What You’ll Be Driving

It was a mission incredible, a task once given the difficulty factor of landing a man on the moon. As with Mercury and Gemini and Apollo, the problems were generations old and their solutions just theories buried within the unknown.

That was in 1993 at the birth of a lightly publicized, little-known industry-government super-car program called Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, or PNGV.

This year, the problems have lessened and solutions are being proved.

And next year, dead on target, at the midpoint of the PNGV challenge, the Detroit auto makers will demonstrate concept vehicles reaching far into the next millennium and incorporating radical technologies that once belonged only to dreamers.

Despite tight security surrounding laboratories at Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler, plus a general refusal among program directors to divulge precise shapes or even some names of the milestone cars, PNGV insiders say most of the concepts, if not all three, will be hybrids powered by small diesel engines and electric motors.

They will be clean-burning, fuel-efficient, five-passenger family sedans weighing 2,000 pounds--in contrast to today’s mid-size cars, which weigh 3,000 pounds or more. They will be capable of delivering almost 80 miles per gallon--versus an average 25 mpg for their 1999 antecessors.

“You’d be pretty safe in saying we’re all going to put out diesel-hybrid kinds of vehicles,” says Bob Culver, on loan to PNGV from Ford.

That means no all-electric vehicles, as once predicted by environmentalists. No propane power. No cars propelled by hydrogen fuel cells. At least, not yet. And despite Buck Rogers futurists who predicted air-cushion vehicles with bubble tops and thrust steering by 2001, our personal transporters will have a wheel on each corner and look depressingly like cars.

“First of all, the diesel engine is a technology that was identified early on in the program as a cycle that gives you 35% more thermal efficiency than a gasoline engine,” Culver explains. Now there are the benefits of compression ignition direct injection, or CIDI, which is “a very high-pressure injection system, with a very small nozzle size that does a much better job of atomizing the fuel.”

“As such,” he says, “you get better fuel distribution, better combustion, and that will lessen, although not eliminate, particulate formation.”

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PNGV represents one giant stride by auto makers that many within the industry call “coopetition,” a pursuit of common goals without stifling proprietary achievement. Equally dramatic, notes one study of PNGV, has been an unprecedented collaboration between Motown and the Beltway that rises above past acrimony associated with “government’s perceived intrusion in the marketplace” and “industry’s alleged lack of responsiveness to issues of public concern.”

Here’s how Ford, General Motors and DaimlerChrysler, old rivals reconfigured into the Bigger Three, are poised to reconcile public concerns with three daring vehicles:

* Ford’s super-car offering will be the all-aluminum Prodigy, a four-door based on the 1998 P2000 Diata show car that looked like a stretched Contour and had a 1.2-liter CIDI diesel engine and conventional drive train. The Diata achieved 63 mpg and met its PNGV weight target, which was 40% lighter than a standard Ford Taurus.

“But our concept car will be styled more for the 1990s,” Ford’s Culver says. “I don’t think I’m going to tell you that our car gets 80 mpg--but it is in the ballpark.”

Prodigy will combine its starter and alternator in one lightweight package. The storage battery will be smaller, and there will be aluminum in every part and every system, Culver says.

“Then you’re able to make the secondary weight saves,” he says. “In other words, if you can do an all-aluminum body, get all that weight off, now you can make your springs smaller, your brakes a little smaller, you can downsize the engine, and all those secondary benefits start adding up.”

* Observers say that although GM’s 2-year-old EV1 electric car--with fewer than 600 vehicles leased to date--has been a commercial failure, its teardrop aerodynamics and power electronics technology remain breakthroughs. Therefore, expect GM’s 2000 proof-of-concept vehicle to show the shape of a four-door EV1, similar to the parallel-hybrid vehicle (front wheels driven by an electric motor, rear wheels driven by an Isuzu diesel) that GM already has on the auto show circuit.

Ron York, GM’s director in residence with PNGV, inherited the EV1 engineering team after joining the partnership in 1993. He notes that “in terms of technical stretch, the EV1 was about halfway from a conventional vehicle to the challenge of PNGV.”

He declined to reveal full details about GM’s PNGV car but acknowledged that it will be an aluminum-intensive, 90-horsepower diesel-electric hybrid. PNGV watchers, however, say the car will not only meet the 80-mpg parameter but even exceed it.

“I’ve got that car on a helluva diet, and I hope to make my [weight] target,” York says. “Right now, I can tell you I’m about 31.2 kilograms [69 pounds] over target.

