Kia has the technology for eco-friendly cars, discovers Jacqui Madelin
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As fuel prices continue to rise, manufacturers are scrambling for the pot of gold; the definitive replacement for petrol. In the meantime they're rushing to sign off on interim technologies such as more frugal combustion engines, more affordable hybrids, and more practical electric cars.
Most have more than
one iron in the fire. Kia, for example, has hydrogen cars on trial in the US and Korea, and along with Hyundai will supply the Korean Ministry of the Environment with 3390 hybrids over the next two years as part of a programme of real-world testing. That's a cautious build-up to the volume manufacture of eco-friendly cars next year.
The Herald has briefly sampled Kia's Rio hybrid sedan. It's powered by a 1.4-litre petrol engine alongside a 12kW, 95Nm electric motor which supplements the petrol during starting, acceleration or hill-climbs. In addition, the engine stops and starts automatically when you halt for more than two seconds.
Kia says this Rio will accelerate from 0-100km/h in 12.2 seconds, reach 180km/h, and uses 5.29 litres/100km of petrol. Our undemanding circuit at its Namyang R&D centre confirms that it picks up as expected for a small bread-and-butter sedan, and yes, it does take a break when you stop.
Being a Kia, when it goes into production next year it'll be efficient, reliable and unexciting - and like many petrol-electric hybrids, will be no more frugal than a diesel-fuelled car of a similar size; the Rio diesel drinks at a claimed 4.9.
No news there then. What is interesting is Kia's work on hydrogen-fuelled cars - using existing models.
Kia engineer Kim Saehoon oozes intelligence, enthusiasm and shy charm. Enthusiasm, because he's convinced hydrogen is the future. Getting petrol from well to tank and tank to road is a wasteful process. Hydrogen, says Saehoon, is cheap, three times as efficient as petrol - and produces zero emissions. Put oxygen and hydrogen in, create an electro-chemical reaction that combines the two, store the resultant electricity in a battery, and spit the water out the tailpipe.
The battery powers the electric motor that drives the car, and everything else from the air-conditioning to the windscreen wipers.
Unlike conventional electric cars, which take six to eight hours to charge, hydrogen needs just three minutes to spark enough for motion.
We've driven a Sportage before - it's a familiar light SUV favoured by families wanting an affordable runabout. This one's hardly affordable, but it looks barely different from the standard cars.
The fuel cell stack is tightly packed under the bonnet up front, with two 76-litre hydrogen tanks underneath and the batteries below the boot floor. The whole lot's hidden from view and carefully distributed; the considerable weight is carried low, and spread evenly front to rear.
Electric motors - a 100kW one mounted transversely up front, a 20kW jobbie in each rear wheel - are torquey as hell, so we pulled away briskly enough. There's a one-step reduction gear; you just press the accelerator, and you're off. Top speed? We're told 170km/h, but weren't trusted to leave the premises. Perhaps they thought we'd steal their technology. And this Sportage is all theirs - Kia developed the lot.
Why not sell a hydrogen Sportage right now? Durability and price, says Saehoon. Of course, cold starts are still slow; anything involving water is problematic when it's chilly. Saehoon says Kia's got the warm-up process down to five minutes at -15C, and starting is still possible at -30C. He knows this, because Kia tried it - and tested start-up at extreme temperatures in a turkey transporter, the only freezer found that was sufficiently large.
Kia's hydrogen set-up allows a range of up to 600km, but the 1500-hour life cycle, or three years of driving, is not long enough for a car on open sale. Mind you, Saehoon says, "That's only the stack - the car won't stop. Efficiency will be reduced, but our target is to see no more than 10 to 15 per cent reduction after 10 years."
Saehoon says hydrogen cars will be an easy-own proposition. There's no oil to change, and little maintenance.
Safety? Kia's built enough cars to waste them; the real-world crash tests run with helium in the tanks replacing the highly-flammable hydrogen, just in case.
Kia's running 32 hydrogen-fuelled cars in California and at the US Army's Michigan cold test site, and 34 in Korea. And it's prepared to mass produce the core technology by 2012: "Any time anyone else mass produces, we will be ready. The hydrogen technology is there - we just need hydrogen refilling stations in the street, as without the infrastructure you can't sell the cars."
It's a chicken-and-egg situation at present; there's little incentive for fuel companies to build infrastructure without hydrogen-fuelled cars, which can't sell when you can't refuel them.
Moreover, hydrogen is still most often made from fossil fuels. Developments in solar power may address that problem. The ideal is to roof service stations - or home garages - with solar panels that supply enough power to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, in sufficient quantities to refuel the cars pulled up beneath them.
That's an ideal in part because one advantage of hydrogen as a fuel is its sole emission of water, and our test Sportage emitted a continual dribble from its tailpipe. But any concern air pollution will be replaced by water-slick and slippery roads won't wash.
"It looks like there's a lot, but there's not much more than in traditional combustion," Saehoon says.
More efficient solar power and real-world hydrogen-fuelled cars may still seem a utopian future, but it's one with real potential. No harmful emissions, and no waste; in theory, the amount of water used to produce the hydrogen should match that created by in-car electricity generation.
Saehoon's vision suggests another utopia, this time for a verdant world in which water redistribution creates a garden of Eden from areas once blasted by drought. Wetlands could export hydrogen to dry countries soon clouded by imported water vapour.
The Aussies would be keen - big hydrogen-guzzling V8 sedans to cure the outback drought? You read it here first ...