Detroit vs. Denmark

Last Sunday I flew to Detroit ahead of several days of meetings. While waiting for my rental car I was reading the current issue of Bicycling Magazine and was blown away by the contrast.

Here I was an automotive engineer in Detroit waiting for a rental car. What could be more mobile than that? But I was transfixed on the article about Denmark and the use of bicycles there for transportation, and how well it worked.

Meanwhile, after half an hour of waiting in line (they were understaffed) I got the car. After pulling out of the lot I followed signs for I-94. Within a few blocks I almost stopped the car because it looked like the road had ended. Upon further inspection, the road was just a gigantic series of potholes and patches. It looked like a test track for evaluating durability.

The car I had was a newly redesigned compact from a domestic nameplate and it rode the bumps surprisingly well. But once out on smooth highway it was numb, as if the front tires were underinflated (they weren’t). Why the manufacturer bothered to redesign it I’ll never know. Let’s call this model Mediocrity 2.0 (M2.0).

So I’m motoring along just fine in Michigan and I’m thinking, as a visitor to the area, I didn’t know of a practical way I could bike from Detroit to Ann Arbor. But according to the article about Denmark, people there routinely bike the same distances, and their quality of life is supposedly higher than here in the US.

There is bicycling hope in the States though. The article mentioned a number of US cities that either are already bicycle friendly or are becoming more bicycle friendly such as Portland, Seattle, Boulder, Colorado, Washington DC (yes!), and so on.

I must say I was impressed with the anonymous government agency (begins with the letters E.P.A.) bike room in Ann Arbor where employees store their transportation. It was no more than a parking space but it did indeed hold a dozen bikes, just like the stats from Bicycling Magazine.

My whole point? The M2.0 is a product of its environment. Developed by a company based in Detroit, it’s reasonably well suited to cushioning the bumps of pockmarked roads and getting people from A to B in about as dull and numb a manner as possible. On the other hand, the environment in Denmark has enabled bicycle use, and its use has become an integral part of daily life there.

We need enablers. If the American landscape were more bicycle friendly, more people would ride instead of drive, not just for recreational purposes but also for transportation. It’s refreshing to see some of the changes occurring here, and I hope it’s a trend that continues.

Ralph Nader's Boat

Automotive News published an article on Ralph Nader’s efforts to state a protest outside of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) headquarters about auto safety. I didn’t even know he was still running for President. Here’s an excerpt from the article (AutoNews.com requires login):

In a statement, Nader said NHTSA, which is charged with adopting lifesaving safety standards, instead "has now become a pathetic consulting firm for the motor vehicle manufacturers."

I’m all for automotive safety but these advocates are usually barking up the wrong tree. To his credit he's been a central figure over the last four decades to the tremendous improvement in automobile safety. But we’ve reached the point of diminishing returns on safety while people are still driving.

If you really want to make a difference in highway safety, pursue improved driver training, cracking down on impaired/distracted driving, getting incompetent drivers off the road, and pushing for driverless cars. The cars themselves are quite safe today and making them safer isn't going to reduce the number of accidents.

Strengthening the roof, while not a bad thing (within reason) is not going to do a thing to fix the fact that a car has flipped over because of human error. It’s people like Mr. Nader who keep diverting the public’s attention from the bigger issue of safety. Get the cars to drive themselves and we won’t have to deal with the aftermath of human drivers.

If more than 40,000 people die each year on the highways, and at worst 10% of these are caused by technical or road issues then the other 90% are due to driver or pedestrian error. Shouldn't we focus on preventing those mistakes in the first place rather than trying to save people after the fact?

The Shift: Energy Limitations

In the past automobiles were performance limited. Components and systems such as engines, brakes, suspension and tires were the items that dictated the boundaries of their performance envelopes. Not so much the fuel. Gasoline, while more sophisticated today, has not been the limiting factor in performance for a long, long time.

