Technology

We’ve launched a new “m-site” which is specifically designed for mobiles.

Hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles could be on the road with regular drivers behind the wheel in a few test areas within five or six years, according to a top General Motors official.

While it might sound like the stuff of science fiction, experts say intelligent vehicles capable of solving problems are just around the corner.

General Motors has awarded contracts to companies to help speed up development of its plug-in electric car the Chevrolet Volt, chairman Rick Wagoner said yesterday.Mr Wagoner, speaking at the company's annual shareholders meeting, also said GM would introduce four new hybrid models this year.The contracts to design and test lithium-ion batteries went to Michigan-based Compact Power and to Continental Automotive systems, Mr Wagoner said.“Given the huge potential that the Volt and its E-flex system offers to lower oil consumption, lower oil imports and reduced carbon gas emissions, this is for sure a top priority program for GM,” he said.The Volt, unveiled in January at the Detroit Auto Show, has a battery-powered electric motor that can run the car for up to 64km on a single charge. Beyond that, a petrol-powered, one-litre, three-cylinder engine can generate electricity to replenish the battery, giving the car a range of up to 1030km, GM said.GM's announcement came as Honda said it will discontinue the hybrid version of its Accord sedans, conceding Toyota's dominance with the hit Prius hybrid.GM shareholders voted down a series of stockholder initiatives, including a bylaws change proposed by the Community of the Sisters of St. Dominic of Caldwell, New Jersey, that the company set goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve fuel efficiency.

American company Autonet Mobile claims to be the first internet service provider for cars, with Avis now offering the service in its rental cars from San Francisco airport and expanding to other areas

The company now has MP3 CD compatibility standard across its range, plus auxiliary inputs for MP3 players and even USB connection in some models.The first company in Australia to offer MP3-compatible CD players throughout their range was Hyundai in 2004. That means users have to burn MP3s on to CDs.However, most people now use portable MP3 players, rather than CDs.Some models in some brands offer full compatibility for iPod with track and volume selection through the car's sound system, but this means that users with other brands of MP3 players are not included.Rather than isolating some users, the easiest option is an auxiliary input jack or USB port for MP3 player connection.Users still have to select tracks on the player, but the volume is adjustable through the car's sound system and you don't have to burn CDs.Volvo Car Australia public affairs manager Todd Hallenbeck said Volvo had MP3 CD compatibility right across its range as a standard feature, but now had auxiliary ports with their high performance and premium sound systems.These are standard on all models, except S40 S, S40 D5, V50 S, V50 D5 and the coming C30 S.All XC90 models now have an auxiliary input in the centre console. Plus the XC90 has the rear audio jacks for second and third-row passengers which allows them to listen to radio, CD or MP3 independent of the front seats.All S80 models have a centre console input standard and a USB port available as an accessory.V50, C30, S40 and C70 models have the input discreetly located behind the elegant floating console with a rubber-bottomed tray so the iPod or MP3 player won't get scratched or slide around as the car is driven.However, it makes it a bit difficult for the driver to change tracks on the player.The next XC70 model will have an aux port for MP3 with a USB port as an accessory.

