Developed by BMW, DCX, and GM
A hybrid is something like an "Oscillation Overthruster" in the minds of most car buyers, it seems to me.
For those of you who are not familiar with the vastly under-appreciated "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension," this is the technology that the scientist/rocker hero of the 1984 film uses to propel a pickup truck so that its atoms dodge the atoms of a mountain at the end of a salt flats speed run, or something like that.
The Overthruster is a single, stand-alone technology that solves an irritating problem, the thinking would go, and so is a hybrid system. Just bolt a hybrid onto an existing internal combustion engine (ICE) and help turn the tide against terrorism caused by the use of foreign oil (or something like that), while making a couple fewer stops for gasoline every year. You don't really want to pay thousands more for this, of course, but you will because doing so gives you license to feel smug.
In reality, a hybrid is any system that uses a mix of technologies to propel a vehicle, which in current production vehicles means a traditional gas-powered car engine and electric motors taking turns to rotate a car's wheels. More wheel rotation created by the electric motors means less gas is used and less tailpipe emissions created.
How those electric motors are designed and applied, however, is a matter of design and application, and this will mean that hybrid technology will be varied between brands, at least over the short term.
Following a launch program in Vienna this week, the nature of automotive hybrids seems set to change, thanks to the Global Hybrid Corporation, a consortium of companies that includes BMW, DaimlerChrysler and General Motors. In public, the firms involved are saying that they have created a "state-of-the-art full hybrid system that...represents a major automotive industry milestone due to the unprecedented fully-integrated combination of electric motors with a fixed-gear transmission."
In private, car company executives are delighted to tell you that they have created a system that delivers better mileage and performance while costing less to build and own than the hybrids currently used by Honda and Toyota, but particularly Toyota.
Beating Toyota on the hybrid battlefront is a big deal for these three car companies, since the Japanese firm has used some of the many billions of dollars it has taken from North American consumers to try to control the hybrid market so it can take many billions more from consumers in North America and everywhere else in the world.
The two German firms and the world's largest car company would prefer that their system control the hybrid market and bring them billions of dollars from around the world.
This competition is the nature of capitalism in the free enterprise system, after all, and it sort of mirrors what previously happened in the Beta/VHS battle and is currently happening with hi-def DVD players. Both systems will serve the same kind of function, with the public getting to pick the one they like better. This struggle may end up with a universal system, with Toyota and other companies joining the BMW-DCX-GM syndicate, or the syndicate will break up and buy hybrid technology from Toyota, or a third party will invent a superior hybrid and everyone will use it, or fuel cells will arrive en masse and all hybrid cars will look instantly like horse-drawn carriages.
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| GM-BMW-DaimlerChrysler Global Hybrid System (Photo: Group Hybrid Corporation) |
For those of you who are not familiar with the vastly under-appreciated "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension," this is the technology that the scientist/rocker hero of the 1984 film uses to propel a pickup truck so that its atoms dodge the atoms of a mountain at the end of a salt flats speed run, or something like that.
The Overthruster is a single, stand-alone technology that solves an irritating problem, the thinking would go, and so is a hybrid system. Just bolt a hybrid onto an existing internal combustion engine (ICE) and help turn the tide against terrorism caused by the use of foreign oil (or something like that), while making a couple fewer stops for gasoline every year. You don't really want to pay thousands more for this, of course, but you will because doing so gives you license to feel smug.
In reality, a hybrid is any system that uses a mix of technologies to propel a vehicle, which in current production vehicles means a traditional gas-powered car engine and electric motors taking turns to rotate a car's wheels. More wheel rotation created by the electric motors means less gas is used and less tailpipe emissions created.
 |
| GM-BMW-DaimlerChrysler Global Hybrid System (Photo: Group Hybrid Corporation) |
Following a launch program in Vienna this week, the nature of automotive hybrids seems set to change, thanks to the Global Hybrid Corporation, a consortium of companies that includes BMW, DaimlerChrysler and General Motors. In public, the firms involved are saying that they have created a "state-of-the-art full hybrid system that...represents a major automotive industry milestone due to the unprecedented fully-integrated combination of electric motors with a fixed-gear transmission."
In private, car company executives are delighted to tell you that they have created a system that delivers better mileage and performance while costing less to build and own than the hybrids currently used by Honda and Toyota, but particularly Toyota.
Beating Toyota on the hybrid battlefront is a big deal for these three car companies, since the Japanese firm has used some of the many billions of dollars it has taken from North American consumers to try to control the hybrid market so it can take many billions more from consumers in North America and everywhere else in the world.
The two German firms and the world's largest car company would prefer that their system control the hybrid market and bring them billions of dollars from around the world.
 |
| GM-BMW-DaimlerChrysler Global Hybrid System (Photo: Group Hybrid Corporation) |