Every afternoon, spring through fall, as the desert floor heats up past 90, thermal convection pulls cool coastal air through the San Gorgonio Pass, a 20-knot draft that powers hundreds of windmills just west of this sun-baked spot.
But the thermals also bring gray-brown smog from the gasoline and diesel engines of the Los Angeles basin, pouring over the 1,800-foot pass into Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert.
This juxtaposition of clean energy and pollution from the not-so-clean was one of the stimuli that led retired Bechtel systems engineer Warner O. Harris to design the T-1000 Neighborhood Truck, a hybrid-electric half-ton pickup powered by a space-age fuel cell that consumes pure hydrogen and emits only distilled water.
Fuel cells, electro-chemical devices that transform hydrogen into electricity without combustion, have been around for 100 years. But the technology has never caught on commercially, mostly because the cells are expensive to build and require high-tech controllers. Only outfits that can afford to spend millions to get clean power–NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Southern California Gas Co.–use them.
Automakers facing stricter standards on tailpipe emissions predict that fuel cells will be the power of the future. An on-board fuel cell can recharge electric batteries with zero emissions, eliminating the range and slow-refueling problems of conventional electric cars.
Ford, Mercedes-Benz and General Motors all hope to offer fuel-cell-powered vehicles by 2004, the year California plans to enforce ultra-low emission standards. Harris and his partner, Western Golf Car President Scott Stevens, are offering their fuel-cell vehicle for sale now.
Assembled in the former upholstery shop at Western Golf Car’s Desert Hot Springs shop, the T-1000 looks a lot like a Cushman or Diahatsu mini-truck, but runs on the cutting edge of clean fuel technology.
In addition to carrying a half-ton of cargo at 65 m.p.h., it can power tools such as air compressors, paint sprayers or halogen lights at remote work sites plus provide electrical service for your house (and your neighbor’s) once it’s parked in the garage.
Coval H2 Partners built the truck mostly from off-the-shelf-components–Ford axles; a GM Powerglide transmission; 6-volt golf cart batteries–so buying replacement parts will be easy.
The heart of the system is a 6.5-kilowatt Proton Exchange Membrane fuel cell made by DeNora of Milan, Italy. The cell operates at 180 degrees Fahrenheit and 6.5 pounds of atmospheric pressure (to boost oxygen content). The fuel is pure hydrogen. The truck is plumbed to standard welding bottles, though Harris plans to install a pressurized fuel tank for commercial users who have a source for hydrogen.
Though DeNora would typically sell such a cell for $55,000, it was excited enough by Harris’ truck that it sold Coval the cell for $35,000. (In return, Harris is shipping the T-1000 to Italy for a show celebrating DeNora’s 75th anniversary).
The price will drop with each cell ordered. After Coval signs up a few customers (the U.S. Postal Service and Walt Disney Co. are interested), he hopes to ink a deal with DeNora for 1,000 cells, which would bring the price down to about $6,000 each.
At that price, Harris believes Coval could build T-1000 trucks for $25,000 to $30,000.
“The price is high, but it’s surprisingly low for fuel-cell technology,” said Jack Brouwer, associate director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine. “It is significant enough that it deserves some recognition as a first step in applying fuel cell technology.”
The revolutionary thing about fuel-cell power is it’s lack of revolutions. The cell has no moving parts, makes no noise (though ancillary coolers or pumps typically do) and emits no exhaust, other than hot air and water.
The DeNora fuel cell is compact–12 inches by 12 inches by 27 inches–and looks like a stack of aluminum and plastic plates with inlet pipes and a row of outlet wires.
Fed pure hydrogen, the cell splits hydrogen’s proton from its electron, a cold fission process, forcing the electron into a copper connector, where it induces a powerful current.
Operating at 180 degrees and 6.5 psi of atmospheric pressure, the cell produces 100 amperes of power at 100 volts with an efficiency of 50 percent–nearly twice the efficiency of conventional internal combustion engines.
The T-1000 is part pickup, part golf cart–and unique. On a custom-made ladder frame, Western Golf Car’s mechanics have installed a Ford half-ton truck axle and a Ranger independent front suspension. The transmission is a General Motors Powerglide two-speed–not coincidentally the same unit used in the Grumman LLVs (Long Life Vehicles) that the Postal Service uses to deliver the mail.
Mated to the transmission is an 85-horsepower electric motor. A battery pack–20 6-volt golf cart batteries–provides direct power for the engine. Harris used conventional lead-acid, deep-cycle batteries because they’re cheaper and fully recyclable–unlike the hazardous, expensive lithium-ion batteries in most electric cars.
On the batteries alone, the 4,500-pound truck can go 45 miles. With two welding bottles of hydrogen fuel (about two pounds), the range doubles. With a high-pressure tank holding 10 pounds of fuel, the range is 245 miles, three times that of the General Motors EV-1.
The truck is quite simple. Turning the key brings the sound of a small electric motor that drives the power steering pump. Shift the transmission into gear and step on the accelerator and the Field Effect Transistors in the power controller emit a high-pitched hum. The truck bursts into motion and the transistor hum disappears, replaced by the quiet whine of the drive motor and the tires on the pavement.
Harris used his background as a power plant systems engineer to design the full-logic transistorized fuel cell controls. When the batteries are discharged 20 percent, the fuel cell kicks on at full power, recharging the system in minutes.
The T-1000, as a prototype, still has a few fit and finish problems. The doors don’t quite fit, the gauges are not hooked up and driving with two men in the cab required a switch to smaller-diameter tires because of wheel clearance problems. But these are problems typical of prototype or show cars.
Refueling also is a bugaboo. One of the problems with electric cars is that you can’t instantly recharge on a long trip. That’s not so with the T-1000, a hybrid vehicle that recharges as you go. But fueling up with hydrogen is not convenient. The closest thing to a “gas station” is a welding store that sells bottled hydrogen–but these aren’t located at every freeway off-ramp.
An even bigger hurdle is the National Highway Transportation Safety Board requirements–crash tests, side-impact barriers, rollover protection.
Coval hopes to market the T-1000 as a maintenance vehicle for closed environments–airports, amusement parks–which will avoid these problems.
“It’s a significant advance of the technology,” says UCI’s Brouwer. “They have a fully packaged unit, and it operates very reliably, but they have some things that would never fly in a passenger vehicle: the gas bottles and the size of the motor, which is a little underpowered for a passenger vehicle.
“I would say it’s a milestone, but there is still a lot of work to be done to make the fuel cells ready for the general market. This is a niche-market application.”
But Warner’s counting on more than one niche. He hopes to sell fuel-cell conversions to replace internal-combustion power trains.
And he hopes some clean-energy buyers will purchase the fuel cell module alone as a source of portable power.
With enough orders, and perhaps a few more investors, Warner and Stevens plan to build a factory behind Western Golf Car’s desert shop, and become the world’s first commercial provider of affordable fuel cell technology.
“Our intention is to put out a piece of machinery that people can use,” Harris says. “We want to do business.”
