GM’s advanced technology leader Larry Burns spells out his vision for the future

by John McCormick

In a world that demands swift results, taking the long view can be challenging. But for Larry Burns, vice president of General Motors Research and Development and Planning since May 1998, there are sound reasons for exploring the future of the automobile, including developments that are paying off sooner than many might imagine.

In Burns’ view the role of advanced technology at GM is to work towards a near-term goal of continuous improvement, a mid-term goal of enabling future developments in hybrids, diesels and advanced gasoline vehicles and a long-term goal of the reinvention of the automobile and the automotive industry. The idea of re-inventing the car sounds dramatic but it is no more than we should expect, argues Burns, who holds multiple engineering degrees from the University of California, University of Michigan and Kettering University.

The car as we know it was developed more than 100 years ago, using the internal combustion engine for power, petroleum as an energy source and mechanical linkages for steering, braking and acceleration. “While we’ve made dramatic progress in improving the automobile - its environmental cleanliness, energy efficiency, safety and design - quite honestly the genetic makeup of today’s cars is very much like those of 100 years ago,” says Burns. “It has served us well but other industries over that same century have undergone radical transformations driven by technology and innovation.”

What makes a radical change in the nature of the automobile possible is the convergence of a number of technologies, specifically electrical controls and software. To take advantage of this trend and introduce technologies like steer by wire, electronic braking and chassis control, vehicles will require more on board electricity. “One way to get that electricity is by using hydrogen and fuel cells,” says Burns. “Electric drive offers a lot of advantages, such as the torque characteristics and flexibility in how you distribute electricity out to the wheels and change the vehicle packaging. So we believe that the convergence of electronics technology and computer software with hydrogen and fuel cells is literally putting us in a position to totally re-think what automobiles might be like.”
Burns feels the reinvention of the automobile is important for one fundamental reason. Today, he points out, there are six billion people in the world and only 700 million automobiles. The great majority of the world’s population aspires to own a vehicle and enjoy the freedom personal transport brings. On the one hand that fact presents great growth opportunities for the automotive industry, but it also presents major challenges, specifically the car’s impact on the world in terms of energy demands, environmental concerns, safety issues and road congestion. Advanced technology and research and development promise to address all these concerns. “New technologies will give us the chance to remove the automobile from the environmental debate,” says Burns. “We will have vehicles that emit only water using hydrogen in a fuel cell. Hydrogen could also allow us to remove the automobile from the energy debate because no longer would we be 98 percent dependant on petroleum. We would have 10 to 12 different energy pathways for creating hydrogen that could compete for our customers’ transportation energy dollar.”

In terms of automobile safety, the new electronics and control systems will lead to equally dramatic change. “No longer will we be just sensing and reacting with the vehicle to the roadway and the environment around it. We will be actually sensing and anticipating what’s going on,” explains Burns. “Using active safety we can be thinking about a world where vehicles may not crash in the future.”

HYBRIDS

Prior to the advent of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, Burns sees hybrid electric vehicles as interim step. “Hybrids are a way of providing more electricity on board a vehicle. And once you have energy being recaptured from braking and the electric generating capability that comes with a hybrid, it allows us to introduce some of the benefits of increased use of electricity on board the vehicle sooner.”
These benefits are already being realized in some vehicles in the form of electric parking brake systems and rear wheel steering.

In the near future, Burns argues that research and development is critically important in relation to the internal combustion engine. “The industry is dominated by internal combustion engines and the challenges associated with emissions and with energy reduction are near term as well as long term,” he says. “So we are working on combustion research and on advanced control concepts. Displacement on demand is a very innovative opportunity to improve the efficiency of gasoline engines today. By itself it can promise anywhere from five to eight percent, maybe as high as 10 percent energy efficiency improvement. The next plateau with gasoline engines will be direct injection and what we call direct stop start, where you shut off the engine at idle. And then ultimately what we call variable valve actuation.

“You begin to lay this out and it looks like you can gain something on the order of another 15 to 20 percent improvement in the efficiency of internal combustion engine for relatively low cost.

“It’s all about very precise control of what’s happening in the combustion chamber,” Burns continues. “How you introduce fuel and air mixture into combustion chamber, how you control the ignition of that under wide range of driving conditions.”

