REINVENTING THE WHEEL
Carmakers have become innovative once more, driven by environmental
regulation and high fuel prices, but will it last? Richard Lofthouse reports
The motorcar industry
lurched into this decade
weighted down by an
increasingly clunky
business model. National
champions on both sides
of the Atlantic fixated on volume growth,
cosmetic tweaks and stale marketing
campaigns that still largely revolved
around engine size and power. The only
thing that appeared to have changed since
the 1950s was the rhetoric. While the
PR-primed industry leaders were eager
to talk lawmakers and lobbyists through
their environmental initiatives, they
could have driven a truck through the
disparity between what was said and what
was actually done. For example, BMW
talked a good talk about the
hydrogen future throughout the
1990s but as recently as last March
unveiled its fourth generation M3, which is
more powerful but less fuel efficient than
any of its predecessors.
Six months later, and the days of gasguzzling
appeared to be numbered for real.
But the sudden race to replace the internal
combustion engine had nothing to do with
treehuggers wailing about greenwashing
stunts; last September all the noise was
about the looming sub-prime crisis in the
US, oil hurtling towards $100 a barrel and
EU-threatened penalties for polluting cars.
Several big exhibitors at the unfortunately
timed Frankfurt Car Show rushed to
align themselves with planet iPod, where
smaller is cuter and
everything runs off
lithium-ion batteries.
Cut to this March’s Geneva car
show and BMW announced that its
EfficientDynamics technologies would
be deployed across its whole range and
that a hybrid diesel might power future
SUVs. But, most startlingly, the company
announced a week later that it is working
on an all-electric city car that could be
on sale as early as 2012. Not only was
this an extraordinary U-turn from the
self-proclaimed maker of the ‘ultimate
driving machine’, it also kicked into touch
the ‘distant future’, liquid hydrogen fuel
solution that the company had stubbornly
backed for years.
The Germans were not the only ones
dancing on a hubcap. Last year General
Motors, which manufactures the oil
rig-sized Hummer off-roader, unveiled
an electric car called the Volt that it
claims will be on sale within two years,
which possibly forced BMW onto the
same bandwagon. And DaimlerChrysler,
which already shares a hybrid-drivetrain
programme with BMW, recently displayed
a fully working, electric Smart car. One of
the compelling reasons for moving in this
direction is that costs per kilometre for
electrically powered vehicles are a fraction
of petrol cars, prompting some analysts
to wonder if utilities will be the Shells
and BPs of tomorrow, fuelling the world’s
transport fleet.
Unlike other electric cars to date, the
GM Volt looks credible. Although still
employing a petrol engine in a hybrid
configuration, the car is completely driven
by battery up to a distance of 60km, after
which the petrol engine springs to life – not
to drive the wheels directly, as in Toyota’s
Prius hybrid, but to regenerate the battery.
Other near-to-market concepts under
development include Mitsubishi’s i-EV,
a diminutive city car driven by a 47kW
electric motor, currently on test in Japan;
Nissan’s Pivo 2, another electric car;
Honda’s fuel cell FCX Clarity and Toyota’s
electric-ethanol hybrid, the Concept 1/X,
plus Fiat’s two-cylinder, part-methanefuelled
Panda Aria. Starting in 2009,
Audi, BMW and Mercedes will all start
to offer petrol-electric hybrids of their
larger vehicles.
Numerous less visionary but real-world
eco-tweaks are suddenly hitting the
showrooms everywhere. The real-world
champion remains the Smart Fortwo
diesel, with a CO2 reading of just 88g per
km driven and fuel economy of 3.3 litres
per 100km (85.6mpg). And thereafter is a
wide and varied cast of showroom heroes
already for sale, typically branded as a new
product line within an existing range, thus
satisfying the industry’s insatiable desire
to show how innovative it is. BMW’s
EfficientDynamics has its counterpart in
the form of Seat’s Ecomotive label, VW’s
BlueMotion, Daimler’s BLUETEC, Ford’s
ECOnetic, and GM’s EcoFLEX.
Most of these concepts involve energysaving
technologies that were tried before
in the 1970s but then thrown aside as oil
became plentiful and cheap, such as stopstart
technology that shuts the engines down
when the brake is applied, restarting it again
when the brake is released. Another, fuelsaving
tactic is to fit tyres with more rolling
resistance and less drag, while others include
better fuel-injection systems, brake energy
regeneration and weight reduction.
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