Private Sector; An Electrovan, Not an Edsel
By DANNY HAKIM
Published: November 17, 2002
DETROIT— THREE decades ago, Dr. Craig Marks consigned his greatest feat of engineering to the scrap heap.
Dr. Marks, who oversaw General Motors' futuristic engineering projects in the 1960's, had created a prototype that took more than two years and a staff of 250 to construct. It was called the Electrovan, the automotive industry's first attempt at making an automobile powered by a hydrogen fuel cell -- a technology now embraced as the power train of the future.
The prototype resembled the mostly forgettable 1966 GMC Handivan, which it was, on the outside. Inside, there was hardly room for the front seats. Five hundred fifty feet of piping were jammed alongside two tanks, one for oxygen and one for hydrogen. Both were chilled to hundreds of degrees below zero, and highly flammable.
When journalists got a glimpse on a sunny October day in 1966, they weren't allowed behind the wheel. The Electrovan was ''a nightmare of complexity,'' Dr. Marks said then. It contained enough platinum to buy a fleet of regular vans.
G.M. executives decided the technology was not feasible. They also decided G.M. didn't have enough room to preserve this prototype.
''I had tried to get it into the Smithsonian, because I said, 'You know, this is an incredible vehicle,' '' recalled Dr. Marks, who at age 72 is now retired and lives in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. ''They had never heard of a fuel cell.''
Nobody revisited the technology until the industry returned to it, en masse, in the 1990's. The Electrovan had been long forgotten; DaimlerChrysler even claimed for a time to have built the first fuel-cell car. Today every major automaker is developing fuel-cell cars. Just last week, Spencer Abraham, the Secretary of Energy, laid out a lengthy report on what is needed to get fuel cells on the road. And G.M. is predicting it will mass produce fuel-cell cars by 2010.
Skeptics abound, including Dr. Marks. Some doubt the industry's scientific prognostications; some see the fuel cell as Detroit's excuse to defer any short-term gas mileage improvements. Others worry about the enormous complexity of retrofitting the nation's 176,000 filling stations with hydrogen, not to mention tearing up the car industry's manufacturing infrastructure.
''Power plants get developed over decades, not a few years,'' said Dr. Marks, who still follows fuel-cell developments and is chairman of the board of trustees of Altarum, a consulting and research firm based in Ann Arbor, Mich.
He said such a complex technology must first be tried in simpler applications, like powering commercial or government vehicle fleets. Carmakers have just begun such ventures.
''Anything 10 years out in this industry is a hope,'' Dr. Marks said. ''All the time I was in the auto industry, gas turbines were going to be in automobiles in 10 years, and that went over a period of 30 years. When auto people say 10 years, they mean they hope 10 years. We don't know.''
From its infancy, the auto industry has explored alternatives to the internal combustion engine. Sometimes the hurdles came down to the simplest problems. In the 1960's, Dr. Marks searched out Abner Doble, founder of the long defunct Doble Steam Car Company, then in his 90's. Dr. Marks believed Mr. Doble had built the most sophisticated steam car and wanted to know why steam had lost the battle to gas and electricity. ''Craig,'' Mr. Doble told him, ''water freezes.''
Battery-powered cars date from Thomas Edison's day. But the same old problems hinder them now as a mass market product -- batteries take too long to recharge and require recharging too often.
Dr. Marks saw a solution in the space race. NASA was using fuel cells to power the inside of Gemini spacecraft. Essentially, the cells strip electrons from hydrogen atoms and use them as an electrical current, then reassemble the hydrogen and combine it with oxygen to form water. The cells provided electricity and water astronauts could drink.
Would the prospects for electric cars be different if they could produce their own electricity?
The Electrovan project became a mini-moonshot, but G.M. then was corporate America's 900-pound gorilla, a Microsoft of manufacturing in an era when starched white men in lab coats could solve anything.
The project started with a new battery-powered car in the body of a Corvair, dubbed Electrovair. Then Dr. Marks' people built a fuel cell system far too big to fit into the car. His team scaled it down enough to put into a van.
There were other problems. The electrolyte used in the system weighed 550 pounds and produced ''brilliant fireworks,'' as Dr. Marks said, if it leaked. The explosion of an external hydrogen storage tank sent pieces flying a quarter-mile away, causing no injuries but underscoring the dangers of stored hydrogen.
Dr. Marks also had to explain to G.M.'s purchasing chief why he needed a horse trough big enough for a man to lie down in. (It was to be filled with flame retardant in case of chemical spills.)
''The guy in purchasing had been getting orders from me for miles of plastic tubing and all this stuff he'd never ordered before,'' Dr. Marks said. ''He said, 'Okay, we'll get a horse trough. I'm not going to ask you what it's for. But when the order comes through for the horses . . .' ''
In the end, the Electrovan weighed more than twice as much as a normal van. It could travel up to 70 miles an hour.
Many hurdles have since been overcome. Outside air can be used instead of liquid oxygen, and the size of cell systems has been greatly reduced. But plenty is left to be done, Dr. Marks said.
Start with storing hydrogen as a highly pressurized gas, which raises safety concerns. An alternative, solid hydrogen, is still impractical.
Then there is the question of gas stations. As an alternative to reinventing them, some propose equipping cars with miniature onboard refineries that would strip hydrogen from gasoline. Creating devices like that would be a considerable undertaking in itself. The precious metal required for the electrodes is also a concern. Today the amount is far less than the Electrovan required but still considerable.
''Is that a long enough list?'' Dr. Marks asked.
Nevertheless, the industry is motivated to make fuel-cell technology work this time. Environmental concerns are increasingly influential, particularly in California, which has very tough clean air standards.
Today, there seems to be light in Dr. Marks's blind alley. Two years ago, G.M. informed him that the Electrovan had been found in a warehouse, its metallic blue skin and bug-eyes reminiscent of Scooby Doo's Mystery Machine. The discovery illustrated one advantage of huge bureaucracies: some orders are ignored. G.M. is even using the vehicle to publicize its prowess as a fuel-cell pioneer.
''I just wished more of the people who worked on it realized it still existed and it was a precedent-setting vehicle,'' Dr. Marks said. ''We just sort of stumbled through.''
Photo: Craig Marks, left, who was in charge of the General Motors fuel cell vehicle project in the 1960's, and his contemporary counterpart, Byron McCormick. (Joe Polimeni)