Morgan goes green
British LIFECar to be environmentally clean
Morgan LIFECar
The partnership consists of the Morgan Motor Company, ex-MOD research arm QinetiQ, Cranfield and Oxford Universities, BOC and OSCar.
The new vehicle, known as LIFECar, is promised to be ultra-quiet and its exhaust systems will produce only water vapour. The group promises "a clean vehicle combined with sound motoring performance and stylish good looks" -- that's the plan anyway.
Part-funded by the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI), LIFECar is a two and half-year long project which the consortium described as marking "a step change in vehicle power technology, producing a combination of performance, range and fuel economy that will be essential to the motoring world of the future".
LIFECar will be based on the Morgan Aero Eight, and is powered by a QinetiQ-made fuel cell, which converts hydrogen plus oxygen from the air into electrical energy. It will be clean at the point of use, quiet and economic, and the only waste product from the car itself will be water. It's claimed that the car's power system will be incredibly efficient, producing significant improvements over current fuel cell prototype vehicles, with the fuel cell powering four separate electric motors, one at each drive wheel.
The key to delivering this step change in energy efficiency lies in a combination of factors, including weight reduction and "a different design approach". This approach exploits opportunities across the vehicle to reduce energy losses and requirements.
Regenerative braking and surplus energy will be used to charge ultra-capacitors, which will release their energy when the car is accelerating. This architecture will allow the car to have a much smaller fuel cell than is conventionally regarded as necessary: it will only be as large as is required to provide cruising speed, approximately 32bhp or 24kW, as opposed to around 85kW (113bhp) proposed by most competitor systems.
Speaking at this year's SMMT International Business Group, where the plans were unveiled, Morgan boss Charles Morgan said: "This is a project which captures the imagination. LIFECar promises to combine advanced technology while retaining the best in traditional ways of designing and building cars. A sports car that is beautiful, brilliant to drive but pollution free must be a goal worth striving for."
What happens now?
Costing a total of £1.9m, with a mix of industry and DTI funding, the two and half year project will be broken down into the following areas of responsibility:
- BOC: Developing the hydrogen refuelling plant
- Cranfield University: Systems simulation, on-board computing and control of the fuel-cell hybrid powertrain. Also responsible for analysis of the integrated design process used. Vehicle controller and control algorithm, together with modelling software
- Morgan Motor Company: Providing the car platform and assembling the final concept car
- Oxford University: Undertaking the design and control (note C) of the electric motors
- OSCar: Responsible for overall system design and architecture
- QinetiQ: Developing Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC)
Technical Background
The car's fuel cell system operates by electrochemically combining on-board hydrogen with oxygen taken from the air outside. Although, in most respects, fuel cells are more like engines than batteries, to the extent that they generate energy from fuel in a tank rather than store energy, like batteries, they use electrodes (solid electrical conductors) with an electrolyte (an electrically conductive medium).
When the hydrogen molecules come into contact with the negative electrodes, the molecules split into protons and electrons. The protons are then carried across the proton exchange membrane to the positive electrode of the fuel cell whilst the electrons travel around the external circuit as electricity. The molecules of the hydrogen and oxygen are combined chemically, with water as the only waste product.
The only emission from the QinetiQ fuel cell will be water vapour. The electric power generated by the fuel cells powers the electric motors and turns the wheels of the vehicle.
PistonHeads says
Of course, PistonHeads is all in favour of new engine technology -- as long as it sounds as good as it goes. We'll confess to some scepticism on that point, and on whether the production of hydrogen, unless fixed from off-planet sources or using non-fossil fuels as an energy source, can ever be said to be pollution-free.
Also, it will have lousy acceleration when you first pull away from your house as there won't be any charge stored.
The more I think about it, the more silly it sounds. You pootle around town for a bit, get out in to a NSL, spot a clear bit of road and floor it. You are pushed back in to your seat as 32bhp fling you up the road... only once you've got up to a decent speed and scrubbed it off on the brakes will you be able to overtake with confidence!
