Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The story starts back in November of 1996, when GM made a little-
noticed announcement. It was developing cars with half the weight and half
the drag of standard cars, and with hybrid drive.Those are Hypercars in all
but name; they even used the word in some TV ads in Thanksgiving tele-
vision football games.There was a leak in Japan that Toyota had developed,
and would sell in Japan in late 1997, in volume production, a doubled effi-
ciency Corolla-class hybrid sedan, which was then officially announced in
the
Wall Street Journal
in March.The
Wall Street Journal
also announced that
Ford, by October of 1997, would be testing about a dozen so-called P2000
mid-size sedans of the Contour class, based on aluminum, with two-fifths
less mass than usual, doubled or tripled efficiency, ultra-low emissions, and
hybrid drive.
The following month, Ballard and Daimler-Benz put a third of a billion
dollars into accelerating fuel cell commercialization for cars. The Toyota
hybrid started to get tested, and it was well received. Meanwhile, Chrysler
showed an emerging markets car, injection molded out of plastic like a toy
car, that snaps together. It was half the weight of a Neon subcompact, but
roomier, 15 percent cheaper, with one-fifth the investment and one-
seventh the factory space. It had doubled efficiency without hybrid drive
and tripled with it. Honda started to do some interesting things. Toyota
finally announced its December launch of its hybrid in October of 1997,
and their president made some waves when he projected that hybrid elec-
tric propulsion would gain a one-third share of the world car market by
2005. Meanwhile, other companies started bringing out or announcing
tripled efficiency cars.
That Toyota hybrid was released at the end of 1997. (The Prius has now
been launched in the United States.) A couple of thousand were pre-sold
the first day, before there were any to sell or to show. GM said, we'll be sec-
ond to none, watch the Detroit show next month. Ford added an even big-
ger amount of money to the fuel cell project. Other manufacturers also
showed interesting things. The empire struck back in January 1998, when
GM unveiled at the Detroit show three stretch versions of its EV1 battery
electric car, but with hybrid drive.They were four-seaters, run by a gas tur-
bine, a diesel engine, and a fuel cell, and even though they weighed a lot,
they still had quite impressive performance. Production-ready hybrids with
fuel cells were promised by 2004, if not earlier. This announcement got a
lot of attention. Meanwhile, a two-fifths lighter Ford car was said to be
