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COMPANY
OFFICIALS
said Thursday that the hydrogen-powered cars are an important
step in weaning the automotive industry from the oil that has nurtured it
since the internal combustion engine first powered automobiles in the late
1800s.
The silver 750hL sedans sport a new type of internal combustion
engine that runs on clean-burning hydrogen — the most abundant element —
instead of gasoline.
“It’s the cleanest fuel there is,” Burkhard Goschel, a member of the
BMW Group board, said during a news conference at Paramount studios.
BMW has hauled the 10 cars from United Arab Emirates to Europe to
Japan and now California to tout the benefits of hydrogen as a fuel source.
The company will continue to test the cars at its new research and
engineering center, which opened Friday in Oxnard, Calif. Already, the fleet
has covered more than 80,000 miles during tests.
POWERFUL PUNCH
When burned, hydrogen packs a powerful punch — it helps propel the
space shuttle to orbit. In the BMW models, it cuts tailpipe emissions by
99.5 percent.
The 750hL features a 12-cylinder engine and can hit 141 mph. Running on hydrogen,
stored in a liquid form in a pressurized tank, the car can travel about 200
miles — more if an auxiliary gasoline tank is tapped to fuel the car.
But concerns about storing liquid hydrogen under high pressure have
stymied its use in automobiles because of the risk of explosions and fire,
experts said. A lack of a cheap and reliable means of producing hydrogen —
and distributing it to consumers — has also hurt the marketing of such cars.
YEARS TO GO
Widescale commercial production may still be a decade or more away,
although BMW hopes to introduce hydrogen-powered 7-Series models before
then. Ford Motor Co. is not far behind: it plans to unveil its own prototype
hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine vehicle next month, spokeswoman
Sara Tatchio said.
he challenge will be
to create infrastructure and devise a way to store hydrogen on board,” said
John Boesel, president of Calstart, a nonprofit group that develops clean
transportation technologies.
Hydrogen can be produced from water through electrolysis or, more
commonly, from natural gas generated during the oil refining process.
The methods are either energy-intensive or costly — or both — at
present.
“Hydrogen cannot compete with gasoline on a cost basis ... (but) we
believe as usage increases, it can become competitive,” said Bob Malone, a
regional president of oil company BP Corp.
Goschel said the company has not calculated how much a
hydrogen-fueled BMW 750 would cost compared with a conventional version,
which sells for about $93,000. And hydrogen service stations may be still a
decade away.
“We’re a long way from putting hydrogen out there,” said Alan Lloyd,
chairman of the California Air Resources Board.
ALTERNATIVE FUELS
The automotive industry has yet to latch on to hydrogen or any other
alternative to gasoline or diesel fuel.Many manufacturers, including General
Motors, are looking at hydrogen, but only to power fuel cells to produce
electricity. Honda and Toyota have both introduced hybrid models that pair
gasoline engines with electric motors to boost fuel efficiency and cut
emissions. Ford, GM and DaimlerChrysler AG plan to introduce their own
versions in 2003.
California — where 40 percent of all air pollution is produced by
tailpipe emissions — has mandated strict standards that should make the
exotic vehicles more common. By 2003, for instance, 2 percent of all
vehicles sold in the state by major manufacturers must be zero emissions.
“We have a variety of fuels that can steer us on the road ahead,”
Lloyd said. |
