The Future of Fuel

By the time you get this it will be a new millennium, and while the year 2000 hasn't brought all the wonderful projected futuristic visions of the 1960’s to reality (moon bases, flying cars, robots in the home etc.) you can bet a lot will change over the next 100 years, motoring being no exception.
The internal combustion engine has been with us now for just over 100 years (since both Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz each developed commercial internal combustion engines). Their success wiped out the competing technologies of the time, Steam – which was a highly developed technology but was both comparatively risky and required you to spend an hour getting the boiler up to temperature and electricity – which at the time didn't have the range and required lengthy recharge times. The irony is that developments in electric motors led to their demise as automotive power units, since an electric motor banished the last great inconvenience to the petrol engine when the hand starter crank was superseded in 1912 by the electric starter motor. The hand crank, however, still survived for many years – especially in the cheap mass market
Model T Ford.
As a footnote it is interesting to note that early on in his career (before WW1), Ferdinand Porsche was involved in developing Electrical engines for automobiles, and even considered an hybrid electric / petrol car (read on), truly a man ahead of his time.
While the internal combustion engine has been highly refined over the years, its dominance is at last being challenged by competing technologies, much of the pressure for this change is environmental, since cars contribute 30% of Greenhouse gas emissions in the USA. This pressure is particularly acute in California, where stringent emission standards are being drawn up to force car manufactures to look into alternatives to petrol. It was the tough emission laws that California imposed in the 1970’s that finally put an end to mass market Beetle sales in the United States, and the Auto makers know that where California begins a crackdown on emissions, other American States follow suite. All European manufacturers are also putting large research budgets into new fuels in anticipation of tougher laws in the USA and Europe.
So what will these new technologies be, there are several hopefuls on the cards and it will probably be years until any one alternative approaches the dominance of petrol.

Keep Burning Petrol

At the moment none of the other technologies can approach petrol’s energy to volume ratio, with 2100 kilo-joules of energy stored in a 10-gallon tank .
The whole car industry is built around the petrol engine, and they are not about to abandon it yet. As seen in the report on page 21, Volkswagen is doing well in the low emissions and fuel economy stakes with the New Beetle only being knocked off 1st place in a recent US environment report by a hybrid petrol / electric car from Honda. However, Honda is developing what it claims are Zero-Level Emissions Vehicles (ZLEVs), because the vehicle would contribute no more pollution than the electricity generated for an electric car. The engine combines a new, hybrid catalytic converter with a tightly controlling the combustion process for maximum efficiency, including variable valve timing, advanced fuel injection, and constant monitoring and feedback from the combustion chamber.
However, one day petrol will run out or become too expensive to extract, so sometime in the future we may all be using one of the proposed alternatives.

Alcohols and Natural Gas

Many manufacturers are actively looking at Alcohols (Methanol and Ethanol) and Natural gas (such as Propane) to power cars. These fuels keep the internal combustion engine but burn cleaner. Companies are developing compressed natural gas (CNG) and methanol (most of which is made from natural gas today but can be made from rubbish, trees, or seaweed).
Existing cars can be converted to using the new fuels but it is expensive. Also with petrol prices so low in the USA – these fuels cannot compete on price. Saying that, many manufacturers in the U.S. market already offer natural-gas versions of their production models.

Electric Vehicles

These have had a dire press in this country ever since the Sinclair C5 debacle, and the only common electric vehicle seen on British roads is the milk float.
But in California (yes them again) car manufactures have been forced into putting zero emissions vehicles on the roads, and that means electric cars. 10 % of all new cars sold in the state will have to be ZLEVs by 2003. Many of these will be in government fleets (since many perceive the mass market is not ready for them), but despite howls of protest from car makers, California is not backing down. Honda is trying to get its own ultra efficient petrol car (mentioned previously) classed as a Zero-Level Emissions Vehicle, but may succeed getting it classified in a sub category.
Range and performance are improving with the advanced batteries now coming to market, nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries will eventually double the range of electric cars but are ten times more expensive that standard lead acid batteries. Even using lead acid batteries, the technology remains prohibitively expensive with most manufacturers making a loss on each electric model. General Motors was the first to market in 1997 (see "New Fuel Cars" in this issue), but Toyota, Honda, Chrysler, and Ford have all produced electric versions of some of their petrol models.

Hybrids: Best of Both Worlds

The leading candidate for the next decade, at least as far as emissions and oil-usage are concerned, is probably the hybrid-powered car, using both an engine and an electric motor. These vary in which power source dominates.
A Serial hybrid car has a petrol engine devoted entirely to generating electricity, only kicking in to charge the batteries for the electric motor – which powers the wheels.
In a parallel hybrid, the engine and electric motor can each be used to drive the wheels, usually with the electric motor dominating at low power / speeds and the petrol engine being used for higher speeds – with both engines coming online for short bursts of acceleration.
Another technology developed for these cars ( and being tipped for use in Electric cars) is regenerative braking, essentially recovering some of the energy lost to the car through braking and sending it back to the batteries.

Long Term: The Electric Fuel Cell Engine

The fuel cell is a hi-tech battery initially developed for the U.S. space program. This technology combines hydrogen with oxygen in a chemical reaction that produces electricity and water vapour only.
This makes them the greenest alternative on offer, the only potential draw back being the energy needed in the manufacture of hydrogen. Fuel cells are very expensive, and the amounts of electricity generated are not large, but the technology is being refined all the time. Mercedes-Benz, Ford, and leading fuel-cell manufacturer Ballard Power Systems have formed a consortium that envisions putting fuel-cell powered cars on the road as soon as 2006 and certainly by 2010.
This is also the long term technology favoured by Volkswagen, who are pursuing a derivative of the pure fuel cell. Rather than store hydrogen in pressurised tanks, VW proposes to create hydrogen from the sorts of fuels readily available (like petrol, natural gas and alcohol) within the car itself. This future engine would burn a combination of fuel / hydrogen and oxygen depending on the power requirements of the engine.

Future Shock

Whatever happens, the car market has not had to face such fundamental changes since the start of the car 100 years ago. Whether or not you believe in Global Warming (the balance is defiantly for it), Car companies will come under increasing pressure from governments to provide technological answers. Expect to see some rapid changes over the coming years, and who knows, perhaps we will begin to see Zero Emission flat 4 engines available at your nearest parts store. Perhaps we should suggest that John Prescott leads the way with an electric ministerial Jag.

  Next: Alternative Fuel Cars