Cars of Tomorrow

Reported October 2006

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- The high cost of hybrids has kept many people from going green, and a new Edmonds.com study shows that with the cost of gas -- combined with tax credits -- it only takes about three years to break even.

Now a new breed of hybrid is going to lessen that time even more. It's the brainchild of not one car company but DaimlerChrysler, General Motors and BMW! They are all working together to create the car of tomorrow.

As gas prices go up, the pressure is on to create cars that use less.

"The hybrid system that we're developing, we can apply to any vehicle that we have," Glenn Denomme, a chief engineer of Hybrid Powertrain Programs at DaimlerChrysler in Auburn Hills, Michigan, tells Ivanhoe.

It allows for increased performance compared to a conventional SUV and improves fuel economy by up to 25 percent. Denomme says, "You can still haul your cargo, but you can still be environmentally sound too."

Today's hybrid works best in stop-and-go traffic -- tomorrow's hybrid will give you better fuel economy, not only in the city, but on the highway. When the new hybrid is stopped, the advanced system shuts the internal combustion engine off, conserving fuel. When the car starts to move, electric power is used to conserve fuel, adding power from the engine as needed.

Speeding up even more, power from both the engine and electric motors are routed to the wheels for greater acceleration.

The new technology doesn't stop there! A fuel cell car is 100-percent electric.

"It takes hydrogen and oxygen, combines it to form water, and at the same time produces electricity," Doanh Tran, an advanced vehicle engineer with DaimlerChrysler’s Fuel Cell Vehicles & Technologies, tells Ivanhoe.

Hydrogen can be produced from just about anything that has a hydrogen molecule, and the car has no emission out of the tailpipe except water vapor.

Right now, platinum is used for the fuel cell’s parts and is expensive, but materials engineers are working to find new metals. And as for mileage, it gets 56 miles per gallon, so a little can go a long way.

The fuel cell car won't be for sale until around 2012. The new DaimlerChrysler hybrid will hit the market in 2008. It will cost more than a conventional car, but the price hasn't been set yet.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Nick Cappa
Manager
Advanced Technology Communications
DaimlerChrysler Corporation
(248) 512-4266
nc503@dcx.com

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
Washington, D.C.
(202) 785-0017
ieeeusa@ieee.org
http://www.ieee.org

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