by Gary Witzenburg

(2007-02-22)

Today, Stempel is chairman and CEO of Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. (ECD), a high-tech Rochester Hills, Mich., company known for inventing, developing and manufacturing, among other things, nickel metal hydride batteries for EVs and hybrids and solid hydride storage systems for hydrogen.

TCC: ECD has been in the nickel-metal hydride battery business since developing extended-range packs for GMs' '99-model EV1. What are the advantages of NiMH?

RCS: On a life basis, it's very good. If you look at the cost of replacing three or four lead-acid batteries vs. NiMH lasting that entire time, it becomes very competitive. So its durability is there, but we're under enormous pressure to get the cost down. Our next generation comes out in 2008 with about a 30-percent cost reduction, and we're feeling very good about that. Beyond that, we think we can get the price in half, probably by 2010.

TCC: Who is using your NiMH batteries in hybrid vehicles?

RCS: Announced customers are GM's Saturn Vue and Aura hybrids, but there will be more. You'll see announcements soon from some European makers. Our problem has been expanding fast enough to keep up with demand. We've talked to the makers and said, "We're going to go with high-volume tooling, now you guys figure out how to get there," because too many have come back and said they need more.

TCC: What ever happened to lithium-polymer batteries, which were supposed to enable battery EVs to compete on cost and range with gasoline vehicles?

RCS: Delco Remy, 3M, and others invested a lot of effort and money in that, but they couldn't get enough power and energy out of it. It worked, but not at a level that was attractive. You can make a lot of things that give you some juice, but it won't fly if it doesn't do enough.

TCC: Now, through your Cobasys subsidiary, you have teamed with Chevron and A123Systems to develop lithium-ion batteries under a GM contract announced in January.

RCS: Yes, we have. Lithium-ion has the power and energy, and three to four volts in a small package is pretty attractive. The manufacturing challenge is that you have to be absolutely perfect. A lithium battery is wound up with plates and a separator between them. If a little fleck of metal gets through that separator, you have an instant short that can lead to a fire. That last computer battery incident happened because of that.

TCC: Let's talk hydrogen fuel. You have Toyota Prius hybrids converted to hydrogen?

RCS: The hybrid is an ideal application, and we've been able to show that you can get virtually the same performance, car to car. We've had to do some things like adding a turbocharger, but the electric motor at the low end provides the torque to get off the line. We're at about 200 miles of range now, and we're changing our metal hydrides to get it up to maybe 300 miles. It's a major development program for us, but we think there are things we can do with those materials to get the mass down and the capacity up."

TCC: Why pursue hydrogen as a transportation fuel?

RCS: I think fuel cells are still a ways off, given their expense and other issues, but there's a lot of pressure to do something about CO². When you run on hydrogen, there's virtually no CO² because there's no C in H². That is a significant plus. As you know, BMW has a big hydrogen program, Ford has announced a hydrogen airport bus program, and others are running experimental cars. We think this is a way to get hydrogen introduced as a transition, much like we did with unleaded fuels in the '70s.

TCC: Your tanks carry hydrogen in solid hydride rather than gaseous form? We understand that is safer but heavier and more expensive than high-pressure storage.

RCS: We're authorized by the DOT to transport hydrogen in hydride containers anywhere in the U.S. or Canada , with no restrictions. You can't do that with high-pressure hydrogen. We've also been told we could put hydride tanks at corner gas stations. And you can refill yourself. There's an interlock, so when you attach the nozzle, it knows it's secure or it won't start the flow. Once connected, it's very easy. Our next objectives are to make them lighter and hold even more, and we have plans to bring the cost down.

TCC: What about the chicken and egg syndrome? People won't buy vehicles that run on alternate fuel until the infrastructure is in place to deliver it; but people don't want to invest in an alternate fuel infrastructure until vehicles that use it are being sold in some volume.

RCS: The way to start is with fleets -- for example, the Ford airport buses. The L.A. airport is an air-quality non-attainment zone partly because of the aircraft engines, but also because the ground equipment, the tugs, etc., are terrible. If you convert those to hydrogen, you could run all your ground equipment on it, with a central refueling point, and you'd have virtually zero emissions.

TCC: Can you put a time frame on meaningful fleet usage of hydrogen fuel?

RCS: The fuel cell is still ahead of us quite a bit, but we have to get the hydrogen out there ahead of it. If we can start with captive fleets by 2010 or so, it'll make a difference. UPS is very interested, as are FedEx and DHL. They've got an emissions issue, but their big driver is fuel cost. They're interested in hybrids, so we've got a couple of delivery trucks running as hybrids. One other thing that's come up has been an interest from cities. They have police cars, fire engines, and ambulances, their fuel budgets are blown to hell because prices have gone way up, and they're seriously looking at alternate fuels -- first natural gas or LPG, then some are putting in about a 30 percent hydrogen mix to further reduce emissions. So there are ways to get this started, but it's going to be a while before it goes across the country.

TCC: You can't pipe hydrogen, so how do you transport it in quantity?

RCS: By truck, with what looks like big oxygen bottles lined up on a 40-50-foot trailer. That's permitted on the road, but there are restrictions. Obviously we're going to have to learn to live with hydrogen.

TCC: The President has allocated money for fuel-cell research. Is any of that going toward hydrogen storage?

RCS: The DOE has a segment of that devoted to storage, and there are some storage projects. They would like to see something other than a high-pressure system before it gets widespread, and they have given us some goals for weight reduction.

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