Experts say hybrid-engine technology could be available in the Holden Commodore sooner than we think. Recent important developments include:- General Motors in the US announcing it has put a hold on future rear-wheel-drive planning while moving ahead with development of hybrid and electric strategies for its global brands that include GM Holden;- GM Holden confirming it is working on a diesel option for Commodore;- A leading manufacturing expert warning Australian carmakers at a key conference this week they need to expand their focus to smaller and greener cars to survive;- Most overseas car companies expanding their development into alternate-powered cars;- The European Commission unveiling a strategy to make car companies cut carbon dioxide emissions in all new vehicles by 2012, and;- The US Supreme Court ruling that carbon dioxide emissions from cars are subject to the same tough standards as other emissions.GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz says the company is putting a hold on rear-wheel drive projects. “We've pushed the pause button. It's no longer full-speed ahead,” he says.Two of the most important RWD cars in the works are the Chevy Camaro sports coupe, due back late in 2008, and the full-size, RWD replacement for the Chevy Impala sedan for 2009. Both are expected to be huge sellers in the US and contribute profits to GM, which is still burdened by financial woes.“It's too late to stop Camaro, but anything after that is questionable or on the bubble,” Lutz says.The RWD cars will be larger and heavier than front-wheel-drive cars so it comes down to the matter of fuel economy. Or, as Lutz says: “We don't know how to get 30 per cent better mileage (from RWD cars).”That 30 per cent bogey arises from a proposal by the US Government to raise corporate average fuel economy standards by 4 per cent a year so cars will have to average 34mpg (6.9L/100km) by 2017, up from 27.5mpg (8.5L/100km) today. On top of that, the Supreme Court ruled last week that the Environmental Protection Agency can regulate carbon dioxide expelled by cars, a gas that contributes to global warming. The EPA doesn't do so now.GM Holden boss Denny Mooney has confirmed development for a possible diesel option for Commodore but denies a bespoke hybrid development for Holden.Following reports this week that Holden engineers were working on a hybrid system, the company says the development engineering is a GM global program based in North America, driven by a joint venture with DaimlerChrysler and BMW.“We're (GM) doing engineering work on a two-mode hybrid,” Mooney says. “It's our joint venture with DaimlerChrysler and BMW.”Mooney says the expense of hybrid development puts it outside the capacity of individual brands within GM but a global GM hybrid or electric strategy could flow to Australia.Holden has dabbled in hybrid and electric technology with the ECOmmodore which highlighted the use of supercapacitors and lead acid batteries. The work, a joint venture with the CSIRO, centred mainly on maximising stored electric power.In Melbourne this week a leading manufacturing expert and director of the US Centre for Automotive Research, Jay Baron, urged local makers to embrace change.He told the Society of Automotive Engineers conference any failure to reflect the needs of a rapidly changing global market was risky.Although supportive of Australia's carmaking business and its export efforts of both cars and intellectual property, he believes hybrids and smaller cars represent the new growth areas for the next 10 years.Baron was also surprised Australia, with a market of less than one million new cars a year, could sustain four major car manufacturers.“A state-of-the-art high-volume manufacturing plant today has to produce somewhere over 200,000 cars a year,” he says.Locally, Ford, GM Holden, Toyota and Mitsubishi are well under this figure. “If you're not producing that volume, then you are a scaled-down niche plant and being in a niche market right now is risky,” he says.“Rear-wheel drive cars are slowly becoming niche markets. In Australia the question is: Are there enough niche markets out there so that you can supply the world with rear-wheel drive cars?“It's a little bit of a risky future not to be looking at where the growth is and the growth is small, efficient cars and new technologies.“There is a whole family of hybrids coming out that could totally change the market again as they slowly scale up.”The change in car buying values and habits is part of a broader cultural shift in the industry.“In North America we're moving away from sports utility vehicles to CUVs — crossover utility vehicles — and higher mileage vehicles,” he says. “In Australia you're transitioning from rear-wheel drive to small front-wheel drive cars, which tend to be more imported.“So you're experiencing similar problems to those we're having.”Baron was the keynote speaker at the conference, which also featured Holden's executive director of engineering, Tony Hyde, Toyota's vice-president of the Toyota Technical Centre in Melbourne, Max Gillard, and the design director of Ford Asia-Pacific, Scott Strong.Toyota spokesman, David Buttner says the company has no plans to produce smaller cars in Australia, but the development of future hybrids is an important factor for the company, “We are continuously evaluating the opportunities to introduce hybrids into Australia, we are working with all stakeholders including the government to facilitate this development,” he says.Ford spokeswoman, Sinead McAlary says the company is constantly examining ways to improve all aspects, such as fuel economy, but a complete shift in focus may not be possible.“To say the Australian industry should develop small cars or hybrids is not necessarily very practical,” she says. “The Australian market is also not ready for the Australian car industry to be producing hybrids.”McAlary says hybrids only accounted for around 3000 sales last year, which is less than the number of Falcons that Ford produces in one month.She says the technology is expensive and people have to be prepared to buy the vehicles, before manufacturers can change the way they operate. “The market has to be ready for it,” she says.And while car companies feed into the new technology that's already being developed in the US and Europe, McAlary says “our industry is too small for us to develop it by ourselves”.Toyota with the Prius, Honda with the Civic and Lexus with the RX440h and GS450h are the only three companies selling hybrids in Australia, but many manufacturers have displayed concept vehicles.One of the newest overseas manufacturers to create a hybrid is Proton, in collaboration with Lotus. Unveiled at the Geneva motor show, the Proton Gen.2 EVE hybrid concept has a claimed fuel economy figure of just 5.6L/100km — some 28 per cent better than the petrol road-going version. Proton has not revealed whether it is planning to mass-produce the hybrid.

