2008 LA Auto Show: Hyundai Gets Blue About Green With New Fuel Efficiency Plan
By John O'Dell November 19, 2008By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
Hyundai Motor Co., itching for the same level of respect U.S. consumers give fuel-economy leaders Toyota and Honda, is beginning to roll out a broad family of efficient new green cars aimed at making it the nation's gas mileage leader by 2015.
Borrowing a page from German's Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen, Hyundai has chose to make its green cars Blue -calling its fuel-efficiency initiative the Hyundai Blue Drive.
Cutaway shows architecture for Hyundai's Blue Drive hybrid system, with flat, rear-mounted battery pack and 4-cylinder gas engine and electric motor drivingfron wheels.
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As a first step, Hyundai officials said, the company will introduce fuel-efficient "Blue" editions of its gasoline-fueled Accent and Elantra compacts in 2009.
The cars will use low rolling-resistance tires, aerodynamic bodywork, higher gearing and specially tuned engines to achieve better mileage and lower tailpipe emissions that present models of the same cars.
A similar "Blue Motion" line was launched by Volkswagen in 2006. Mercedes-Benz followed with its "Blue Efficiency" effort early this year.
Hyundai Hybrid
The Blues will be followed in 2010 by a gasoline-electric hybrid model of the Sonata midsize sedan (below, left) designed expressly for the North American market.
Hyundai said its "full hybrid" Sonata - capable of a limited amount of all-electric travel - is jumping past the lithium-ion battery technology that American, Europe and Japanese automakers are racing to perfect and instead says it will go with a lithium polymer technology for its various battery-dependent models.
Plug-in versions that use larger, grid-rechargeable battery packs for longer all-electric range, will follow at an unspecified pace, company executives said.
Building a Better Battery
The lithium polymer technology still uses lithium chemistry to store energy, but enables the batteries to be packaged more efficiently, Hyundai said, by using sheets of polymer gel as the electrolyte.
The solid electrolyte permits manufacture of flat, or "prismatic" batteries encased in thin, lightweight aluminum "pouches" that can be assembled, interconnected and cooled more easily than cylindrical, liquid-filled lithium- ion batteries, the automaker said.
The batteries, made by Korean battery giant LG Chem, are more durable, smaller and store more power than lithium-ion batteries, yet are cheaper to manufacture, according to Hyundai.
Conventional lithium-ion batteries are made of a triple-deck sandwich of cathode, anode and separator film that is rolled up like a jelly-roll and assembled inside small cylinders that are slightly larger than conventional AA batteries. The cylinders are filled with a liquid electrolyte, requiring a heavy metal casing.
The cylindrical shape makes it more challenging to efficiently cool the batteries to prevent overheating. It also makes it more difficult to assemble the batteries into oddly shaped packages to fit into convenient spaces under and around a vehicle's passenger cabin.
The hybrid Sonata will couple a 30-kilowatt electric motor to a 2.4-liter, four-cylinder engine with an engine management control system that allows them to operate separately or in tandem - a parallel hybrid system.
Power will be transmitted to the wheels via a 6-speed automatic transmission, the company said.
Hyundai's hybrids -the Sonata will be the first of a variety of models, company officials said - also will use a start-stop feature that permits the gas engine to be shut down when the vehicle makes a full stop and be instantly restarted when the driver releases pressure on the brake pedal.
New Crossover, New Engine
Hyundai also said that it has approved development of a production model of a new crossover - unveiled as the HED-5 i-Mode Concept (right) at the recent Geneva International Auto Show.
While showing the same concept vehicle at the Los Angeles show, the company has added a new 2-liter, turbocharged, four-cylinder direct-injection gasoline engine that, it says, will be used in a variety of future Hyundai models starting with the production version of the six-seat HED.
Production and on-sales dates haven't been set, the company said.
The crossover's engine injects gasoline under high pressure deep and directly into each cylinder - much as a diesel engine injects its fuel - promoting a more powerful combustion event with less fuel and consuming that fuel more efficiently than in a conventional gas engine.
Hyundai claimed 286 horsepower and fuel economy of more than 30 miles per gallon on the highway for the concept engine.
Hydrogen Hyundai
Those fuel efficient vehicles and engines will be followed "long term" by commercial models of one or more vehicles powered by the fuel-cell electric drive system that Hyundai has been developing for nearly a decade now.
The company said it sees fuel cells, which convert hydrogen and oxygen to electricity that powers the vehicle's electric motor, as the "ultimate" expression of its Blue Drive program and as "the most promising technology for future transportation."
The first Hyundai fuel cell vehicles could go into mass production - for the Korean market first - as early as 2012, the company said.
A part of its ongoing test program, Hyundai recently took its Tucson Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle on a 13-day, 4,300-mile cross-country trip as part of a program called Hydrogen Tour 2008.
The company said its hydrogen-electric SUV averaged 185 miles between refueling stops and achieved top speed of 95 miles an hour.
Hyundai and its Kia stablemate are jointly testing a fleet of 32 FCEVs -Hyundai Tucsons and Kia Sportages - in the U.S.
Kia, which introduced a fuel-cell electric version of its Borrego SUV at the LA Show earlier today, has said it expects to begin limited retail production for the Korean market as early as 2010, beating big brother Hyundai by two years.
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