Thursday, September 20, 2007
By WARREN BROWN
WASHINGTON POST
FRANKFURT, Germany — I am writing this column on a Toshiba laptop powered by a fuel cell produced by SFG Fuel Cell — a small Munich, Germany, company specializing in direct methanol fuel cell technology.
I’ll tell you more about that later.
The laptop is at a media workstation set up by Opel to assist journalists covering the International Motor Show, the premier exhibit on the global automotive show calendar.
All of the laptops at the Opel workstation are powered by SFG fuel cells. That’s appropriate. The show is green, and fuel cells are the Great Green Hope.
Fuel cells are electrochemical conversion devices. They pull hydrogen from a variety of sources, such as methanol. The hydrogen mixes with oxygen to produce electricity that can power houses, cars ... or laptops. The byproduct is water vapor.
Opel is a subsidiary of General Motors. Both companies have been working for nearly two decades to demonstrate the efficacy of using fuel cells to power cars, a development they believe could do much to remove the automobile from the environmental and energy security debates.
Rough going
But it has been a rough go. Hydrogen fuel cell development is woefully expensive. The technology in fuel cell stacks, in which the electrochemical conversions take place, is complicated. Original fuel cells were big and clumsy. It has taken several billion dollars and lots and lots of time to reduce them to a size small enough, manageable enough to power a bank of 12 laptop computers at a car show.
It will take more time — estimates range from five to 15 years more — to affordably, effectively integrate fuel cells into the global mass market for cars and trucks.
That is a problem. We live in an impatient world. We want quick fixes to problems — such as the increasingly unfavorable balance between rising global demand for oil and dwindling exploitable oil reserves — that have developed over decades. Politicians, media, consumers — we all want a silver bullet, preferably one that can be fired without wounding any of us.
The problem is that the real world does not work that way, which creates another difficulty — a big public relations problem — for companies such as Opel, GM, Audi, Porsche, BMW and others that initially ignored the quick-fix of gas-electric hybrid technology in pursuit of other solutions, such as advanced diesel power and hydrogen fuel cells.
And so, here I am at the Opel/GM workstation, plugging away on a fuel-cell-powered laptop, the willing pawn in a public-relations gimmick to demonstrate the potential of using hydrogen fuel cells in everyday life. I’m happy to do it. I believe in fuel cells. I was reared by a scientist father, the late Daniel Thomas Brown Sr., who taught me to be patient with the trial-and-error, slow developmental nature of most science and technology.
But I also understand that patience in an impatient world does not sell. That is why I am not surprised, in strolling through the 10 cavernous display halls of the Frankfurt show, to find that nearly all vehicle exhibits, including that of the teeny Smart Fortwo urban car coming to the United States this fall, offer some kind of gas-electric hybrid vehicle.
It is not that gas-electrics represent the best, or the only, solution to our energy conservation problems. There is not one automotive engineer, not even those responsible for the Toyota Prius, who would say that.
Gas-electrics are one solution — “one that our engineers are angry at us for pushing, because they know we’re only doing it for reasons of public relations,” a member of Audi’s board of directors told me here. But it’s the instant gratification solution at the moment.
Citroen C3
There are many good mobile energy conservation, oil-use-reduction ideas on display at the Frankfurt auto show, which ends Sunday. The Citroen C3 city car, for example, uses an electromechanical engine stop-go formula to save fuel and reduce emissions in congested city traffic. All of them — hydrogen fuel cells, diesel, biodiesel, flexible fueling systems, plug-in electrics, gas-electrics, diesel-electrics, rapid swirl/multi-valve engine combustion systems, aluminum-body and other lightweight body materials engineering, fuel-efficient tire technology, direct hydrogen feed — should be given a chance to develop.
It makes little sense at the moment to choose one at the expense of another in pursuit of an apparent quick-and-easy fix. It makes even less sense to develop public policy, such as letting driver-only gas-electrics use the high-occupancy vehicle lanes designed to reduce traffic congestion, based on that choice.
The existing and emerging alternate-fuel and alternative-propulsion technologies should be viewed as complementary, instead of as rivals. They have a common mission: to end our addiction to oil and cure the ills associated with that addiction.