BMW unveils hydrogen-powered cars
By Andrew Bridges
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — BMW officials traveled to one of the nation's smoggiest cities yesterday to show off a fleet of luxury cars that run on rocket fuel, but belch virtually nothing more than water and steam from their tailpipes.
Company officials said the hydrogen-powered cars are an important step in weaning the automotive industry from the oil that has nurtured it since the internal combustion engine first powered automobiles in the late 1800s.
The silver 750hL sedans sport a new type of internal combustion engine that runs on clean-burning hydrogen — the most abundant element — instead of gasoline.
"It's the cleanest fuel there is," said Burkhard Goschel, a member of the BMW Group board, during a news conference at Paramount studios.
BMW has hauled the 10 cars from United Arab Emirates to Europe to Japan and now California to tout the benefits of hydrogen as a fuel source.
The company will now continue to test the cars at its new research and engineering center, which opens Friday in Oxnard, Calif. Already, the fleet has covered more than 80,000 miles during tests.
When burned, hydrogen packs a powerful punch — it helps propel the space shuttle to orbit. In the BMW models, it cuts tailpipe emissions by 99.5 percent.
The 750hL features a 12-cylinder engine and can hit 141 mph.
Running on hydrogen, stored in a liquid form in a pressurized tank, the car can travel about 200 miles — more if an auxiliary gasoline tank is tapped to fuel the car.
But concerns about storing liquid hydrogen under high pressure have stymied its use in automobiles because of the risk of explosions and fire, experts said. A lack of a cheap and reliable means of producing hydrogen — and distributing it to consumers — has also hurt the marketing of such cars.
Widescale commercial production may still be a decade or more away, although BMW hopes to introduce hydrogen-powered 7-Series models before then. Ford Motor Co. is not far behind: it plans to unveil its own prototype hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine vehicle next month, spokeswoman Sara Tatchio said.
"The challenge will be to create infrastructure and devise a way to store hydrogen on board," said John Boesel, president of Calstart, a nonprofit group that develops clean transportation technologies.
Hydrogen can be produced from water through electrolysis or, more commonly, from natural gas generated during the oil refining process.
The methods are either energy-intensive or costly — or both — at present.
"Hydrogen cannot compete with gasoline on a cost basis ... (but) we believe as usage increases, it can become competitive," said Bob Malone, a regional president of oil company BP Corp.
Goschel said the company has not calculated how much a hydrogen-fueled BMW 750 would cost compared to a conventional version, which sells for about $93,000. And hydrogen service stations may be still a decade away.
"We're a long way from putting hydrogen out there," said Alan Lloyd, chairman of the California Air Resources Board.
The automotive industry has yet to latch on to hydrogen or any other alternative to gasoline or diesel fuel.
Many manufacturers, including General Motors, are looking at hydrogen, but only to power fuel cells to produce electricity. Honda and Toyota have both introduced hybrid models that pair gasoline engines with electric motors to boost fuel efficiency and cut emissions. Ford, GM and DaimlerChrysler AG plan to introduce their own versions in 2003.
California — where 40 percent of all air pollution is produced by tailpipe emissions — has mandated strict standards that should make the exotic vehicles more common. By 2003, for instance, 2 percent of all vehicles sold in the state by major manufacturers must be zero emissions.
"We have a variety of fuels that can steer us on the road ahead," Lloyd said.
