Green machines - Business - Business - theage.com.au

Hybrid cars run on the smell of an oily rag and emit much less of those horrible greenhouse gases. Many say they are the future, but motoring giants such as BMW and Nissan-Renault call them a stop-gap ahead of a bigger revolution to come. Richard Webb reports.

You can't beat the story surrounding hybrid cars at the moment. What with petrol at more than $1.10 a litre and concern over our warming planet following the hottest year on record, they seemingly kill two birds with one finely engineered eco-friendly stone.

Japanese car giant Toyota, which is neck to neck with General Motors as the world's biggest car maker, is leading the way in the hybrid field. It expects to sell 400,000 of its market-leading Prius petrol-electric cars worldwide this year on the way to a target of 1 million cars a year by the end of the decade.

Demand for these cars has gone through the roof. The Prius is one of only two hybrid cars on sale in Australia - Honda launched a new generation Civic Hybrid at the Melbourne International Motor Show which closes today - and there is a three-month waiting list for them. Such is the demand that second-hand Prius cars have been known to sell for more than they cost new.

By recycling energy they are eco-friendly and if you buy one of the new Civics, Honda will also plant six trees every year for the first three years to offset the greenhouse gas emissions you create while driving.

But for all their green credentials, these cars have their drawbacks. They operate using a petrol motor in conjunction with an electric motor powered by a large rechargeable battery stored onboard. The interaction between the two is controlled by a computer.

This additional technology means more weight and comes at a price. The addition of a hybrid system adds 20 per cent or more to the vehicle's construction cost while the extra weight of the large battery reduces fuel efficiency when the electric motor isn't in play.

In both the Prius and Civic Hybrid, the onboard battery is charged when you brake and this energy is then used to power the electric motor, which kicks in when the vehicle is travelling slowly or accelerating.

It's a great combination for stop-start city driving as it allows the electric system to recharge often and take more of the engine burden but is not so good when you hit the open road. Tests have shown that when driving distances, you can get better fuel efficiency with diesel vehicles, partly because they don't have to lug a big battery.

Still, something has to give. As China online publisher Lyric Hughes Hale said late last year, the rise of China means "in automotive terms, the death of the internal combustion engine".

Pay-back time

Consumer group Choice road-tested both the Prius and the old Civic Hybrid and liked what it found. It said the vehicles emitted considerably less greenhouse gas - some studies say up to 66 per cent of that of the average family car - were reliable, and that once you got over the quirks (the Prius can be quiet when the electric motor is taking the strain at low speeds) delivered a similar drive to a standard sedan.

But Choice found that based on fuel at $1 a litre, and travelling an average 15,000 kilometres a year, it would take more than nine years of driving to recoup the difference in purchase price between the Prius and Toyota's standard Camry. The time was more than 17 years for the old Honda Civic Hybrid versus its Honda equivalent, although the big gain with Honda's new generation hybrid vehicle, launched last week, is that Honda has reduced its fuel consumption from 5.2 litres per 100 kilometres to 4.6 litres.

Should petrol hit $2 a litre though, Choice said the payback time on the Prius would drop to 4.5 years. "We think either is a perfectly acceptable alternative to a car powered by fossil fuels alone."

They handle well

RACV chief engineer Michael Case has put the Prius and the previous Civic Hybrid through their paces and gives them a resounding thumbs-up. "They are surprisingly good to drive and we didn't see any technical issues," he said. "In many ways they were just like driving a normal petrol engine vehicle."

Under RACV tests, the Prius registered fuel efficiency of 5.1 litres per 100 kilometres against an average small car consumption of 8 to 9 litres per 100 kilometres. The Civic Hybrid turned in 6 litres but this was for the previous model. "They are interesting vehicles and while the initial models have been a little expensive, hopefully when they move to newer models and sales have increased, the purchase price will fall to more in line with that of a standard vehicle," he said.

Not convinced

Toyota, and to a lesser extent Honda, are going big on petrol-electric hybrids but some other major car manufacturers are not convinced. BMW Group chairman Helmut Panke said that while hybrids had a future they were not the total solution. "Hybrid is a niche application," he said.

"In typical driving conditions there are vehicles that are much more efficient today than the hybrids. I would predict that in the next five to eight years that every manufacturer will have, let's say, one hybrid vehicle in their line-up. But hybrid is not going to be the complete portfolio solution."

Nissan-Renault chief Carlos Ghosn was more damning. "Hybrid sales account for less than 1 per cent of global sales - it is a niche technology," he said. "The question is how much the consumer is willing to pay for them and if they are unsure at $US70 a barrel (for oil) then I would be very worried."

This lack of conviction was reflected in US President George Bush's advanced energy initiative to lower US oil consumption. Mr Bush's State of the Union address this month flagged that another $US30 million ($A41 million) would be spent to speed up the battery development for hybrid vehicles but $US289 million was allocated for hydrogen fuel cell development.

The alternatives

There are two ways to greatly improve petrol-electric technology and both are actively being sought. One is to reduce the weight of the onboard battery. This month US battery giant Johnson Controls teamed up with French battery group Saft to begin developing a larger version of the lithium-ion batteries now used in electronic equipment such as mobile phones. These batteries emit more power per battery kilo, potentially bringing more fuel efficiency gains. But they bring with them a problem as lithium explodes relatively easily.

A second option is to team the electric motor with a more efficient diesel engine for further fuel consumption gains. But some say the real solution will occur when we finally move to a new fuel altogether and at the moment, billions of dollars are being ploughed into developing hydrogen fuel cells.

Hydrogen fuel cells are clean as a whistle as they use a readily available gas and emit no pollutants, just water vapour. However the technology looks to be at least five years away from being usable and to date involves extremely high pressures, raising explosion issues.

Even when marketable, there is the huge hurdle that any new fuel faces - the need to introduce hydrogen servicing facilities into fuel stations.

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