips and switchgrass are treated with special enzymes to produce the far more efficient "cellulosic ethanol." Still, it will take years before ethanol could be an economically viable alternative to gasoline'”and for cars to run on pure ethanol, the auto industry would have to retool its entire line of engines. The same "chicken-and-egg" problem haunts all the alternative car scenarios.