DIESELS

Last year GM sold 1.9 million diesel vehicles worldwide. The global diesel market has grown from 15 percent in 1998 to 19 percent today. “That four percent growth in a five year period is substantial for any technology,” Burns notes. “To put that in context, hybrids went from zero percent in 1998 to one tenth of one percent today, so the growth of diesels has been 40 times greater than the growth of hybrids. Diesel innovation has been very impressive; they’re cleaner, more exciting to drive, the odor and noise are gone.”

Burns believes that diesel continues to hold promise in Europe where diesel fuel is less expensive than gasoline and where the regulatory environment is much more concerned with Co2 than particulates emissions. “In the US and Japan the regulations are quite different, and the fuel pricing infrastructure is quite different.
“The challenges are particulates and NOx. We don’t know how to meet the US regulations in 2007 without NOx traps and particulate filters, which have estimated costs in excess of $8000. As such we need to find much more cost effective solutions in order to continue to bring those products to market.
Also those emissions systems tend to degrade the inherent efficiency of diesel engine by five to eight percent depending on the after treatment technology.”

HYDROGEN ECONOMY

Looking further into the future, Burns is convinced that the world needs to transition to a hydrogen-based economy. “Today the auto industry is 98 percent dependent on petroleum – that’s not a robust position to be in,” he says. “Quite honestly we have many issues, whether it’s global climate concerns, regulated emissions, energy independence, national defense or trade imbalance. There are a lot of problems associated with fact that petroleum exists in plentiful quantities on the planet but doesn’t exist uniformly for all the local economies to have equal access. As a result there are tensions between supply and demand and in addition we have to burn it to extract the energy.

“The beauty of a hydrogen economy is that hydrogen can be obtained from a wide range of pathways; from fossils fuels, natural gas, petroleum, coal, nuclear, geothermal, hydro-electric and biological sources.”

Burns stresses that his vision does not involve eliminating petroleum and replacing it with 100 percent natural gas. “It’s a matter of first taking it down to 90 percent, then 80, 70 and having these hydrogen pathways compete on a local economy basis.

“One extreme example is Iceland; it has a lot of geothermal and hydro energy. Iceland could be an energy independent nation using hydrogen. France has a lot of nuclear power and cheap electricity, so maybe that country would leverage that to create hydrogen from electrolysis of water. China has a lot of coal and natural gas and hydro-electric power, so perhaps China converts coal into hydrogen and sequesters the CO2.”

Burns recognizes that there is a need to work through interim steps such as using coal, natural gas and gasoline to produce hydrogen, but ultimately the goal is to use renewable sources.

Burns envisions each of the hydrogen pathways taking demand for petroleum off the automotive industry. “Suddenly at the margin you have a lot of competition on different energy pathways for transportation. And competition is a good thing; it brings about stability on prices, innovation, greater supply.”

FUEL CELLS

The way Burns sees it, all the technologies his teams are working on, from electronic controls to fuel cells, offer tremendous future promise. “As the world’s largest automaker we need to be spending some of our advanced resources on creating that future; the market will tell us in the end which technologies play out and which ones dominate. Creating that fundamental knowledge and intellectual property, the capability to develop automobiles based on those technologies is what this is all about.”

As far as fuel cells are concerned, Burns continues to push for commercially viable vehicles by 2010 and for GM to be the first auto company to build and sell one million fuel cell vehicles profitably. “Why do we think this is a reasonable timeframe? Firstly we believe it’s possible and if we think that so do others. So it’s driven by competition as much as anything else. It’s about competition for technology leadership in reality and in perception. And it’s providing the right hedges for dramatic business growth if the full potential of these technologies can be realized in a cost effective way.”

Burns points out that events in the next few years could change the timetable for the world’s transition to hydrogen and fuel cells. “Events of recent years – 9-11, the Iraq war and the Northeast blackout. These are developments that would make you want to pull hydrogen and fuel cells forward. The emergence of China and the demand it places on petroleum is another event that pulling the hydrogen economy forward. You could have a fundamental breakthrough on hydrogen storage and that could change the picture dramatically.”

“It’s way too soon to say how fast hybrids, currently at one tenth of one percent of the market, are going to catch on. Will hybrids get past the tip in point before alternative, simpler and more promising fuel cells can be perfected? That’s an important question. I can’t call it.

“I’d rather create the future, anticipate the kinds of events that could dramatically change the timetable on this future, monitor these events and respond accordingly, as opposed to going out there and saying this is what’s going to happen.

“We need to use research and development to help us thrive in the present, to solve tough technical questions associated with our products and to reduce the cost of well-known materials and processes. We need to use advanced technology to help us transition to the future profitably and literally to reinvent the automobile.”