Ford Airstream Electric Concept Car

Not to be upstaged by GM's plug-in electric concept vehicle, Ford has unveiled its own concept. The twists are design by Airstream and a hydrogen-powered fuel cell to charge the battery. From the AutoblogGreen article: "The fuel cell, made by Ballard, turns on automatically when the battery charge dips below 40 percent. With the on-board charger (110/220 VAC), the battery pack can be refilled at home. Ford says the HySeries Drive is 50 percent smaller and less complex than conventional fuel cell system and should have more than double the lifetime."

Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

This is where there is a lot of money to be made. A plug in vehicle that has a range of about 40 miles will take care of the business that most people use in their day to day lives, while having a small fuel cell or gasoline generator available for occasional longer journeys will make it feasible as a normal car. They just need to make sure it doesn't look like the Prius and handles like a normal car (and not a tin car) and they can make a lot of money. But then again this is Ford. They'll invent the systems while Toyota or Honda will actually make an effective product.

"The innovator's dilemma"

[dpbsmith]

In the article about the Chevy Volt concept car, I ranted about why GM didn't just manufacture and market the EV-1? Most people "don't want" 2-seater cars with an 80-mile range? Fine, no problem, don't try to sell it to most people, just sell it to the few people that do.

Well, since then, I've read Clayton M. Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Great, great book. Everyone should read it. And I'm stunned by how perfectly the car companies are falling into the exact trap he describes. And how perfectly the electric car fits his definition of "disruptive technology." And, yes, he does talk about them in the last chapter.

Chevy and GM need to spin off a small division, a la IBM spinning off the Boca Raton PC division, to make and market an electric car. Not a future "sustaining technology" electric car that meets the needs of existing customers of gasoline cars. (Hybrids a la the Prius are a perfect example of that). Just... EV-1's, which are known to have a small market... a market which puts different values on things than the existing car market. A small spinoff for which that market is worthwhile. A spinoff that plays by its rules and doesn't need to compare the profit margin of an EV-1 with the profit margin of a Suburban, so it won't divert all its effort to building Suburbans. A small spinoff that will sell the cars to anyone it can find who will buy one, and will thereby find the new market for them.

Then, over time, the existing business for currently feasible small EVs will result in learning curve improvements, economies of scale, better batteries, longer ranges, bigger vehicles and suddenly one day the mainstream buyer will notice that the electrics _are_ competitive for the traditional market.

Yes, I know... you can tell that I've just read Christensen's book. Which has been out for a decade. But judging from the big carmakers, I'm not the only one who hasn't read it.

Just do it, Detroit. Stop fooling around with the concept cars, the great stuff that's always been just around the corner since 1939. Don't build a prototype of tomorrow's car, build a real car, now, and sell it, today.

Just start up the EV-1 line and build some more. Just like the last. Then sell them. Then build some that are a little better. Then sell them. And s on.

That's great.

[x1n933k]

However, the way these cars are produced, shipped and lubricated are with fossil fuels. Not to mention there is no infrastructure for fuel cells. How do you produce and transport hydrogen? Fossil fuels. How do you produce natural gas? How about the batteries being used. Built in China with machinery powered by coal?

Concepts like this are a joke. It's not how to replace the cars we drive is getting rid of them and transporting people efficiently which will make the difference.

[J]

Re:Why no "trickle" solar?

[Ken_g6]

It's interesting - I've done some math on this before, and it's not really worth it.

After efficiency losses from engine and alternator, one gallon of gas [wikipedia.org] is equal to at least 10 KWH of electricity. Realistically, about the best you could do with solar panels is to cover 2 meters of the car with ~15% efficient panels = 300 watts (max). Now assume you get 12 hours of full sun directly on the panels each day (which is impossible). That's 3.6 KWH/day, or about a third of a gallon of gas. More realistic solar panel data (PDF) [spsenergy.com] gets about 1/5 of that in real life.

That might not even be worth the extra weight of solar panels and equipment!

Re:Yeah yeah

[c6gunner]

No problem: I'll agree to drive one of these to work every day, if you agree to wear a clown suit to work every day. Deal?

Re:To be honest, the conversion cars are more...

[posterlogo]

Just build a nice commuter car with fantastic mileage, that's what we really want.

Agreed. That's what we want. What we need is to commute less (telecommute part time where possible, work closer to our homes) and use more public transportation. These hybrids are great and I want one, but it's easier and cheaper to make a dent in our fossil fuel consumption by making manageable lifestyle changes.

Re:Uhhh Hello Earth to Detroit

[smchris]

Yup, need a fill just drop by your corner hydrogen station. Road trip? One every ten miles on the freeway anywhere in the U.S. right? Yup, yup, yup. This'll fly.

I guess they call them concept cars because the term "vaporware" hadn't been invented in the day. And I would have to guess it is how Ford is boldly signaling: 1) they really don't give a damn, or 2) they still have their heads so far up their corporate ass that to this day they are thinking "fleet market trade" (as if consumer Priuses aren't already a day-to-day sight on the streets).

And why the 300 million [bbc.co.uk] dollar gift Ford is getting from the State of Michigan taxpayers to keep plants open is just pissing into the wind. I think what I find most disgusting is that a company claiming it is on the verge of economic collapse expends this much effort on something designed to give their PR department a direction to wax nostalgic about the family aluminum trailer of the 1930s. They have demonstrated that one thing Americans can still do is B.S.