Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 12, 1995 TAG: 9501120038
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-6 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RICK LINDQUIST STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
The Big Three automakers are sponsoring research to update the electric car - briefly popular at the turn of the century - into a New Age version that outperforms many of today's conventional cars, yet still has such amenities as heating, air conditioning, power brakes and steering - and a sound system.
This automotive revolution is already under way in a basement lab at Virginia Tech.
There, a student team is attempting to transform the skeletal remains of a red Dodge Neon into a prototype for a car of the future - in high-tech lingo, a hybrid electric vehicle. The car has been stripped to its carcass to prepare for the new engine.
In the race to come up with a practical electric car, hybrids are a midcourse pit stop. The concept combines a battery-powered motor with a small internal-combustion engine that runs an onboard battery-recharging system that can greatly extend the car's range over a purebred electric car. The electric car often can travel only 50 miles or so between charges.
Tech's ``Team HEV,'' advised by Douglas Nelson, a mechanical engineering professor, is one of 12 groups at universities across the country taking part in the 1995 Hybrid Electric Vehicle Challenge, sponsored annually by Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, the Department of Energy, Natural Resources Canada and the Society of Automotive Engineers.
Approximately 60 Tech students from several disciplines are part of the team, some as volunteers and others for class credit.
``What the hybrid does for us is get range, but hopefully it will run the vehicle very efficiently,'' Nelson said.
In this what-goes-around-comes-around atmosphere, the Big Three automakers are watching anxiously, says team member Bill Stinnett, a graduate student in mechanical engineering from Vinton. ``We've got some companies anxious to see what we'll do with this,'' he observed. ``They're kind of desperate."
Desperate, because they recognize the days of the internal-combustion engine are numbered, as federal air pollution and fuel efficiency regulations collide with the laws of thermodynamics that keep conventional gasoline engines from being much more clean and efficient than they already are.
Time is not on their side. By 1998, automakers must meet the stringent California standards requiring that 2 percent of all cars sold there have ultra-low emissions. As they did during the petroleum crisis two decades ago, automotive engineers hope electric power can help them out of a bind.
``We plan on putting an electric motor right here,'' said Stinnett, using his hands to show where a 115-horsepower electric motor - more powerful and much smaller than many of today's small car engines - fits inside the compact's now mostly vacant engine compartment. An electronic drive system obviates the need to shift gears. The watermelon-size, oil-cooled, battery-powered motor, he predicts, should provide performance comparable to its 135-horsepower predecessor's, propelling the car to 60 mph in 12 seconds or less.
General Electric donated the motor and drive system to the project. Allied Signal is shipping a charging alternator. Other firms have chipped in with specialty parts or cash.
Battery technology is the proverbial brick wall facing electric car engineers, Stinnett and the team's electrical systems guru Dimos Katsis explain. Conventional lead-acid batteries - such as the one that starts your car - are heavy and run out of juice too soon, restricting an electric vehicle's range. The challenge race for the electric hybrid cars specifies 150 miles, about three times the typical electric car's range.
Katsis, a senior electrical engineering major from Winston-Salem, N.C., said batteries haven't changed much since the first electrical vehicles hit the road a century ago. ``A flurry of research'' in the past few years, funded in part by the Big Three, could provide the needed breakthrough, Katsis said, but, for now, Tech's team is sticking with lead-acid cells.
Other technological hurdles are equally formidable, like trying to fit the internal-combustion charging engine, its compressed natural gas fuel tank and the alternator into what used to be the Neon's tiny trunk. Cardboard replicas of the fuel tank and auxiliary charging engine now occupy the area. Natural gas is cleaner-burning than gasoline or diesel fuel, but its necessary cylindrical fuel tank seems an awkward fit.
Rear-mounting the auxiliary engine creates another set of problems, Stinnett said, especially noise and cooling. Then, the huge battery bank in the car's rear also must be ventilated, and, because of the weight, the car's springs might need to be beefed up.
The biggest challenge is meeting emissions standards, said Stinnett, who refers to the process of tuning an engine for minimal emissions as ``a black art.''
Computers will help pull everything together, starting and stopping the charging system, monitoring cooling and keeping an eye on battery level, among other things.
The team also is working against the clock, but still hopes to have the Neon ready for road testing by spring. On June 5, the team hopes to ``impress some people in Detroit'' with the retrofitted Neon.
A practical, fully electric vehicle, or even a hybrid electric vehicle still is some years down the road. Conversions now available are costly. Driving a hybrid or electric car also requires adopting a new set of behind-the-wheel habits. ``There's no engine sound to give you feedback,'' Stinnett pointed out. Lights will do the job in Tech's HEV.
Nelson predicts the motoring public eventually will warm up to electric vehicles. ``I really believe you would love to drive an electric car,'' he said. And while it might bother some not to hear that macho roar when accelerating, the electric or hybrid's performance ``will be as good if not better'' than today's machines powered by internal-combustion engines.
by CNB