Today, the vehicles we have are not really limited by much at all in terms of both performance and their energy sources, predominantly gasoline. If you want a car that can accelerate like it was shot out of a cannon, cruise all day at 100 mph, and stop on a dime, there are many alternatives to choose from.

As we move forward and develop alternatives to oil-based energy sources, we’re finding that we’re now on the other side of the coin. Chassis capable of handling the aforementioned performance criteria are plentiful. But alternative energy sources of propelling a vehicle to those lofty levels are not measuring up to the performance of good old-fashioned petroleum.

Now it is about energy density because the energy issue is upstream of the performance issue. Solving that will affect performance – at least in the near term. We’ll have to take what seems like a step backward in order to go forward.

While oil has such high energy density that nearly everything from marine engines to lawn mowers can be powered by internal combustion engines scaled for each application, tomorrow it will be a case of different horses for different courses. What might work for locomotives won’t work for automobiles, which will again be different from trucks and planes.

Right now it looks like electric cars are the next step. But that might not work for many other applications such as long haul trucks. Or rail. Or construction equipment.

In the foreseeable future, I just don’t see oil getting completely displaced by alternatives until big breakthroughs are made. Not only do we need to concentrate on making those breakthroughs, we need to be mindful of using less of everything. It’s a two pronged approach to accelerating the end of oil: Developing viable alternatives AND reducing our overall energy needs.

The Midas Touch – Not Always Good

This is not about the muffler repair chain. This is about the value of commodities when demand increases, specifically it is about ethanol and corn. Corn is at about an all-time high closing at $6.13/bushel today on the Chicago Board of Trade.

Let me illustrate why corn to ethanol is not a scalable solution. The USDA estimates 86 million acres of corn will be planted in 2008. For conversation’s sake, let’s just make it an even 100 million acres.

My back-of-the-envelope calculations (using these conversion factors) show that if all the corn the US produced was turned into Ethanol for automobile use, we’d end up with 27.24 billion gallons of ethanol. Now think of what that would do to food prices and political stability around the world. Nothing good. Not to mention the water and energy that goes into producing ethanol.

Ok, but continuing down this path where does that leave us? Wikipedia shows 34.6 MJ/L for gasoline and 20 MJ/L for ethanol. That means 1 gallon of ethanol contains about 70% of the energy of a gallon of gasoline. So the 27.24 billion gallons of ethanol would equate to about 19 billion gallons of gasoline.

How much gasoline does the US use each year? The EIA figure for 2006 was 388.6 million gallons per day, or almost 142 billion gallons per year. That means if we used all the corn (and then some) grown in 2008 and turned it into ethanol, we can expect it to replace about 13.5% of the gasoline used.

You’ve seen the headlines of food shortages and price increases in many parts of the world. Certainly there are a variety of factors causing this. But on more than one occasion corn-based fuel has been cited as a concern. Right now the amount of corn used for fuel is miniscule, and already we’re seeing price issues.

Irrational markets driven not only by demand but also by projections and fear are putting a huge risk premium on the price of many commodities.

Whenever demand for something increases or potentially increases, the price will increase and in some cases skyrocket. Corn is no exception. There is simply too much demand for, and fear over it.

Corn does not seem to be a scalable solution to our energy problems. In fact, there don’t seem to be many possibilities that offer a scalable silver bullet. The heart of the problem is that the world currently consumes too much energy in proportion to what is able to economically produce, which in turn will cause price increases in the production of every energy source there is.

Go here for more about recent corn price activity:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080403/corn_at_6.html

NHTSA Fuel Economy Proposal

The new CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) proposal is going to have unintended consequences. It’s based on the premise that each manufacturer’s fleet should have an average based on the size of each model and the number of vehicles produced.

The size of each model is based on its “footprint”, that is the track width multiplied by the wheelbase, and that the smaller this area is the higher the fuel economy (MPG) of the vehicle must be. It is intended that this would raise the average fleet fuel economy.

I also believe this is NHTSA’s solution to their dilemma of how to categorize a vehicle as a passenger car or a light truck, a dilemma that has become markedly more of an issue with so many different models now available from manufacturers.