Professor Herbert Kohler, DC's vice-president of research and advanced engineering, and also its chief environmental officer, says enforcing hydrogen production would stimulate manufacturers to make greener cars."Having an available supply of hydrogen would push forward development of the fuel-cell car," he says. "For example, an oil producer making 100,000 barrels of oil should also be required to make a certain amount of hydrogen. It's no longer good enough for oil companies to offer petrol and oil and diesel for ever. If they are not taking it (global warming and declining fossil fuel supplies) seriously, they will go out of business."Kohler says hydrogen fuel is the best answer now to maintaining clean and green transport for the future. In a fuel-cell vehicle, hydrogen and air are used to generate electricity which then powers a vehicle's electric motors. Fuel-cell vehicles, such as the three city buses on trial in Perth, are self-generating and require no plug-in recharging. Fuel-cell vehicles are touted as the solution to strict emission controls and reliance on fossil fuels.The European Community has proposed vehicle makers have an average of 130g of carbon-dioxide emissions across their range. Kohler says it's a challenge. "The upside is that the EC proposal recognises that it's not only carmakers at fault," he says. "Other factors such as traffic organisations, oil companies and so on will have a common approach."Meeting future challenges — some of which Kohler says are indistinct — is one reason DC is developing fuel-cell vehicles. It aims to have fuel-cell cars in showrooms by 2012, but is not alone. Honda wants a fuel-cell car on sale by 2009 and more than a dozen car companies are working on similar vehicles.However, while fuel-cells appear as the solution to zero-emission transport, Kohler says the process of making hydrogen creates a lot of carbon-dioxide — the gas primarily blamed for global warming."The production of hydrogen is more carbon-dioxide relevant than the production of petrol," he says of the methods used. Kohler says alternative ways of extracting hydrogen from natural gas or water — such as using solar or wind energy — would greatly reduce the carbon-dioxide emissions from the production process.He criticised BMW's plans to make a conventional internal-combustion engined car that runs on liquified hydrogen."Hydrogen in an internal-combustion engine is nonsense — it's a carbon-dioxide disaster," he says. "The carbon-dioxide emissions from the production stage to the vehicle's tank is more energy intensive and, therefore, produces more carbon-dioxide than petrol or diesel. It makes no sense to substitute one fuel for another. It is an illusion to the customer."Kohler says although internal-combustion engines running on hydrogen have issues, the production of hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles is more attractive. He says a fuel cell has double the efficiency of an internal-combustion engine. "So the fuel-cell vehicle can compensate for some of the added carbon-dioxide created in producing hydrogen," he says. He also believes more efficiency could be expected from fuel-cell vehicles."The world has 120 years of experience with the internal-combustion engine," he says."It has only 10 years' experience with a fuel cell. Given that time frame, there will be added advantages of the fuel cell we may not yet know about."Daimler Chrysler has a fleet of small A-Class cars and 30 buses powered by fuel cells. Though fuel-cell development is ongoing, DC has parallel investigations in other power sources, including hybrids."We'd love to combine hybrids with diesel," he says. "Diesel-fuelled vehicles are always better than hybrids for emissions and economy, except in a city cycle with dense traffic."We see hybrids (combining an internal-combustion engine with an electric motor) as being more effective for delivery vans and buses. We have 1500 hybrid buses in the US ... a perfect application for the technology."But he says DC is reluctant to develop the hybrid power train for passenger cars. "From a rational perspective, diesel is superior," he explains. "But we accept, from a PR side, the Japanese have done an excellent job."But they don't have a diesel engine. Hybrid was their attack to reduce fuel consumption and emissions. Behind the scenes, they have had more and more problems with hybrids in the US. There are now 30 days of stock for hybrid vehicles. Some customers have been disappointed, saying claimed fuel consumption is not transferred to day-to-day use."Kohler says the best hybrid is one that uses a diesel engine."But it's the most expensive," he says.

