Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, a major proponent of alternative energy research, recently visited The Scuderi Group at the Society of Automotive Engineers 2006 World Congress in Detroit.
To see more photos from the show, check out the Scuderi Photo Album.
The profile of the Scuderi Air Hybrid engine that recently ran in the Detroit Free Press was republished up in the Boston Globe and the Philadelphia Inquirer over the weekend.
New engine’s a family affair
By Justin Hyde, April 23, 2006
‘’We’re basically preserving technology that’s been around for a century, but we’ve tweaked it a bit and made it better,” Sal Scuderi said.
They won’t have a working prototype until next year, but the Scuderis have:
Verified their unique engine ideas with outside experts.
Raised $8 million to fund the company.
Patented their designs in 45 countries.
The moves put them several steps ahead of the parade of engine inventors who have made pilgrimages to Detroit over the years to tout engineering breakthroughs. Most leave empty-handed, but the Scuderis believe Carmelo Scuderi’s ideas are too compelling to ignore.
‘’When our dad did the original design and with every effort we put forward, we go back to thermodynamics. That’s everything in an engine,” Sal Scuderi said. ‘’A lot of people we deal with are good at understanding how engines work, but they’re not good at how thermodynamics work.”
To read the whole article, click here.
Financial Times
Toyota embraces ethanol technology for US push
By Bernard Simon in Toronto and James Mackintosh in London
Published: April 18 2006 22:23 | Last updated: April 18 2006 22:23
Toyota is planning to sell ethanol-powered vehicles in the US by 2008 in the latest push by the Japanese carmaker into segments dominated by the Detroit-based manufacturers, a company executive said.
Toyota has resisted the technology amid worries about the impact of highly-corrosive ethanol on rubber seals in the engine. The new vehicle would be fitted with anti-corrosive parts to meet US regulations.
Toyota is known for its fuel-efficient hybrid petrol-electric systems, with its Prius hatchback the market leader by far.
But the Japanese company is eager to show it has not put all its eggs into the hybrid basket. “We’re studying all alternative fuels,” Toyota said. “We will not be outflanked.” Last year’s surge of consumer interest in hybrid vehicles has shown signs of flagging amid questions about whether the extra fuel efficiency justifies the high purchase price.
Read the whole article here.
Jamie Lincoln Kitman, the New York bureau chief for Automobile Magazine and a columnist for Top Gear, a British magazine, had an interesting article in the New York Times over the weekend.
…just because a car has so-called hybrid technology doesn’t mean it’s doing more to help the environment or to reduce the country’s dependence on imported oil any more than a non-hybrid car. There are good hybrids and bad ones. Fuel-efficient conventional cars are often better than hybrid sport-utility vehicles - just look at how many miles per gallon the vehicle gets.
Being a professional car-tester, which is to say a person who gets asked for unpaid car-buying advice practically every day, I know these distinctions have already been lost on many car buyers. And I fear they’re well on their way to being lost on our governments, too.
Kitman reminds us about the law of unintended consequences,
Pro-hybrid laws and incentives sound nice, but they might just end up subsidizing companies that have failed to develop truly fuel-efficient vehicles at the expense of those that have had the foresight to design their cars right in the first place. And they may actually punish citizens who save fuel the old- fashioned way - by using less of it, with smaller, lighter and more efficient cars. All the while, they’ll make a mockery of a potentially useful technology.
Yesterday it was Nissan talking down gas-electric hybrids, arguing that they were too expensive to build. Today, the LA Times is writing about Honda’s plan to cut production as hybrid sales fall.
Honda Eyes Production Cut as Accord Hybrid Sales Fall
The move highlights the industry’s uncertainty over the technology’s popularity and future.
Honda Motor Co. may be learning a hard lesson about hybrids: It’s better to hold the horses.
A Honda executive said Thursday that the automaker might reduce production of its gas-electric Accord hybrid sedan because the vehicle, marketed as a performance model rather than a fuel miser, hasn’t been selling as well as hoped.
It was the second time this week that auto executives attending the New York Auto Show have raised questions about the popularity of hybrid technology.
Nissan Motor Co. Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said Wednesday that hybrid sales appeared to be slowing, something he has frequently suggested could happen as consumers weigh hybrids’ extra sticker cost against their fuel economy.
Accord hybrid sales are off 51% from last year, when the model was introduced and was still a novelty because it mates a V-6 engine with Honda’s hybrid electric drive system that gives it 253 horsepower, versus 244 in the non-hybrid model.
The HyrbidSmarts blog says that Honda is already looking ahead to what’s next,
Hybrid vehicles are a stepping stone, moving auto manufacturers slowly towards the ultimate goal of clean, zero greenhouse gas, renewable automotive fuels. Many observers are placing their bets for the ultimate clean car technology on hydrogen fuel cells.
Honda, therefore, is to be congratulated for announcing that it will put a hydrogen-powered vehicle into production, albeit in extremely limited numbers.
There has been a great deal of hype around gas-electric hybrids, and deservedly so, as they are the first true alternative to the internal combustion engine. As we see with the news this week, this promising technology still faces many challenges, most notably, the extra cost that results in automakers losing money on each vehicle sold.
This is what makes the Scuderi Air Hybrid engine so compelling. Unlike conventional engines, the Scuderi Engine produces compressed air during its normal operation. By adding a small air storage tank with some simple controls costing only a few hundred dollars, the Scuderi Engine can recapture energy normally lost during the breaking of a vehicle. To accomplish this with electric hybrids requires a complex electrical system, costing thousands of dollars, consisting of generators, motors, and large batteries. In addition, unlike electric hybrids, the Scuderi Air-Hybrid has the unique capability of recapturing energy from the exhaust of the engine, making it possible to utilize a Scuderi Air-Hybrid design in stationary applications such as electric generators - an application where electric hybrids are considered impractical.
While electric hybrids are struggling to reach a 50% increase, the Scuderi Air-Hybrid is anticipated to almost double the mileage of a vehicle. Besides having significantly higher increases in efficiency and better reductions in toxic emissions than electric hybrids, the Scuderi Engine also improves power and performance. Today’s electric hybrid cars normally reduce power and performance to obtain an increase in mileage. Because the Scuderi Air-Hybrid increases power while improving mileage at a cost of only a few hundred dollars as compared to thousands for an electric hybrid, the Scuderi Air-Hybrid is the first hybrid system that makes economical sense.
To learn more about the next-generation of hybrid, the air hybrid, click here.