However, this proposed regulation potentially won’t achieve its objective because manufacturers will build larger, less efficient models than they could since they have lower fuel economy hurdles to clear, relative to smaller vehicles. It’s a disincentive for manufacturers to offer smaller (and presumably more efficient) vehicles.

If that is the case then the way to have a more efficient vehicle fleet is to leave it to the market to demand more efficient vehicles by voting with its money. So why have the burden of this additional change?

Every manufacturer should be accountable to one standard, and not have their thresholds based on their product mix. Foundations should be built on level ground. NHTSA should clarify the definitions of automobiles and light trucks, and apply these definitions to all vehicle manufacturers the same way.

Here’s a link to the proposal (scroll down to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration):

http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fedreg/a080428c.html

More Self-Parking Cars

Speaking of driverless cars, VW (among others) is working on self-parking cars.

It’s obvious that in order to have a driverless car the first step is to have a self-parking car. It’s only a matter of time.

Gasoline Buffers

The main obstacle of electric vehicles is energy storage media. A gallon of gasoline or diesel fuel is about 6.5 lbs. The equivalent weight in batteries is in the neighborhood of 205 lbs. This is akin to carrying a memory stick with gigabytes of capacity compared to reels of film or floppy diskettes.

But there are many advantages to electric power such as the ability to decouple vehicle speed from engine speed, energy recapture during braking, silent operation, and no emissions when operating in electric mode. These factors add up to considerable potential energy savings.

This is why there are numerous projects aimed at developing series hybrids (the Chevy Volt being the first that comes to mind). In other words gasoline and diesel are excellent energy storage media while electric powertrains are much more efficient. So the challenge is to somehow combine the better aspects of the two in order to achieve a superior solution, and putting in place the infrastructure to support pure electric power when the energy density of batteries (or capacitors, etc) have matured sufficiently.

Right now that appears to be a revolutionary chassis combined with a small IC engine and electric drivetrain. By that I mean cars that are dramatically different and lighter than existing vehicles. Conventional designs fitted with electric power wouldn’t be nearly as much of an improvement. We should strive for major gains by thinking further outside the box.

Flywheels As Bridges

I’ve been wondering lately if a mechanical flywheel could be a means to bridge the gap between battery and supercapacitors for on-board vehicle energy storage. Supercaps can be charged and discharged quickly, and their high bursts of power are good for acceleration but not so much for constant power.

On the other hand, batteries are slow to charge and discharge but are good for sustained cruising. Using supercaps and batteries together could provide for a wide range of power needs. Except thus far it doesn’t seem there’s any way to charge batteries quickly and maintain their service lifespans.

Possibly then a mechanical flywheel could be used as a bridge between the two in the sense that an on-board supercapacitor could be quickly charged and enable a vehicle to get back on the road. The supercap quickly charges the flywheel, and then the flywheel slowly charges the batteries.

At this point flywheel capability in a vehicle application is relatively unknown but it’s a potentially useful technology path. And with Formula 1 featuring KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems) next year, this is a great opportunity for technology transfer from racing to the street.

Gasoline to Battery Range Comparison

One tank of gasoline contains hundreds of millions of Joules of energy (MJ), about 45 MJ/kg according to Wikipedia. Let’s say your typical car is 3,000 lbs in weight, has a range of 350 miles on a tank of gas, and gets about 30 mpg highway.

By contrast a Nickel-Metal Hydride (NimH) battery is good for about 0.22 MJ/kg. For the sake of discussion, using today’s technology how much battery mass would it take to provide the equivalent?

At 30 mpg it would take 11.67 gallons of gas to go 350 miles. If each gallon is roughly 6.5 lbs, then we have roughly 76 lbs or 34.5 kg of gas. Based on 45 MJ/kg that’s 1,552 MJ of energy.

