Dutch Put Electric Car Just Around Bend

If researchers in this small Dutch town are right, drivers might one day bid farewell to the internal combustion engine and switch to silent, speedy, long-range electric cars.

The research institute Energie Onderzoek Centrum is embarking on a three-year, $4.4-million project to develop an electric vehicle system powered by fuel cells running on methanol--a volatile, flammable natural gas derivative better known as a solvent.

“We mean to show that we can do much better than the internal combustion engine even with a catalytic converter,” said Ronald Mallant, the project’s leader.

“We aim to have the system working by mid-1995,” he said.

Most of the funding will come from the European Community, and the institute is working with Britain’s Loughborough University and an Italian research institute, Tecnars.

The institute plans to buy the most advanced fuel cells, electric motors and methanol converters. It will then work on producing a fully integrated system.

The system involves feeding methanol (CH30H) through a converter that produces hydrogen and carbon dioxide (CO2). The hydrogen then passes through polymer fuel cells producing an electric current and water as exhaust.

There is no combustion and virtually no noise.

A battery is likely to be included to boost the motor at peak load moments such as hard acceleration. It would then be recharged by the cells when the motor is using less current.

This setup would give the car a much greater range than current electric vehicles, which run only on batteries.

These are hampered by limited storage capacity and also need hours to recharge.

Methanol can be supplied at normal service stations and filling would take the same time as gasoline or diesel does now.

The system’s main disadvantage is the CO2given out by the conversion process. CO2is blamed by scientists as the main contributor to the greenhouse effect.

But the CO2output of the methanol system is likely to be lower than the emissions from an internal combustion engine, Mallant said.

He pointed out that a battery-powered car is not totally green because power-stations that supply the power usually burn oil, coal or gas.

The system emits almost no carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons or nitrous oxides, which are produced by internal combustion engines and which are key components of smog and acid rain.

The institute’s research parallels work being done in the United States by a group of companies including General Motors Corp., Dow Chemical Co., and the Canadian company Ballard Power Systems Inc. of Vancouver, which is working on a methanol-fueled electric bus.

Ballard is the leader in polymer fuel cell production, Mallant said.

The institute expects that drivers will have to pay much the same for a full tank of methanol as they would do for gas or diesel, and as methanol is produced from natural gas, it would reduce gas-producing countries’ dependence on imported oil.

The Netherlands itself has huge supplies of natural gas and the government decided in August to pump $9.3 million into electric car research.

Despite its green reputation, the Netherlands is Europe’s most densely populated country and the most heavily polluted, according to a recent survey by Groningen University.

To try to combat this, the Dutch government has been at the forefront of anti-pollution research and from next year 10 minibuses, 10 medium-sized trucks and one public bus, all powered by electric motors, will be available for leasing.

The government will pay the difference between the electric vehicle cost and that of the diesel versions.

Truck manufacturer DAF NV, the Dutch subsidiary of Swiss-Swedish engineering firm ABB Asea Brown Boveri, and electric vehicle builder Spikjstaal BV will provide the vehicles.