Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
coming on the market in 2000 but is not yet available. Chrysler showed a
US version of their molded plastic car and said it could be crash-worthy
here, predicting it would cut factory investment threefold and total car cost
twofold, and enter production as soon as 2003.
At any rate, there was obviously an explosion of activity, and if these were
the kinds of things that were being announced out of the secret programs,
you can imagine there was a lot that is still behind the curtain. If you won-
der what they are up to back there and give your imagination pretty free
reign, you will be about right.The most surprising development, for me, in
that line of work is the unexpected technology fusion that is going to lead
to profound changes in the electricity system. It works, in brief, like this:
The way to run a Hypercar is with a fuel cell.That is a gadget that is a bit
like a battery, but it is an electro-chemical device into which you feed
hydrogen and air. What comes out is electricity, pure hot water you can
drink, if you don't scald yourself, and nothing else. It is extremely reliable,
which is why it is used in space stations and space shuttles. It is silent and
completely clean.
To make fuel cells cheap enough to go in a car, you need to make a lot
of them. Manufacturing cost predictions at the end of 1998 were around
$800 a kilowatt.The cost needs to get down to about $100 a kilowatt to go
in a Hypercar.They would need to get twofold cheaper than that to go in
a regular car, but Hypercars only need half as many kilowatts, so you can
pay twice as much per kilowatt. How to get them cheap enough to go in
cars? You make a large quantity for buildings, because 170˚F hot water also
comes out of the fuel cell, and you can use that for heating, cooling, and so
on; those building services are worth about enough to pay for natural gas
and a gadget called a reformer to change it into hydrogen in the building
to feed to the fuel cell. If your fuel is already paid for in that way, then the
electricity is extremely competitive, even at early prices.
Once you've done that, and you have the price down to where you can
put the fuel cells in cars, which happens very quickly, then why don't you
lease some of those fuel cell Hypercars to the people who work in the
buildings that already have fuel cells in them? Then they can drive to work,
and in the parking lot plug into the power system and the hydrogen line
that brings out extra hydrogen from the reformer in the building, because
it is not kept fully occupied all the time, and it can store a little on the side
for this purpose. Then while you are sitting at your desk, your previously
idle, second biggest household asset has just turned into a profit setter and
