| By Warren Brown
Some celebrities are conservationists of
the moment. They buy fuel misers such as a Toyota Prius or Honda Civic
gas/electric hybrid car for publicity. But for serious travel, they zoom
around the world in private jets and require the service of limousines.
Then, there are others such as actor Dennis
Weaver and auto-racing great Carroll Shelby. The two octogenarians -- okay,
Weaver won't be 80 until June 4 -- would appear to have little in common.
Weaver spent much of his adulthood tracking down bad guys on the "Gunsmoke"
and "McCloud" TV series. Shelby devoted his life to developing high-performance
cars and smoking tires on racetracks around the world.
Now the two of them have become the
odd couple of energy conservation, albeit not the hand-wringing sort who
contend that all Americans driving sport-utility vehicles are supporters
of international terrorism.
Weaver and Shelby want you to continue
driving SUVs, buses, pickup trucks and fast cars. They simply want you
to use different fuels, preferably hydrogen.
That was Weaver's message on National
Alternative Fuel Vehicles (AFV) Day which, much to the public relations
benefit of the event's supporters, occurred Friday -- two days after the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries announced it was cutting
crude oil production to support already high oil prices.
The AFV advocates, including Weaver,
their chief spokesman, could not have been happier.
"OPEC is playing the game to stay
in business. But the problem for them is that they are selling a product
that is going to run out. They need to start selling something else," Weaver
said in an interview.
The problem isn't OPEC's production
and price manipulations. "That's their game," Weaver said. The problem
is America's failure to consistently, seriously promote the development
of alternative fuels such as hydrogen, compressed natural gas and bio-diesel.
"It's frustrating to me that our
energy policy doesn't really include alternative fuels," Weaver said. "That's
why we're holding this alternative-fuels event to educate people. We don't
need OPEC. We need to move toward cleaner, renewable fuels such as hydrogen."
It is the kind of thing said and
heard every time OPEC decides to hold up the industrialized world for a
few more cents per gallon. There is always talk of moving from a "fossil
fuel economy," which depends on sucking fuel from the earth and its ocean
beds, to a "hydrogen economy" in which the fuel source is renewable, non-polluting
and as theoretically accessible as a glass of water.
But expensive, ongoing development
of direct-hydrogen-powered cars and hydrogen fuel-cell models shows that
the road from concept to marketable reality is a long one indeed.
All major car companies have some
type of demonstration vehicle in which a fuel cell, an electrochemical
energy conversion device, is used to convert hydrogen and oxygen into energy
to power the drive wheels. Some automakers, such as BMW AG, have produced
vehicles that are directly powered by hydrogen. But no normal car buyer
can afford those cars in which the fuel-cell stack alone costs $20,000
to $30,000, depending on its configuration.
There is also the problem of harnessing,
storing and supplying hydrogen, which can be obtained through the electrolysis
of water (using electricity to split water molecules into pure hydrogen
and oxygen) or by extracting it from fossil fuels. How can it be safely
delivered to the public at a price the public will buy?
"It takes vision," said Weaver, who
drives a Toyota Prius hybrid and lives in a solar-powered house he calls
"Earthship."
"It's inevitable," Weaver said of
the prophesied hydrogen economy. "This is going to happen. Oil is going
to run out. Everyone knows this. They know that we are going to need another
source of energy. All it takes is people with vision to get there."
Anyone with a cursory knowledge of
Carroll Shelby could be forgiven for assuming he would not share Weaver's
vision. Shelby is the original horsepower king, creator of the famed Shelby
Cobra performance car. He is a two-fisted speed hog who has survived more
organ transplants than some cars have had oil changes.
But it was Shelby who sat down with
me at the University Club in Washington recently to discuss his vision
for the future -- a car that would remove cars from the energy and pollution
debates but that "still would let a guy have a little fun."
Shelby's futuristic car would be
lightweight, built largely of composite materials. It would be of modular
construction, "almost a plug-in-type thing," in the manner of a customized
computer. It would run on hydrogen, or some other renewable fuel.
In pursuit of that dream, Shelby
has joined forces with the Hydrogen Car Co. (HCC), a Los Angeles-based
firm dedicated to the development of a wide range of hydrogen-powered vehicles,
including a hydrogen-powered version of the Shelby Cobra -- the Hydrogen
Shelby Series 1.
The HCC vehicles can run on pure
hydrogen or, using what the company calls a "variable gas sensor," a mixture
of hydrogen and other fuels, such as compressed natural gas. At the moment,
HCC's cars and trucks are better suited to government and corporate fleets
running dedicated routes with fixed fueling points. But Weaver and Shelby
figure that all will change in favor of hydrogen-fueled vehicles in the
next decade or two, "before the oil runs out," Weaver said.
Considering their already long list
of accomplishments, it is natural to ask why these two elder statesmen
would bother with something like alternative fuels. Their answers were
succinct:
"I'm concerned about the future of
our kids and the health of our kids," Weaver said.
Said Shelby: "Oh, hell, I'm always
looking for another challenge."
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