November 29, 2000

Fuel efficiency: The future is now
by Craig M. Lee

Smart City direct injection diesel

I beg your pardon? Did I hear that right?

"For those who love their cars, the future is bright," Lui Hrobelsky is saying. "There's a lot of advanced technology to make things better and, for people who enjoy cars, there's a lot of interesting stuff coming."

Can these words be true? And be coming from the mouth of the senior Canadian government official responsible for, I thought, choking the life out of cars so we can have blissful, tree-hugging, "sustainable" (ugh!) transportation?

Yes, in both cases.

Mr. Hrobelsky, 52, is chief of energy and emissions engineering at Transport Canada. He has seen the future and says it's not necessarily as unpalatable as car-crazy North Americans may fear. Vehicles won't have to be boring, slow, impersonal and without spirit.

His optimism may come from the fact that he and his staff have what many auto buffs might consider dream jobs: getting paid to drive and test and poke and probe some of the most high-tech and niftiest, most fuel-efficient and clean-running cars and trucks now on sale anywhere in the world.

Wonder cars that generate sky-high fuel economy numbers while spinning heads like a possessed Linda Blair when they drive down the street. Cars so totally different and cute, you might want to hug them.

Many of these vehicles are not for sale in North America, which is a shame. They may not meet Canadian and U.S. regulations, or there may simply be no demand for them. But they have a whole lot to offer, maybe even our environmental future.

Tremendous benefits. For instance, some give you full heat from the heater in 15 seconds flat -- no more freezing your tail off waiting for tepid air on a cold winter's day.

Some shut themselves off while idling to save you gas -- and everybody, it seems, is talking about the high price of gas these days. Some have continuously variable transmissions for maximum efficiency, clutchless shifting and other innovations.

And we could be seeing many of these features, if not these cars, soon.

"We are testing these vehicles with our eye on the future, but this isn't Buck Rogers 2050 stuff," Mr. Hrobelsky says.

For him, the cars and trucks of the future are here now, except Canadian drivers can't yet buy many of them. Some of his cars have been seen by no one else in North America, although lucky Ottawa-area residents may catch a glimpse of them as the vehicles toodle around town.

"We're lab-testing them for emissions, fuel economy and safety, and we're performing road evaluations to learn whether the public will take to them," he adds. "We'll see whether it's practical for the cars to be changed to meet existing regulations or whether it is appropriate to change the regulations so these cars (and their benefits) can be brought to Canada."

Mr. Hrobelsky recently gave me a chance to inspect and drive cars from the the current 12-vehicle fleet. It includes a very small Mercedes A-Class (the C-Class is the smallest Merc currently imported into North America) and an even-smaller Smart car, built by a firm that began as a joint venture between DaimlerChrysler (Mercedes) and the Swiss company that makes high-fashion Swatch watches.

Smart City Convertible

The Smart (stands for Swatch-Mercedes ART) is the talk of Europe. Put one in a parking lot and it'll draw more curious folks than a house fire.

Only 2.5 metres long (less than eight feet), this fresh little darling is like a modern-day BMW Isetta. Weighing only 730 kilograms (1,600 pounds), it's powered by a tiny 800-cc three-cylinder turbo diesel. The transmission gives you the choice of fully auto mode or six-speed sequential shifting, like a CART race car.

Though Europeans have gone bananas over the glass-roofed Smart, it's unknown whether North Americans will take to such a little Timbit of a car. Here, we love our SUVs and pickups.

Still, the Smart is a ball to drive. Start it and you hear a little clacking from the diesel. Mash the gas pedal and the car shoots forward. Acceleration is accompanied by a faint little whistle from the turbo. It'll cruise effortlessly on Highway 417 at 125 km/h (sRating five, don't tell anyone). It's roomy inside and I never felt intimidated driving it.

And if you tire of its paint colour -- change it. Simply drop by to your dealer (in Europe) and exchange the thermoplastic body panels. They come in a variety of wowie colours. There's no charge and it takes half an hour to do yourself.

This car just made me blurt out, "Lui, I want one!"

The Smart has all the toys: air conditioning, power windows, traction control, ABS, air bags. And it's got comfort (for two) and looks, in spades. The design I'd call New Age hyper-tech, yet the centre stack (with the radio and heater controls) looks like one of those mini-jukeboxes you'd see in a diner booth.

There's already a convertible version, and Mercedes, which bought out its partner's share of the company, is working up a gas-electric hybrid model, a roadster, a four-seater and a mini pickup.

Mercedes-Benz A-Class

Despite the A-Class Mercedes' short length (3.57 metres or just under 12 feet), it has classic Mercedes looks and all of the safety features you'd expect in a big Mercedes: front and side air bags, antilock brakes, Electronic Stability Program and Brake Assist.

To protect in a frontal crash, the A-Class's engine, transmission and drivetrain are partly below the passenger compartment, so they slide under it in a serious collision. As a result, the occupants ride up a little higher, like in a Ford Focus or Toyota Echo.

There's a smooth five-speed stick, but no clutch pedal.