“I have had five passengers in the car. No shape will be revealed [until next year], but it is uniquely styled to give us the best combination of aerodynamics, good aesthetics and very acceptable passenger accommodations.

“I think the team will literally set a new world record in aerodynamics.”

* Steve Zimmer, PNGV director for DaimlerChrysler, says clues to his company’s concept under construction can be found in vehicles displayed at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January. Such as the supercharged Dodge Charger R/T with its V-8 engine firing on natural gas to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

“That [natural gas] is not the focus area of PNGV,” Zimmer says, “but what we showed was an advancement on the whole issue of compressed natural gas, which deals with storage, which does fall under PNGV.”

An oversized Jeep Commander was also shown, its underlying purpose an exercise in the packaging of primal and still-cumbersome fuel cells. Another entry was a full-size Dodge Power Wagon truck running on sulfur-free diesel fuel and fitted with a 7.2-liter inline-6 engine developing a monstrous 780 pound-feet of torque. By comparison, a production Dodge Ram with an 8.0-liter V-10 engine produces 450 pound-feet.

“The key message [of the Power Wagon] was that our industry is making a continual effort to engage oil companies and the government in addressing the total systems solution,” Zimmer says. “That involves not only new technology, powertrains and lightweight body structures but also the necessity for a substantial change in current fuels or possibly going to [sulfur-free] designer fuels or migrating to methanol or other fuels.”

DaimlerChrysler has publicly demonstrated an ultra-streamlined diesel-electric hybrid called the ESX2. Can the ESX3 be far behind?

Zimmer says an ESX3 “would be as good a guess as any . . . because there are a lot of technologies embedded in that product, from powertrain to the body structure to the lightweight interior to the automatic manual transmission.

“All that work continues on that particular vehicle concept, and that is a primary focus of a lot of our internal proprietary work.”

Zimmer believes that DaimlerChrysler’s entry for 2000 will demonstrate most of the goals of PNGV, but he notes that not all issues will be resolved.

“This will be an interim report card that shows where we have pulled this together in a total-vehicle concept,” Zimmer says. “This will say: ‘OK, here is what we have achieved, and here is what is left to be done.’ ”

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Those precise challenges--their core being a nation choking on exhaust fumes, the threat of global warming and the hapless burning of fossil fuels until the world could be running on empty--brought Ford, GM and Chrysler together in 1992. They combined as the U.S. Council for Automotive Research, or USCAR, a consortium to strengthen the technology base of the domestic auto industry through “cooperative, pre-competitive research.” Or “coopetition.”

A year later, President Clinton, accompanied by federal and industry leaders, announced the industry-government agreement to form PNGV. Its declaration of intent was lofty and conveniently overlapped that of USCAR: to develop commercially viable vehicles that can preserve personal mobility while reducing the harmful effects of cars and light trucks on the environment.

Its timetable was crisp: drivable concept vehicles by 2000, production prototypes by 2004, production by 2008.

Its mandate was nonnegotiable: a lightweight, clean and roomy super-mid-size sedan that will be safe and perform as well as, but cost no more than, a 1994 Chevy Lumina.

Said GM’s York at the time: “We won’t be able to violate the laws of physics . . . but we’re certainly going to challenge them.”

Not everybody applauded. The media were skeptical of this linking of big industry and big government. The Sierra Club allied with Ralph Nader in questioning consumer and society benefits--and building a car on tax money and then selling it back to the taxpayer. Editorial cartoonists drew the Big Three as cowboys bellying up to the federal bar for free booze and the super-car as a vehicle equipped with windbags and seats for 25 bureaucrats.

“But in my opinion, progress has been outstanding,” says Don Walkowicz, executive director of USCAR. He cites advanced fuel cells, parallel-hybrid systems, lightweight materials development, accelerated manufacturing techniques and power electronics as major accomplishments.

“Without PNGV, those technologies and the American automobile industry wouldn’t be so far along,” he says. “Our assertion is that we have done more, better, quicker.”

To bolster acceptance of their performance, officials for USCAR and PNGV recite a long list of current work and past achievements involving specific disciplines. Adapting polymer-matrix fiber composites from space vehicles to ground vehicles. Refining ultralight steels. Adhesive bonding of aluminum and polymer composites. Advanced transmissions and fluids. Dry-powder paints. From recovering plastics out of automotive shredder residue to speeding die-casting techniques, with 48 teams working on lightweight materials alone.