New car styling is moving quickly towards high-waisted doors and huge side roof pillars specifically to provide more side impact protection.And there is also allowance being made for the differing heights of cars and four-wheel drives with the latter featuring less aggressive and lower frontal areas to minimise side impact "intrusion" in a collision with a smaller passenger car.But the real challenge is to make a car that minimises injury to pedestrians in the awful event of an impact.It seems an almost insurmountable problem considering the size, weight and speed of the "objects" involved.But car manufacturers and designers are rising to the challenge.Citroen's new C4 is an example of the way things are going.It's a small/medium car and the front has been designed as much for aesthetics as for pedestrian safety.The front bumper area is rounded off and extends quite low to spread any impact force with a pedestrian's leg over a larger area.The C4's leading edge is all of relatively soft plastic with yielding structures beneath.The bonnet is thin aluminium sheet and engine components, "hard parts" are well down in the engine bay and away from danger.The bonnet is raked from the front up to the windscreen which is raked at almost the same angle as the bonnet once again to minimise blunt impact with a pedestrian.The front mudguards are in soft plastic.The mirrors have rounded leading edges and fold when hit. The only glass at the front of the car is the windscreen. Headlights and all brightwork the badges and grille are plastic.There is no protruding radio aerial and even the door handles are recessed.Ford has taken matters a little further with a spring loaded bonnet on a specially developed Focus model.The bonnet springs up about 20cm acting as a "pillow" in the event of a pedestrian collision. The system has not been broadly adopted on production cars at this stage but other elements of pedestrian safety adorn many other cars.Sophisticated computers will soon be used to help either avoid a pedestrian collision or to adjust parts of the car instantaneously to minimise harm.Pedestrian airbags are a possibility in the future.In the meantime, it would pay dividends to invest in better education programs for pedestrians to stop some of the suicidal behaviour that takes place.Disobeying red lights, jaywalking, walking on to the road from between parked cars or from behind vans, trucks and buses, walking onto the road when intoxicated, simply not paying attention or having compact audio headphones on all, heighten the risk to pedestrians. 

The attraction of ethanol is that it is a renewable resource derived from plants and is essentially carbon neutral because the plants from which it comes consume carbon dioxide during photosynthesis.Manufacturing ethanol would not be carbon neutral unless the power consumed came from a source such as solar, wind or hydro electric generation.But even then, the energy consumed to make infrastructure for these power generation systems would consume non-renewable resources.It is a vexed question.However, using ethanol for transport has other benefits that need to be taken into account, specifically, it reduces our dependence on imported oil and we have all seen what that can do, particularly at the bowser.Using ethanol to power vehicles is probably not the answer to global warming, oil dependence and fossil fuel problems but is part of the solution as we wait for hydrogen engines to be fully developed.Ethanol can be viewed as a stepping stone along the way towards hydrogen.Saab is the first auto manufacturer to bite the bullet in Australia and release a production car that happily runs on mostly ethanol.More than that, the BioPower 9-5 runs better on E85 (85 per cent ethanol) than it does on straight petrol, producing more power and better performance on the "green" fuel.But E85 is not readily available in Australia, certainly not at a commercial level through numerous outlets.Our preference for petrol has seen ethanol almost completely overlooked as a transport fuel.Perhaps the best Saab can hope for in the short term with its BioPower cars is that the Federal Government is pushed into dealing with the issue and also that the average motorist starts thinking about ethanol as an alternative to petrol, LPG, and diesel.Right now, there are three ethanol producers in Australia: Rocky Point, Manildra and CSR.Total annual production from the three companies is around 170 million litres.This would have to be increased hugely should ethanol use for transport become commercial.However, even if every scrap of arable land in Australia was put under crops, it would still not provide enough ethanol to power the nation's vehicles.The Swedish experience (where Saabs are made) has shown that the move to ethanol has not been driven by petrol prices, but by demand for cleaner fuels.But the Swedish government has significant cash incentives for people who buy bio-cars.These incentives for the population to go "green" are not replicated here.Saab hopes E85 will spread rapidly as a transport fuel. It is already extensively used in countries like Mexico.