A little electric motor works the clutch automatically as soon as you move the shift lever. Uncanny.

Power comes from a spritely, 1,700-cc turbocharged four-cylinder diesel that launches this five-passenger car to 100 km/h from a standstill in 12.5 seconds, while delivering more than 67 m.p.g. (Imperial) on the highway (4.2 litres per 100 kilometres).

The four-passenger Volkswagen Lupo is another innovative high-tech diesel. It's two sizes down from the familiar Golf, smaller still than the Polo that VW also doesn't bring to North America. In Europe you can get a Lupo with four powerplant choices, up to a 1.4-litre gasoline engine.

The test diesel Lupo can travel 100 km on less than three litres of fuel -- that's over 100 m.p.g. -- thanks to its 1.2-litre, three-cylinder, turbocharged and inter-cooled direct-injection engine.

Volkswagen Lupo

Come to a stop for more than four seconds and the diesel shuts off. You sit there in dead silence. The light turns green and you step on the gas and the car just moves forward. Start-up is instantaneous.

The Lupo is faster than the Smart and there's a five-speed automatic transmission that you can also shift manually, sequentially, if you want. With 61 h.p., zero to 100 km/h comes up in a very respectable 14.5 seconds.

These engines put to rest that old stereotype about diesels being slow, archaic and dirty of exhaust. "They're extremely fuel efficient and that's one of the attractions, if you're focused on climate change," says Mr. Hrobelsky.

The Lupo's light weight (830 kg or 1,830 pounds) comes as a result of its small size and ample use of aluminum in doors, engine cover and wheels. Magnesium is used in the transmission housing, rear door frames and steering wheel. The Lupo struck me as a serious and practical vehicle, yet with out-of-sight fuel economy.

Also being tested are two recent arrivals in North America, the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius. Both are gas-electric hybrids that you don't have to plug in to recharge. They are already part of the solution to cleaner air and conserving the planet's remaining supply of dino-juice.

Their batteries are recharged by regenerative braking; when the cars brake, the energy lost from forward momentum is captured to recharge the batteries. But they're very different vehicles.

2001 Honda Insight

The Honda Insight is a small two-seater, sort of a larger CRX, while the Toyota Prius is a five-seater, almost as large as a Camry.

The Honda is essentially a gas-engine car that relies on an electric motor to assist it in acceleration and a lot of daily driving. The Prius is the opposite, relying more on its electrical motor than its gas engine.

Although the rear fender skirts and aero look give the Honda Insight a kind of spooky spaceship look and stereotype it as a gutless granola car, zero to 100 km/h is registered in a mere 10.6 seconds using both engines together.

The Prius looks more conventional than the Insight, if you consider cars like Toyota's other new Echo to be conventional looking. But what's conventional these days? The New Beetle? The PT Cruiser? The Audi TT? The Pontiac Aztek?

Both the Insight and the Prius can be purchased now in the mid-to-high $20,000 range, which has to be a bargain considering the technology.

Like the Lupo, the Insight shuts itself off when idling for any length of time. Its low emissions and high fuel economy result from its three-cylinder, all-aluminum, 1.0-litre engine that produces 73 h.p. and works in tandem with a 13-h.p., permanent magnet brushless electric motor.

A smooth-shifting five-speed manual transmission makes driving a pleasure. Coming to a stop, the Insight will shut off even at 20 km/h (unless the air conditioning is on) so you coast to a halt in silence. It's unnerving, but only at first. Auto-start is instant and totally unobtrusive.

Billed as the world's most fuel-efficient car, the Insight's advanced aerodynamics (co-efficient of drag is 0.25) and an all-aluminum body and frame (about half the weight of steel) result in a package that can achieve 3.2 L/100 km (88 m.p.g.) on the highway.

The Insight uses the well-protected area behind the two passengers to house the electronic controls for the hybrid engine, the nickel-metal hydride batteries and the gas tank.

2001 Toyota Prius

The Toyota Prius has a larger 1.5 litre four-cylinder engine that uses variable valve timing "with intelligence." The gas motor is attached to a 40-h.p. electric motor that delivers a whopping 225 lb.-ft. of torque from 0 to 400 r.p.m., more than a V-6 Camry.

A special generator converts the motor's spinning motion into electricity, which then drives the electric motor and charges the batteries. It does double duty as the engine's starter motor.

There's a battery pack sealed in a carbon composite case, about the size of a large conventional car battery, behind the rear seat. It consists of 38 sealed nickel-metal hydride modules, each about the size of a "D" cell battery. The Insight's battery pack is similar.

These new and better batteries are not like ordinary lead-acid car batteries. They're basically inert, non-flammable and non-caustic (that is, they don't burn skin).

The Prius's electronically controlled continuously variable automatic transmission is very efficient at transmitting power. The two engines are managed using an Advanced Control System (ACS in Toyota-speak) that reads sensors to identify accelerator pedal position, hills, battery charge, engine speed and whether the air conditioning is on. It then sends signals to select the battery or gas engine and whether to have the generator recharge the battery or send energy to storage during braking.

