TECHNOLOGIES TO EXPLORE

August 11, 2010 Vol. 6, No. 16

Well, after writing a veritable novel last time about the EPA/CARB hearings in California, I’m going to keep it relatively short and possibly even sweet with this one. It’s summer, after all, and with the exception of that gnarly debate between the SCR camp and Navistar, things have been a bit quiet on the hardware front.

Quiet they may be, but I still find myself wishing I had more time to explore some emerging technologies. Like many or more likely most of you, there’s never enough time to do what I want to do. In fact, though I buy the odd lottery ticket and would be overjoyed to win a million bucks or three, I’d rather be paid in hours.

I had exactly that feeling today when I read a piece in The Economist — aside from Today’s Trucking, probably the best magazine on the planet — about Goodyear working with a biotech company called Genencor to make a variation of isoprene. That’s the key ingredient in synthetic rubber, which is used in combination with natural rubber to make many of our tires, in a 60/40 ratio. As the name suggests, isoprene is yet another by-product of petroleum.

But now we have BioIsoprene, not made from oil at all, rather from — and I love this — E-coli bacteria and plant sugars or other non-food biomass. This work is actually quite advanced, so much so that Goodyear has already made and tested prototype tires made from the stuff. Genencor has just finished building a pilot plant in California, and the two companies figure a commercial, mass-production factory could be up and running by 2015.

This is no small deal when you figure that it takes about 26 litres of oil to make even a little car tire. And how many tires are made around the world each year? More than a billion. Do the ugly math, and you won’t have to be a tree-hugger to see the downside there.

STICKING WITH TIRE COMPANIES, MICHELIN is up to some interesting stuff too, according to another story in that same issue of The Economist (April 24-30, 2010).

I’m not being lazy here by citing work that other journalists have done, by the way. It’s just that I’m mighty intrigued by this stuff — and haven’t yet had the time to delve into it on my own. Figured you lot would be interested too in the meantime.

Anyway, the Michelin effort is actually a mighty interesting new variation on an old theme: the hub motor. Actually invented by Dr. Ferdinand Porsche — yes, THAT Porsche — and applied in a hybrid car that made its debut at the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris, the hub motor may be an idea whose time has finally come. It’s a simple idea, namely about powering a vehicle by placing individual electric motors at each wheel. Among the advantages is the fact that no complicated drivetrain is required because each wheel is driven directly by its own little powerplant, all this propulsion being co-ordinated these days by an electronic controller. Lord only knows how old Ferdinand managed to keep from going in circles with motors on every corner.

Michelin’s idea is to produce what it calls the Active Wheel, a system with an electric motor to drive each wheel but more besides — namely, an active suspension built into the hub and powered by a second electric motor. Say goodbye to struts and shocks and the like. It’s in testing now.

ArvinMeritor applied this basic technology on a very interesting all-electric courier van developed jointly with Toronto body-builder Unicell and Purolator a couple of years ago. Called the Quicksider, a prototype worked in revenue service in Toronto for some time, and successfully by all accounts. I’ll have to admit ignorance about its current status but will check and come back to you. It seemed to me to hold much promise.