Advanced Automotive Technology: Visions of a Super-Efficient Family Car

for their part recognize that small entrepreneurial companies have important contributions to
make in solving the many challenging problems. These considerations suggest that the federal
advanced vehicle R&D program should maintain a balance between small and large company
participation to ensure the most successful outcome.

Traditionally, DOE advanced vehicle technology programs have worked primarily with large
companies--defense contractors, automotive suppliers, or the Big Three themselves. To the extent
that small or medium-size companies have participated, it has generally been as part of a
subcontractor team. CRADA agreements with federal labs are also difficult for small companies
to participate in, owing to the 50 percent cost sharing requirements. PNGV which is structured
to work as a partnership under the leadership of the Big Three, seems likely to reinforce the large
company orientation of the federal effort.^46

Recently, other government programs, such as NIST’s Advanced Technology Program, and
ARPA’s Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Program and Technology Reinvestment Project have begun
to provide significant finding to contractors outside the traditional auto industry, especially to
small and medium-sized companies. The Administration, however, has requested no finding for
EHV in FY 1996, and substantial cuts in TRP and ATP are being debated in Congress. If these
cuts are made as threatened, the federal program would become even more dependent than it
currently is on the traditional industry.

Conclusions

The 20-year plus federal involvement with advanced vehicle R&D provides an important
perspective on current efforts to commercialize advanced automotive technologies. First, from the
earliest days of these programs, the amount of time that would be required to commercialize
advanced vehicle technologies was severely underestimated. For example, according to a
projection made in the first annual report to Congress of DOE’s Electric and Hybrid Vehicle
Program, dated December 1977: “The technology of electric and hybrid vehicles is such that...
advanced vehicles with advanced energy storage systems are not likely to appear before the early
to mid-1980 s.” In fact, many of the technical challenges cited in those early reports, such as
battery energy storage capacity, power density, and lifetime continue to be major challenges
today.

Although most of the technologies involved in advanced vehicles (batteries, flywheels, motors

and controllers) have received government finding for decades, this funding has been highly

variable,^47 and only in the last five years has there been a concerted attempt by both the auto

industry and government to develop viable commercial vehicles. Thus, although the technologies

are by no means “new,”we still have little experience with the way they perform as an integrated

system in on-the-road vehicles, or with rapid, cost-effective manufacturing processes. At this

%%e PNGV steeringcommittee has recognized the need to fmd ways to bring innovative ideas from entrepreneur and mallCompaniea into the

Wm47FW ~ eqle ~ publ~ed fin~g a document titled “Inventions Needed for fm ~E*~ E~~c ~d H@jd Vefic]e program roae to a peak of pNGV.n. $37.5 IIdliOn in 1979, but dropped tO $8.4 million in

1985. By 1995, it ~ riaen again to about $90 million.