We know a 350 mile range would be too far for batteries. So how much would the market accept as an alternative? Let’s assume 2/3 of that which would be 210 miles. For the same vehicle then 210 miles would require 2/3 as much energy which would be equal to about 1,035 MJ. But keep in mind that a gas engine is about 25% efficient whereas an electric power train is closer to 75%.

That means if you’re using 1,035 MJ of gas at 25% efficiency, you would only need about 345 MJ of electricity (1,035 x 0.25 / 0.75).

Using battery tech with 0.22 MJ/kg we’d still need an astounding 1,568 kg (or 3,456 lbs) of batteries. No wonder the ranges being discussed for plug-in hybrids (PHEV) are more often in the 50 to 100 mile range, using lithium batteries.

However, all is not lost. If we can pare the weight of the vehicle down from 3,000 lbs to say 1,500 lbs we can probably save another 1/3 in the energy for the same range. If that was done battery mass would come down proportionally to 1,045 kg (2,305 lbs). Still not practical but that’s for a 200 mile range. If the range were cut to 50 miles then it looks like we could get away with less than 600 lbs of batteries (2,305 lbs x 50 miles/200 miles = 576 lbs) if the car is very light. This does not yet account for the weight of the batteries either.

It’s clear there are only 3 main ways to increase PHEV range without additional fuel:

Improved battery energy density
More efficient powertrains
Drastically lighter vehicles

While there’s a lot of work being done on improving battery technology, it should be noted that dramatically lighter vehicles will strongly contribute to the growth of PHEV vehicles. And in doing so we’ll probably see a lot of refreshing concepts in the very near future.

F1 Notes – Spanish Grand Prix

Some observations of today’s event:

Fernando Alonso did a great job in qualifying, almost got pole. He was lucky to get away with his off during the warm up lap when he nearly hit a wall. Good start from the Ferraris.

Lewis Hamilton probably made the best one, certainly the decisive one of the race when he jumped Robert Kubica. He’s done this on more than one occasion at the start where he’ll go to the outside approaching the first turn and then dart inside to take the position from the car ahead as it tries to defend the mid-outside line. It often pays off.

Not a good day if your name was Sebastian. Vettel was taken out by Adrian Sutil’s failed move on someone else ahead of him. More reason to qualify further ahead.

Speaking of Sutil I don’t see him lasting the rest of the year unless he really improves his performance. Teammate Giancarlo Fisichella outqualified him by about 0.7 of a second which seems like somewhere between a kilometer and a mile.

Then Sebastian Bourdais had the accident with Nelson Piquet which eventually took them both out.

Couldn’t believe there was an audience of 132,000 people. Huge turnout for Fernando Alonso.

Then Heikki Kovalainen has a massive accident due to mechanical failure. It looked awful as the car wedged itself under the tire barrier having impacted it nearly straight on at high speed. When the car was finally extricated there was visible daylight in the cockpit, not a good sign at all. Heikki was taken away on a stretcher but appeared to be mostly ok. Hopefully he’ll be fine and his promising career won’t be adversely affected.

Hard to imagine the consequences of such an impact if the wall was concrete as they likely were in the recent past.

Steve Matchett on Speed TV really knows his stuff. Always fascinating to hear him speak about strategy and the many considerations that go into running the cars.

The rule prohibiting refueling in the pitlane when it’s closed due to a safety car period is both confusing and cumbersome. Totally ruined Nick Heidfeld’s race. A 10 second penalty for refueling when you had to? Utterly ridiculous.

It’s time for David Coulthard to hang up his F1 gloves. He’s become an obstinate curmudgeon, party to too many accidents when getting passed, and today’s result was he was lapped by his teammate Mark Webber who actually finished, and in the points to boot.

If Red Bull are to win they need to replace Coulthard.

In the end Jackie Stewart’s pre-race prediction was right on the mark no one would challenge Kimi Raikkonen for the win. Raikkonen gets criticized unfairly for his perceived lack of emotion. But he gets my vote for not only being the best driver on the grid, he doesn’t complain and gets the job done without drama. That is a mark of a true champion.