DRIVING FORCES
Keith Naughton
The Car of the Future
What we'll be driving in five years.
This week in Japan, Honda rolled out the future of personal transportation: the FCX Clarity, a hydrogen-powered fuel-cell car that emits only water from its tailpipe. It can go 280 miles on a tank of hydrogen—a renewable fuel that has nothing to do with fossilized dinosaurs—while getting the equivalent of 74 miles per gallon and doing zero to 60mph in less than nine seconds. The first Clarity rolled off the assembly line Monday and the Hollywood crowd is already lining up to lease it for $600 a month. Jamie Lee Curtis is one of the first. "This is a must-have technology for the future of the earth," Honda President Takeo Fukui said at the rollout. "Honda will work hard to mainstream fuel-cell cars."
Sounds great, but sadly the mainstreaming of fuel-cell cars will come much farther downstream. Honda, for all its good intentions and buzz-worthy PR, is heavily subsidizing the Clarity, which actually costs several hundred thousand dollars to produce per model. Fukui says it will take 10 years to get the price of the Clarity below $100,000. And they only plan to lease 200 Clarities over the next three years. The biggest roadblock, though, is beyond Honda's control—the almost total lack of hydrogen filling stations. That's why Honda is making the Clarity available only in southern California, which has 19 hydrogen fueling stations but really only three you can pull into like a regular gas station. So should Jamie Lee Curtis want to take a road trip to Vegas in her new Clarity, she will be stranded on the Strip.
So what will the rest of us be driving in five years? The answer is not so much "Jetsons" as it is "Smallville." Auto experts and futurists say our rides in 2013 will definitely be more high tech (though not as futuristic as fuel cells), but the most noticeable change will be their size. We're already downsizing at a rapid clip. But instead of replacing the Hummer with a Honda, by 2013 there will be new models on the market that offer seven-passenger seating, in a significantly smaller package. Under the hood, we'll have hybrids, diesels and turbo-charged engines that are good on gas and not so bad at burning rubber. But we'll still be riding on fossil fuel—just less of it. "Five years from now," says auto analyst Lincoln Merrihew of TNS Automotive, "we should have smaller, lighter and more fuel-efficient vehicles but not necessarily slower ones as turbos capture some former glory and since electric vehicles accelerate pretty briskly."
Driving the change, of course, is $4 gas and runaway oil prices. Another accelerant is new federal regulations that require all automakers' new models to achieve an average of 31.6mpg by 2015, up from about 25mpg today. By 2020, they have to hit 35mpg.
Still, despite the panic at the pump we're all experiencing now, analysts believe gas prices will eventually fall. (I know, you don't buy it. I'm having a hard time myself). The economists at Global Insight predict that by 2013, the average price of gas will drop a buck to $3.08 per gallon. That's why they don't expect all of us to squeeze into tiny Smart cars like the Europeans (who endure $7 a gallon gas). "When the gas bubble bursts and prices go back down, this hysteria will die down," says trend watcher Wes Brown of the Iceology consulting firm in Los Angeles. "The reality is that people need vehicles of different sizes. "We can't all fit into a Prius."
But many more of us will be fitting into Prius-style gas-electric hybrids. J.D. Power and Associates predicts hybrid sales will reach 1.1 million in 2013, accounting for 7 percent of the total U.S. auto market, up from 2.5 percent today. And by then, we'll have 89 different hybrid models from which to choose, up from just 16 today. Among those: three new versions of the Prius—a sport wagon, a family sedan and a tiny mileage miser about the size of a Smart. GM's plug-in hybrid, the Chevy Volt, also will be on the road by then, offering 40 miles of pure-electric drive before a tiny engine kicks in to recharge the battery (not propel the wheels like current hybrids). Honda also has two new hybrids coming—a small family car and a sporty two-seater. In fact, there will be hybrids in every shape and size. "Hybrids will be the new status symbol," says John Wolkonowicz of Global Insight. "Having a hybrid in 2013 will be like having a V8 in 1955."
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Member Comments
Posted By: beyondgreen @ 09/29/2008 5:36:18 PM
Comment: Our country is going to hell in a handbasket. The high cost of fuel has driven up the production and shipping cost of everything. Consumers have nothing left over after filling the tank and paying more for the necessities of life to spend on extras, save or invest. We need to get ourselves out from under our dpendency on foriegn oil.Just as gas prices start to fall slightly and we felt like there might be hope along comes Ike and causes them to spike to an all time high. Families everywhere are wondering where else they can cut back to cover the cost of fueling up the family vehicle to get back and forth to work and take care of the necessities of life. There is no money left for relaxation and family fun. The stress level continues to rise. Most areas of the country have seen a sharp rise in their electric bill as power companies pass their increased production costs on to consumers. The price of a gallon of milk is almost as precious as a gallon of gas. The cost of every consumer product has risen sharply. Americans are stretched to the limit. Jobs are being lost, foreclosures are increasing at an alarming rate. Seems even the family pets are suffering the high cost of fuel as almost daily a sad new story is on TV about shelters being forced to euthanize record number of surrendered pets from those forced out of their homes due to foreclosure or they simply can't afford to feed them anymore. The energy crisis in our country is far reaching and needs immediate attention. Our economy is in a sorry state of affairs directly related to the high cost of fuel. We have become so dependant on foreign oil that we have neglected to fully utilize such natural sources of energy such wind power & solar power. Along with modern technology such as plug in cars, hybrid cars, v2g technology ,and regenerative braking, technology we still seem to be floundering as a nation as to devising the best plan utilize all that is available to us and lift ourselves out of this mess we are in. We need to take o ur closest look at which candidates put our economy and energy crisis at the forefront of their agenda. The Manhattan Project of 2009 by Jeff Wilson
Posted By: ebiz3000 @ 08/22/2008 2:19:17 PM
Comment: What a joke! America is getting screwed and no one is complaining. The only reason we do not have fuel cell cars, and other break through technology, coming at a fast pace is OIL is GOLD, Period! The middel East countries and American Big Oil Co's will, or are already, buying up any technology they can to sloooooooow down the replacement of oil in the world. It is about dollars! Wealth! Wake up America before it is too late.
Posted By: HillBillyBill @ 08/10/2008 9:18:51 AM
Comment: It is not an "energy" issue. It is a transportation issue: Moving people and goods from one place to another.
Imported oil is used as fuel for the internal combustion engine.
Brazil took the hint from the Jimmy Carter speech of July 15, 1979 (google it) and is today totally independent of imported oil--using many flex fuel vehicles manufactured by Ford!
Alternative renewable fuel sources can be developed in many countries besides Brazil--if major commitments by the governments are made and persisted in as prices fluctuate and technologies are developed.
Persistance is the key word. Cheap imported oil got us hooked before. Cheap imported ethanol or hydrogen or whatever could get us hooked on imported fuels again.
The alternative renewable fuels must be developed and maintained at home to be successful in making us independent of TRANSPORTATION fuels.
We have adequate "energy". It is self sufficient fuels for the internal combusion engine that we need.
In the meantime, conservation is the one thing individuals can do. It worked during WWII. It is working to some extent now as working class Americans and businesses feel the pinch of $4 a gallon gasoline. It ha already decreased demand and prices at the pump (as well as crude on the futures market) are falling. But the mistake often made in the past is to go back to our old ways when the price drops temporarily--and remain "adicted" as the president said.