Greener than ever but no revelations

Gerry Malloy

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

If the overriding theme of last year's Detroit auto show was "green," then that of this year's show is "greener."

Faced now with clear consumer resistance to soaring gasoline prices and with government-mandated, hard-number fuel economy targets that must be achieved by 2020, automakers are in a race to out-green each other in terms of both public perception and real technology.

Unlike last year's show, however, where GM's Chevrolet Volt was the centre of attention, there was no paradigm-shifting technology introduced during this year's media previews.

Rather, it was more of the same – much more – as others jump on the hybrid/plug-in electric/fuel cell bandwagon, albeit mostly still in experimental rather than production forms.

GM did show its plug-in hybrid Saturn Vue, which is destined for production, tentatively in 2010. And the company confirmed that production of the fully electric Volt is still scheduled to begin in late 2010, while acknowledging that that target may be a little too ambitious.

Toyota, too, announced that it will release a plug-in hybrid in 2010, although it will be in the form of a demonstration fleet rather than broad-based production and sales. The company also announced it will add two other hybrid models for 2009, and revealed a concept car/truck called the A-BAT with a hybrid powertrain.

At a concept level, Chrysler covered all the bases with its pure electric Dodge ZEO, diesel range-extended electric Jeep Renegade, and fuel-cell powered Chrysler eco-Voyager – all of which are interesting if not original in concept, but none of which suggests near-term production feasibility.

What will be potentially available in late 2009, in very small numbers, is the Fisker Karma – a plug-in hybrid luxury sedan designed by ex-BMW, ex-Ford and ex-Aston Martin designer Henrik Fisker, who now operates his own coach-building firm in California.

Although information available was light on technical detail, the Karma is said to use a rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack, capable of providing 80 km of pure-electric driving range, backed up by an unspecified "fuel-efficient" gasoline engine for extended driving.

The electric-drive technology for the car was developed by Quantum Technologies, which is a leading industry supplier of alternative-energy systems and hardware.

Looking further into the future, GM showed the latest in its progression of fuel-cell powered concepts, called the Cadillac Provoq.

With not-so-far-out styling that may suggest the future direction for Cadillac's crossover designs, it combines GM's newest, fifth-generation fuel-cell design with E-Flex electric-drive architecture in what is beginning to look like a production-feasible package.

The fifth-generation fuel-cell module is said to be about half the size of the fourth-generation version, which is currently being used in a limited-production run of Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell vehicles, being built at GM of Canada's Canadian Regional Engineering Centre in Oshawa.

According to Larry Burns, GM's vice-president responsible for research and development, another two or three iterations of fuel-cell development could bring both manufacturing technology and costs into the range of production feasibility on a broad scale.

Even so, the first commercially available fuel-cell vehicles will still be "very expensive," according to company vice-chair Bob Lutz. Which accounts for the technology's appearance in a Cadillac-branded concept car.

Initially, GM had identified Chevrolet as the brand to lead the company's alternative energy efforts. Its last fully developed fuel-cell concept car, the Sequel was branded as a Chevrolet, and the current demo fleet is based on the Chevrolet Equinox.

"But we have had to rethink that strategy," said Lutz. The cost of a fuel cell, when it is ready for production, will still be so high that it makes more sense to introduce it in a premium brand, where more if not all of that cost can be recovered, than in a bread-and-butter brand like Chevrolet, he explained.

While electric drivetrains and ultimately fuel cells offer real prospects for reducing both emissions and petroleum usage down the road, neither are going to have a huge impact in the very short term. And it is that fact that led to what may be the most important announcement of the show, from an environmental perspective – also from General Motors.

GM chair Rick Wagoner announced an affiliation with a company called Coskata, which is developing a process to produce bio-ethanol, economically, from almost any carbon-rich material, including municipal waste.

The process is expected to be in commercial production within a year. If that happens, and if it lives up to expectation, it could reframe the whole approach to ethanol (E85) as a primary vehicle fuel.

While automakers (primarily North American) have been building flex-fuel vehicles capable of running on either gasoline or E85 for years, and millions of such vehicles are now on the roads, there is virtually no supply infrastructure to support them, outside a few mid-western U.S. states.

And even where there is, there is little incentive for consumers to use E85. It is as costly as gasoline, but because of inherently lower energy content its use results in significantly increased fuel consumption, so it actually costs drivers more to use.

Besides which, there are philosophical arguments over whether a food crop such as corn (from which most ethanol is now derived) should be used for fuel.

The Coskata process, could potentially sidestep all those issues. In which case, it may be the singular most important revelation of this year's Detroit auto show.

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