Waving the flag for the all-electric crowd are two Ford Ranger EV compact pickup trucks, which Ford builds for the commercial market. They'll go more than 100 km per charge of the battery pack, even with A/C on and at night, or during a Canadian winter.

1998 Ford Ranger EV

The Ranger trucks use older technology, circa 1998 (ah, the pace of progress). Each uses 39 individually sealed lead-acid modules slung under the chassis, producing eight volts per module. But they still drive like an ordinary vehicle, except there's near-total silence.

The electric motor is attached to the rear axle. It puts out the equivalent of 90 h.p. through a single-speed transmission that has two "ranges": drive and economy. You can get an 80-per-cent recharge in three hours from a converter attached to your home, though the latest battery and charging technology will get you that in under 20 minutes, which would make it a more realistic powerplant for daily use by the public or for urban rentals.

"And the heater comes on full blast in 15 seconds," adds Charles Thibodeau, 28, senior engineer for energy and emissions at Transport Canada, who will be noting how these vehicles perform this winter in Canada.

A sporty Renault Megane four-passenger coupe is also being studied because of its unique and efficient gasoline engine. Its motor features direct injection, something new for gasoline engines, though direct injection is common on diesels.

Unlike ordinary fuel injection, which introduces the fuel into the manifold, the Megane introduces gasoline right into the combustion chamber and at much higher pressure, which means it can run very lean.

There are two Chevrolet (formerly Geo) Metros in the Transport Canada fleet. The Metro is already on the market, but it has been doing badly in sales because gas is still relatively cheap in Canada and the United States, compared with almost anywhere else in the world.

The Metro is felt to represent a strong example of successful conventional technology. Its three-cylinder, all-aluminum engine can get by on as little as 4.5 L/100 km on the highway (63 m.p.g.) and its five-speed transmission has overdrive ratios for both fourth and fifth.

Unlike the Smart, the Metro is a cheap and nasty econo-box, a failure of imagination. As a result, it's about to be discontinued by General Motors. Sad, really.

Also in the Transport Canada fleet are several factory-offered compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles, ranging from the smallish Honda Civic GX-CNG model -- unavailable in North America, except in California -- to the huge-ish Ford F-250 pickup with mammoth 5.4-litre Triton V-8.

The beauty of natural gas is that it produces much lower exhaust emissions. Natural gas is a lower-carbon fuel than gasoline or diesel. Emissions of carbon monoxide can be up to 70 per cent lower than essentially the same engine operated on gasoline. Greenhouse gases and toxins are also significantly lower.

So maybe there's hope for those among us who drive SUVs and pickup trucks, but who secretly feel guilty for doing so.

CNG fuel is priced lower than gasoline, but refuelling stations are rare and gassing up often means lining up with cabbies and city delivery van operators, who are making the most of this technology.

There are no examples of fuel-cell technology in the Transport Canada fleet, but fuel cells are coming, you can be assured. Fuel cells combine hydrogen and oxygen, without combustion, to produce electricity. Emissions are zero and the only byproduct is water.

The world's leading developer of fuel cell technology is Ballard Power Systems of Burnaby, B.C. Ballard and Ford have teamed up to produce a fuel cell vehicle using a proton exchange membrane (PEM) cell process. A Ford vehicle with fuel-cell technology should hit the market in 2004, Ford says. It may become part of Ford's newly acquired TH!NK line of alternative-fuel vehicles.

No wonder Lui Hrobelsky is upbeat.

About air pollution and petroleum use, he notes: "Recent progress has been fantastic. With the regulators working in concert with manufacturers, current cars now put out about 98 per cent fewer pollutants than before regulations came into effect in the early 1970s. And fuel consumption has dropped by half, on average."

But he leaves no doubt we must do better still in the future.

"Unfortunately," Mr. Hrobelsky says, "changing lifestyles takes a long time. Look how long it took to change attitudes towards smoking, or about drinking and driving. We don't have the luxury of that amount of time with respect to our environment."

Mr. Hrobelsky will report on his findings with respect to fuel economy, emissions and safety. He will also identify obstacles, such as passive safety standards, that prevent these vehicles from being sold in Canada. A similar review resulted in a new class created this year to allow low-speed vehicles, such as electric golf carts that max out at 40 km/h, the kind you see on the streets of restricted-access communities. Transport Canada is also considering changes related to electric and power-assisted bicycles.

More regulatory leeway would be good news as evidenced by this array of cars. The choices out there beyond our shores are glorious.

When you think about it, motorcycles are also regulated vehicles, freely sold, and they mix with other traffic on the road. So why not let people make an informed choice ... allow that wonderful Smart car and others like it?

Speaking of which, what will happen to that Smart car and some of the others in the Transport Canada fleet? "We'll crash-test them," Mr. Hrobelsky says.

"That's the sad part of our jobs," laments engineer Charles Thibodeau.

Craig M. Lee is an freelance automotive writer based in Ottawa.