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BMW produces car engine powered by liquid hydrogen
New technology still has a long way to go in meeting power needs of today with energy sources of tomorrow.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
FAIRBORN — Imagine driving up to a hydrogen filling station, filling up with liquid hydrogen, dispensing waste water and driving off, all in three minutes.
Imagine a car that automatically slows before it approaches a vehicle ahead too closely.
Extras
For that matter, imagine a vehicle that steers itself.
The technology is real — right now — even if the infrastructure to support it is distant, Raymond Freymann, director of BMW Research and Technology, told Wright State University students and faculty Tuesday in a speech billed as "The Science and Technology for the Automobile of 2025."
BMW has produced the 750hL, whose 12-cylinder combustion engine can be powered by either gasoline or liquid hydrogen, Freymann said.
Rolled off the assembly line in December 2006, 100 of the vehicles were made. You can't buy one, but leasing rates are available.
For how much? "It will be nicely priced, I'm sure," Freymann said.
Freymann, who worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in the early 1980s, made his case for hydrogen as the probable automotive fuel in the future.
The world's energy needs will be three times higher in 2070 than they are today, Freymann predicted. Renewable energy sources — hydro-electric, wind, solar and biomass — must meet more of our needs, he said.
For autos, that means storage systems that can keep liquid hydrogen chilled at -253 degrees Celsius. It also means catching up to the power and torque of today's gas engines, which are 20 percent more powerful than hydrogen engines, Freymann said.
"It's not a vision," he said. "It's realistic. It can be done."
At one point, Freymann played a video of a BMW prototype vehicle that steered without the assistance of its human "driver." Asked if wires were guiding the vehicle, he denied it.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or
tgnau@DaytonDailyNews.com.
About the engine
The BMW 750hL 5.4-liter engine has two independent, electronically controlled fuel induction systems.
It can be fueled with either gas or hydrogen.
The 140-liter liquid hydrogen tank has a range of 400 kilometers (249 miles).
