newsroom

TODAY Friday 12 September 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: The Automobile Crisis of 2020

Amory Lovins, whom we venerate, is a rational enthusiast of what he calls the "hypercar" -- a four-passenger vehicle made of composite plastics, shaped aerodynamically, that drives its wheels through an electric motor that, in its turn, is powered by a super-efficient gasoline motor. The energy spent on braking is recaptured by the power drive. It is engineering child's play, says the Sage of Snowmass, Colorado, to thereby design and build a family car that goes 100 miles per hour and can travel 100 miles per gallon. In fact, Amory argues, fuel efficiencies of a much higher order are within easy reach, but everybody likes the ring of 100 mph/100 mpg.

The question is not engineering per se -- a team of Caltech undergraduates could build Amory's hypercar over the weekend -- but whether such a product can be mass-manufactured and operated on an economically attractive basis. That will be tough as long as the price of oil stays as low as it's been, for cheap oil encourages consumer demand for spacious vehicles that gobble gasoline (the Ford Expedition is a rapacious beast, but also fast, comfortable, carries a big load, and has this multi-disc CD player hooked up to some awesome speakers in the back). The consensus of industry experts and commodity investors is that there will be no significant rise in the price of oil in the next few years and no appreciable slice of the market that purchases an automobile for environmental motives.

So what's the incentive in building hypercars? Surprisingly, perhaps, they can appeal to auto buffs for strictly performance reasons: rapid acceleration, superior handling, a sense of enjoyable communication with the road (driving an Expedition puts you about five feet above the asphalt). But auto buffs constitute a modest, though influential, niche market. The hopes for making money from fuel-efficient cars over the next decade are based on the expectations of government intervention in the name of environmental protection and resource conservation.

We have a modest version of that situation now. The American CAFE standards -- which require manufacturers to achieve an overall "fleet" average of fuel efficiency -- have been in place since the 1970s. They haven't been raised lately, and new-car fuel efficiency over the last three years has actually declined, but the standards are still there. An automaker who wants to increase profits from Sport/Utility Vehicles (big guzzlers) may be tempted to take some financial losses by selling an economy hypercar that will help maintain the mandated fleet average in fuel efficiency.

But a more significant factor would be the implementation of new government sanctions or incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If the developed countries of the world disappoint us enviros and merely pledge to stabilize emissions for the next few years and go back to 1990 levels no sooner than 2015 or so, those will still be very hard goals to achieve without a rise in the price of fossil fuels. Some form of government intervention will almost surely be required, and it may be easiest to exercise within the transportation sector (even more so for developing countries, where there a just and irrepressible demand for increased electrical generation). That, at least, is the hedged bet of Toyota, which next year will market a compact hybrid-engine car in Japan, with an eye on working out the kinks for an anticipated global market in the second half of the next decade.

In Germany, Daimler-Benz is trying a leapfrog strategy by developing a car powered by fuel cells, which emit nothing but a little water. The fuel cells themselves require hydrogen, which Daimler supplies through the burning of methanol in an on-board engine; the prototype unveiled on Wednesday at the Frankfurt Auto Show is therefore not emission-free, but it represents an enormous advance over current models. Fuel cells are truly marvelous, but they are still expensive. Even Daimler thinks fuel costs must be reduced by a factor of ten before they can compete economically with the internal combustion engine. Can governments speed that process of closing the competitive gap?

Even if all is for the best in the best of all possible fuel-efficiency worlds, even if every driver on the planet steers a fuel cell car by 2020, we will still have enormous transportation problems, as Amory Lovins always likably reminds his audiences. Congestion, sprawl, and the consequent loss of ecosystems and natural habitats -- all are made worse, not better, by the development of eco-friendly cars. A fuel cell auto future will, by itself, encourage horizontal development, architectural blight, and parking lots the size of Connecticut. No rest for the weary here.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE:

A couple of weeks ago we sent a note to all our High Fives contributors, asking them to check all their recommended Website links and to revise their copy to reflect new enthusiasms and disappointments. The results are going up each day, and you might want to check up on old favorites.

 

Recent "Today" columns:

9/11: Gratifyingly Inept Adversary
9/10: The Porkbarrel Works for You
9/09: Climate Change Changes
9/08: More or Less Voluntary Simplicity
9/05: Man Bites Cougar
9/04: Logging
9/03: Fishing
9/02: Our Biodiversity Problems
8/29: Babies
8/28: MegaSheep and SuperCow

To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.