[V8] Mercedes advances

[Roger Woodbury]

 Subject: Mercedes advances

You probably all know that Mercedes is bringing a testing prototype to the
US that will have an operating fuel cell system.  The cars will be available
next year under lease only, primarily in California where there is some
roadside availability of hydrogen.

The cars will be the "B" sedan, which is slightly smaller than the VW Rabbit
and will have a range of around 150 miles.

The way that the things will work is that the hydrogen will create
electricity by chemical reaction.  The components of the system will live
beneath the floor of the car in a sandwich sort of arrangement, which is how
true usable space for at least four passengers can be found in such a small
platform. 

This will be a very interesting experiment because refueling will take about
five minutes of less as opposed to however many hours it takes to recharge a
plugin hybrid.  Power is transmitted to the wheels of the Mercedes by a
reasonably sized electric motor, and it sounds to me like the car will have
extremely good performance and certainly move much better than most small
gasoline engine cars in the traffic conditions that the cars are being
designed for.

Now the cars will only be leased at this time, and I understand that the
lease terms and price are extraordinary.  The lease will be of closed end
design, and the lessees will be chosen by a secret "demographic" scale and
not be based on income parameters that are normal for a lease.  The leases
will be for a relatively short period also, and mileage will not be a
consideration.  In fact, Mercedes hopes that at least 40% of the lease fleet
will be driven to exceptionally high mileage and there are discussions that
for those cars that exceed 250,000 miles in the short lease period, there
will be a "special reward" (spezialitaturdung) for those lessees.

Mercedes feels that this is a major advancement in clean vehicle development
and will pay many benefits not only to the atmosphere but because of various
reasons, the driving environment itself.

According to independent observers, the cars
 are quite light weight compared to other vehicles of their size.  The fuel
cell equipment has been refined to weigh comparatively less than a fuel tank
with fourteen gallons of gasoline, and the electric motor is, while
expensive, much lighter (31%) than a comparatively powerful conventional
engine.  In addition, due to the unique design and nature of the vehicle,
there are no airbags installed in the vehicle and passenger restraints are
traditional lap and shoulder harnesses.

In severe impacts from the front, rear of side, the car immediately combusts
leaving only a tiny environmentally friendly residue on the street.  Thus
the need for a wrecker service to tow away a damaged vehicle, a traffic
clogging rush of ambulances and fire engines required for normal vehicular
mishaps are eliminated.  These same observers have reported that Mercedes
spent 375 million Euros to eliminate the two major drawbacks to the use of
the technology:  the brilliant flash and the ear splitting noise that
resulted from collisions involving these cars.  The flash is now no greater
than an old fashioned flash bulb commonly used in consumer cameras in the
1950's, and the concussive noise of collision is now reduced to a mere
"pfffft" sound inaudible at a distance of more than 2.67555 meters.

Mercedes will be marketing this new technology in upcoming vehicles as "The
Ultimate Commuting Machine".