Under braking the dynos would charge the batterys up. Electric motors are very quick at releasing the energy, so you will be supprised how quick the things are. Strap it to a light weight body the power to wait sounds better. I assume the intention would be to charge the cell up at home and then a combination of downhill and engine breaking (dyno chargeup) will prelong the charge.
Would be nice to see a 320bhp equiv with 0-60 sub 6 seconds.
Good luck
p.s
Still love the sound of a V8 Screaming
do seem to remember that the bhp on electric motors isn't v high - but the torque is monumental and delivered much more instantly than petrol - after all motor is in the wheel practically!
Guess we'll just ahve to wait and see. Great to see Morgan doing things like this - tradition is v important to a maker like this - but innovation (as seen with the aero 8) is what will mean morgan is still going strong in 100 years time - and I for one am keen that thats the case - so good on em!
The article refers to 'at the point of use' - i.e. zero emissions whilst driving around.
Overall if we switched all our cars to be 0 emissions at point of use then the health benefits in terms of cleaner air in cities etc would be considerable.
The fact that (as we're still buring fossil fuel to make the electricity) somewhere in the UK we're kicking out tonnes of emissions from buring those fuels is true to a point - however it must be true that emissions created in large quantities in one place are much easier to capture and neutralise. Lots of work has been done on this already and power stations are considerably cleaner than ever before. It's cheaper to do - and although it's never going to be 100% effecive, it's a lot more cost effective than fiting cars with catlaysts.
Anyway - don;'t think this will be the car of the future in that everyone will be driving electric morgans in 50 years time (well you never know I guess!) - but in maybe 50 years time it could yet be another reason why the chaps at Malvern are remembered fondly
If they get it right and can licence the technology to larger manufacturers you could see morgan becomming the consultants in this area in the same way other manufacturers turn to Lotus for chassis development and suspension tuning. Hope they succeed If they do then I can forsee that there will (perversely as a result!) be +4s and +8's for a long time to come, and thats got to be a good thing.... PWellsie said:
Do you really think Morgan would put their name to this if it was as pathetically useless as you seem to think?
I don't know - having had no experience of Morgans I don't know how pathetically useless they are. Edit: lockup notices this topic is on the MORGAN forum and furiously waves a white flag!
However, having read the story properly, I spot that the capacitors store braking energy _and_ surplus energy, so that takes the wind out of my sails a bit. All the time you are pootling around town, the fuel cell will be thrashing away storing charge ready for that blast when you get out on to the open road. Which is nice.
However, your sustained cruise speed will still be limited to whatever 32bhp and a slippery shape gives you. No bad thing when we've all got GPS systems recording (and issuing penalties for) our every move.
>> Edited by lockup on Friday 4th November 09:47
All the greenies clamour and rejoice over cars like this, but none of them actually buy any of them ! Anytime I talk to an enviromentalist, I always ask why they have not bought a clean car and they come up with a wide array of crap excuses. The fact is that no-one really wants a car that costs more to run ( batteries and capacitors are consumable and VERY expensive.....), gets less performance, less range, and has less carrying capacity than an equivalent petrol car.
Morgan are wasting their time on this project. Enviro cars are great for cash rich multinationals who need good PR, tax breaks and dev, not for a niche classic british sportscar manufacturer.
And its classic British lets
everything up management. I know said the project managers, lets spread the individual reponsibilitys over various independant bodys, so that they can disagree on specs, fail to deliver and make the project impossible to control or deliver on time. wculbert said:
Hi,
It is low risk for Morgan in that they just provide a Aero 8 Chassis and assemble it. They are also getting funding for it.
It will be intresting to see what happens.
William
Precisely - plus they get a whole pile of Kudos out of it - and look high tech - which is always handy for a company thats still making cars with wood!
I really on' think anyone is expecting this to go into any kind of volume production - having said that the Aero 8 buyer is usually a rich eccentric - and theres probably a few on the order list who'd buy one just so they can say they've got one!
Just a thought, maybe I am not understanding the science of it all - should I be asking this question on the weather reporting forum?
Graham
mr_tony said:
Precisely - plus they get a whole pile of Kudos out of it - and look high tech - which is always handy for a company thats still making cars with wood!
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