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Today, less subjective voices are sounding testimonials for USCAR and PNGV, this merging of talents of more than 1,000 scientists; a dozen consortiums beneath the USCAR banner; 10 teams serving PNGV; plus the research services of half a dozen federal departments, laboratories and agencies, plus more than 400 universities, large suppliers and small entrepreneurial firms. Last year, the auto industry spent almost $1 billion on PNGV. Adding to that cost is the $250 million contributed by federal laboratories and agencies.

“Even at a point less than halfway to its conclusion, the PNGV is showing excellent prospects for its ultimate success,” writes Robert M. Chapman in “The Machine That Could,” a Rand Corp. study of PNGV prepared for the Commerce Department. “In spite of having to work with a virtual budget at times . . . [it was] able to overcome early doubts by enlisting industry competition and federal agencies unused to working with others to collaborate on a common purpose . . . a win-win experience for the government, the industry and for the individuals involved.”

A National Research Council report to be released in Washington today--the fifth in a series of NRC oversight reviews of PNGV work--states that after targeting advanced technologies for its diesel-electric hybrids, the program is “making the most progress in its history.” The report singled out PNGV research in aluminum and carbon-fiber plastics, direct-injection diesel engines, fuel cells and electrochemical batteries.

But, it warned, increasingly tougher state and federal environmental standards, particularly those proposed by California, could jeopardize PNGV research.

“More stringent clean-air standards for engine emissions in California, and those expected to be proposed by EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] for nitrogen oxides and particulate matter,” the NRC said in a statement, “have placed significant burdens on PNGV’s work toward technological breakthroughs.

“Changing standards within such a short time frame disrupts ongoing research,” it said. “The federal government should review how future emission requirements will affect automotive technologies, and develop a plan that responds to its findings.”

Speaking of the report, committee Chairman Trevor O. Jones said: “It is important that EPA start to consider automotive emissions and fuel economy as a total systems problem.” Dean Bedford, of auto industry analysts Bedford & Associates in Detroit, says that if nothing else, PNGV has “got the public off the kick that it is a violation of antitrust laws if the industry gets together to try and solve some of the problems that face it.”

In addition, he says, the alliance has schooled the automobile industry in the difficult ways of government, while educating government to the realities of the automobile industry. In particular, the limited purpose of electric vehicles.

“We had to get away from the extension cord and the electric vehicle,” Bedford says. “[PNGV] has got a lot of people in government familiar with automotive technology on a scale of 12 inches to the foot. Now they are getting the right ideas that some of these wild schemes they thought were feasible just don’t work.”

The workings of PNGV are already around us.

The Plymouth Prowler, a retrospect with air bags descended from hot rodding in the ‘40s, wears panels of aluminum and composites. GM’s EV1 has an aluminum frame and a polymer body that weighs only 290 pounds.

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Although European and Asian laboratories had already been developing fuel cells and hybrid vehicles, many American researchers believe the work of PNGV has accelerated the efforts of overseas companies.

“Inside the Big Three and the industry as a whole, there are people who will say Toyota was spurred into action by PNGV, and I think even Toyota will admit to some of that,” Culver says.

“And Daimler stepped up its efforts once PNGV was announced,” he says.

As Jason Mark, transportation analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, explains: “We are seeing an environmental arms race among the auto makers.”

DaimlerChrysler’s Zimmer looks back on the last five years and sees the attainment of impossible objectives, first by trial and error and then development of holistic focus.

“We started off with a broad, clean slate,” he recalls. “Then we said: ‘Let’s not take anything off the table.’ We kept options open, and we waited until what we thought was the appropriate time--which was basically the end of last year--to narrow it all down to where we could say: ‘OK, now we’ve really got to start to focus these efforts and the challenges that remain.’ ”

In the process, another premise has been sunk: that one day, some radical design or overlooked element would consign the reciprocating piston engine to the land of dodo birds and pants pressers.

GM’s York thinks not. He predicts a mix of future cars:

There will be electric vehicles as third cars for short commutes and local errands. In time, fuel cells will power buses, delivery trucks and other commercial vehicles where the larger size and higher cost of the system will be absorbed more easily. Sport-utilities and sports cars will remain powered by good old-fashioned gasoline because some consumers will never be weaned from power and noise.

Plus, of course, those PNGV diesel-hybrids for luxury and mid-size family cars.

“It is like the moon program,” York says.

“And if we can achieve anything close to 3X [triple fuel economy] and bring it to market profitably and competitively . . . that would be the same as getting men to the moon and bringing ‘em back alive.”

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Paul Dean can be reached at paul.dean@latimes.com.