Interviewed by Tom Mangan

Jim Motavalli, seer of the automotive future

He's a car writer and editor of E, the enviro-mag. He talks more about alternative-powered cars here.

I've seen the new Toyota and Honda "hybrids" but I'm still not clear how they work. Can you give a quick summary on how their propulsion systems differ from standard car engines?

The Honda Insight and Toyota Prius work quite differently from standard internal-combustion cars, and quite differently from each other, too.

The 70-mpg Insight, on the market since December, uses a small gasoline engine that runs whenever the car is turned on. When greater acceleration is needed, a very thin electric motor is engaged as a kind of supercharger. Both motors stop dead at a traffic light, then restart in a fraction of a second when the gas pedal is pressed.

The 60-mpg Prius can run on either its gasoline or electric motor, or both together. A TV screen lets the driver know which system is engaged at any one time, a decision made by computer for maximum fuel efficiency.

Both cars are fueled up at the gas station, not plugged in. There's still a lot of confusion about that last point: The Insight and Prius are not radical changes for the driver, who does what he or she has always done!

Fuel cells (which pump hydrogen into a cell and produce electrical power from the resulting chemical reaction) sound like the future of motive power, but it sounds as if some profound technical obstacles must be overcome before that happens. Could you share a few examples of the technical riddles that remain to be solved?

The remaining obstacles aren't so much with the fuel cells themselves, but with the infrastructure around them. The cells are very clean, very compact and very efficient, as well as being dead reliable.

The problem, though, is how do you get enough hydrogen stored on board the vehicle to give it a decent range? And, secondarily, how do you generate hydrogen on a massive basis, and make it available at a vast new network of pumping stations?

These are so-called "infrastructure" questions, and they're bedeviling the industry right now. Some interesting new solutions: producing hydrogen from green algae (an Olympic-sized swimming pool covered with this pond scum is said, by scientists at the University of California at Berkeley, to emit enough hydrogen to fuel a fleet of 50 cars on a daily basis) and storing hydrogen in metal hydride--as a solid--on board the vehicle.

Very radical and fascinating stuff!

When you say hydrogen, the Hindenburg going up in flames comes to mind. I saw one report, however, which said that any containers holding hydrogen in cars would in fact be safer than the gas tanks we have now. If that's true, where are the most ominous remaining hazards in using raw hydrogen in fuel cells?

Hydrogen has a number of unusual properties: It burns without a visible flame, and it doesn't radiate heat, so you can be standing an inch away from it and not see it or feel it. It's very leaky, so is hard to move in pipelines, and because it's so light it could theoretically collect in the rafters of a garage, presenting an explosion hazard.

But it's inherently no more dangerous than gasoline, which we've certainly learned to live with.

The Hindenburg, by the way, probably exploded because of the flammable doping compound painted on its cloth skin. The hydrogen that filled the balloon certainly made the explosion more spectacular. I think some super-reinforced hydrogen tanks probably are safer than today's gas tanks.

I'm assuming you've driven some fuel cell prototype cars -- what was your gut-level reaction to the handling, performance and road feel?

Fuel cell cars are still in a very experimental stage. I've driven entries from Honda and Ford, and been a passenger in several others.

As cars, they're quite a bit like battery electrics (since they have an electric drivetrain) but the short range is dramatically extended. The Ford was the most advanced of the cars, with very good overall acceleration and performance. Of the fuel cell vehicles I've seen, it was the most likely candidate for picking up a quart of milk.

The Honda was very evidently still in experimental mode; it rattled and squeaked, and the mechanics probably had it apart the night before.

But the buses have been on regular duty in Chicago and Vancouver with few problems.

What are primary forces causing the auto industry to get religion on alternative fuels and power sources? I can't imagine it's the nagging of Greenpeace and Ralph Nader

You're right, it's not carping from the greens that's making them change hues. Instead, there are major "drivers" such as the California law requiring, by 2003, that 10 percent of the cars sold there be some form of ultra-low emission vehicle. That law is also being adopted by Massachusetts and New York. Other states are looking at it as well.

Adding to that is the growing conviction that global warming is real. (All three large U.S. automakers have pulled out of the Global Climate Coalition, a naysayer group.) Automakers realize, further, that oil is a limited resource that can't be counted on indefinitely.

And so despite little consumer, demand at present, carmakers realize that big changes are coming. In some cases, they're ahead of the public.

Reviews of your book describe you as going from a skeptic of the auto industry to one who believes there's a deep-seated devotion to building cleaner cars. What were some of the things that started changing your mind?

I was an uncritical car fanatic when I was growing up, complete with posters of the 427 Cobra on my wall.

I became a car writer without giving much thought to the environmental effects of these beasts.

But then I became editor of E Magazine five years ago, and I began to learn that cars were not quite as benign as I had thought. They're a major contributor to smog and global warming, among other things. I began to write about cars more skeptically, and was amazed to find how much the car industry had fought environmental regulation.

But I do think that's beginning to change --slowly.

From your vantage point as a car enthusiast and a consumer of middle-class means, what'll these cars have to have before you'll go out and buy one yourself?

If I was buying a car in the next few months, I'd probably buy a hybrid Toyota Prius. The Honda Insight, also a hybrid car, is out for me because it's only a two-seater (and I have two kids). Both the Prius and Insight are quite affordable, at $23,000 and $19,000 respectively. At those prices, both companies are losing money--so grab on to a bargain when you can get it!

The only reason I DON'T buy a car is because I have weekly "test" cars lent to me by the manufacturers. If I had a car of my own, it would just sit in the garage taking up space, and that's not very environmental, is it?

The point is, though, that these cars are very much within the buying power of a "consumer of middle-class means." And there's no sacrifice to be made in owning one.

Sure, they're new, but hybrid vehicles will be everywhere within a few years, to be followed shortly thereafter by fuel cell cars.

The age of alternative power is dawning.

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