Quote:
Originally Posted by robchalmers
Personally - working for an OE thats part of a bigger group (I'm not speaking for them and my view may not be theirs- disclaimer) but I doubt that they'll want to produce a car that runs on a one market fuel. Thinking of the effort that has gone into R&D purely on one engine for flex-fuel, where if the is no supply of one fuel you can still use another its hard to imagine them creating pretty much a new class of engine in addition to the Gas and diesel in current model ranges, not to mention the changes in car infrastructure for the different fuelling set-ups / heat dissapation / cooling, all of which would need to be tested and certified for multiple markets. I think you'd have to be looking 5-10 years down the line by which time alot of OEs are looking to have already start in model cycle development of alternates. That would leave you with the aftersales markets and I doubt you'll see many bar most hardcore paying $4k ($1k per cylinder) to convert 5k family run-a-round.
Sorry to sound like I' having a downer there
Also a couple of things from the bullet point above:
'Range: vehicle only limited by size of fuel tank' can't you say that of any fuel in any vehicle?
'Emissions: "0", N & H2O' have any toxicology studies been done into the affects on the body of high N environments - just if all the cars in a rush hour jam are running ZF we could have health risk of the quantity of the smog issue we have now.
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You have to start somewhere if you want to make a change. No transportation fuel is perfect, but we feel we have the best answer to get off of imported oil, sending USD overseas & the emissions it produces.
5-10 year time line for ZF acceptance is OK when you consider CNG has been around for 20 years with very little acceptance. Pickens has it wrong, CNG is a terrible transportation fuel. Lets use it to make H2 & ZeroFuel.
As far as flex fuel, E85 is not accepted for many reasons, and our engine tech is straightforward. NH3 vehicles have been around since the 30's.
Our 1K per cylinder retrofit is much cheaper then others that offer battery hybrid retrofits or CNG conversions. I wouldn't expect many 5-10K vehicles being retrofit, as we plan to market vehicles in all segments, including as cheap as the Nano running on ZF.
Infrastructure will be much cheaper & quicker to setup. Being ZF is non-flammable, non-explosive, or toxic there is no need for fire systems, blow proof pumps or vapor recovery systems. Early adapters & those who want to buy or mix themselves in large quantities can have inexpensive home filling stations
As far as range, BEV's are limited compared to ICE's.
I would rather breath N then NOX.