December 1, 1976

Engineer Predicts Auto Break Through

The eye-ball confrontation between the Big Three auto makers and federal environmentalists goes on, but Uncle Sam probably will blink first.

Manufacturers say they can not meet the 1978 standards for engine emissions and that if the clean-air act is not relaxed they will shut down their plants.

This prospect is too awful for a new political administration in Washington to contemplate.  An idle automobile industry would plunge this nation, and the world, into a catastrophic depression.  The auto companies hold all the aces, and the government knows it.

The next generation of Dream Machines, therefore, will be slightly larger, slightly more luxurious, and considerably more expensive than the current models.  The subcompacts will be shunted to the back of the show rooms until the cost of gasoline resumes its march to $1 a gallon.

"The clean-air fanatics have pushed us to the limits of petro-combustion technology" an engineer of a major auto company told me recently.  "The next move is up to us."

The "next move" will be a break-through in fuel according to my informant whose job depends upon my skill in protecting his identity.

Several exotic fuels are under development which will be clean, powerful and efficient - for a price.  As oil escalates in price the new mixtures will become competitive.

A combination of gasoline, alcohol and water (yes, water) cuts exhaust pollution but prices out at $1 a gallon,

Engines that burn low-grade diesel oil are efficient and economical but are too sluggish for American tastes.  My engineer friend says, however, we may have to go to five-cylinder diesel cars - like the new Mercedes-Benz - if the U.S. car industry is not given a few more years to come up with something better.

The ultimate answer, according to my source, is a rotary engine using a "lean" mixture of gasoline and liquid hydrogen.  Essentially this is the power plant that sends rockets to the moon.

The day of churning pistons and controlled explosions within a cast iron block are numbered.

It is interesting that this giant step forward to an automobile acceptable to environmentalists, manufacturers, and consumers is being made by the aerospace industry.

The spin-offs from our space program may yet pay bigger dividends here on Mother Earth.

Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, believe that within a year or two they will make a practical automobile engine that can produce its own liquid hydrogen as it powers a car down the road.

The resulting power plant would operate on 25 percent less fuel than today's engines and eliminate all - repeat, all - pollutant emissions.

A Wankel rotary engine, similar to that now used in Mazda imports, has been adapted to bottled hydrogen, but the range is only 50 miles.  Development of a "hydrogen generator" that produces extra fuel as it operates is possible, but expensive.  Such generators are built into space ships routinely.  The technological trick is to bring them within reach of Sunday drivers.

About $5 million has been spent on the hydrogen-gasoline engine during the last five years, most of the money corning from NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency.  Recently the Energy Research and Development Agency has gotten interested in the project.  ERDA wants all the bugs worked out within the next six months.

Environmentalists will have to back down on their opposition to nuclear reactors if they want clean air, declares my engineer friend.  "Hydrogen is the cleanest burning fuel possible, and the easiest to produce.  It is liberated from water by application of electricity and heat, both economically available through nuclear energy.  It can be produced in potentially unlimited quantities."

The principal draw back is the highly explosive nature of gaseous hydrogen.  The liquid version is no more dangerous than gasoline, and that produced by hydrogen generators consists of tiny quantities used up immediately.

The new engine and hydrogen generator will add a stiff additional cost to the initial purchase.  Fuel economy, however, will recover these production costs relatively quickly.

My friend thinks the prices of gasoline and hydrogen will come together in the next two or three years - especially if the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) bump the price of crude oil a total of about 20 percent.

It appears that ultimately the high cost of living will accomplish what wishful laws can not - a more efficient automobile.

Author: Lindsey Williams