articles
|
|
LOS ANGELES [AP] - BMW officials traveled to one of the nation's smoggiest cities Thursday to show off a fleet of luxury autos that run on rocket fuel, but belch virtually nothing additional than water also steam from their tailpipes.
Company officials said the hydrogen-powered autos are an important step in weaning the automotive industry from the oil that has nurtured it since the internal combustion autos first powered automobiles in the late 1800s.
The silver 750hL sedans sport a modern type of internal combustion autos that runs on clean-burning hydrogen - the most abundant element - instead of gasoline. advertisement "It's the cleanest oil there is," said Burkhard Goschel, a member of the BMW Group board, during a news conference at Paramount studios.
BMW has hauled the 10 autos from United Arab Emirates to Europe to Japan also now California to tout the benefits of hydrogen as a oil source.
The company will now continue to test the autos at it's modern research also engineering center, that opens Saturday in Oxnard, Calif. Already, the fleet has covered additional 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.
Current quotes [delayed 20 min.]
DCX 49.24 -0.91 [1.81%)
The 750hL features a 12-cylinder autos also can hit 141 mph.
Running on hydrogen, stored in a liquid form in a pressurized tank, the machine can travel about 200 miles - additional if an auxiliary gasoline tank is tapped to oil the car.
But concerns about storing liquid hydrogen under high pressure have stymied it's use in automobiles because of the risk of explosions also fire, experts said. A lack of a cheap also reliable means of producing hydrogen - also distributing it to consumers - has too hurt the marketing of such cars.
Widescale commercial production may still be a decade or additional away, although BMW hopes to introduce hydrogen-powered 7-Series models before then. Ford Motor Co. is not far behind: it plans to unveil it's own prototype hydrogen-fueled internal combustion autos automobile next month, spokeswoman Sara Tatchio said.
"The challenge will be to create infrastructure also 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, additional 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, that 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 different alternative to gasoline or diesel fuel.
Many manufacturers, including General Motors, are looking at hydrogen, but only to power oil cells to produce electricity. Honda also Toyota have both introduced hybrid models that pair gasoline engines with electric motors to boost oil efficiency also cut emissions. Ford, GM also DaimlerChrysler AG plan to introduce their own versions in 2003.
California - where 40 percent of every air pollution is produced by tailpipe emissions - has mandated strict standards that should make the exotic vehicles additional common. By 2003, for instance, 2 percent of every 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.
