Cleaner car claims abound at Kyoto

WITH the world's attention focused on the Kyoto summit on greenhouse gas emissions, carmakers have been quick to promote their future visions for environmentally compatible cars.

BMW AG started the flood with an announcement on Tuesday, timed to coincide perfectly with the start of the United Nations- sponsored conference on global climate change, that the company aims to reduce greenhouse gases by having hydrogen-fueled cars in mass production by between 2020 and 2025.

According to BMW officials, the company's ultimate goal is to manufacture cars that run on hydrogen extracted from water. The company is planning a pilot program in 1998 to be implemented with a hydrogen filling station at a Munich airport.

Commenting on the strict limits on greenhouse emissions proposed at the Kyoto conference, BMW officials said that short- term targets must not hinder the long-term development prospects of industry.

Mazda announced Wednesday it had developed its first fuel-cell car but it had no plans yet to market the pollution-free vehicle.

"We have no plans to commercialize the Demio FCEV (fuel-cell car). We are still in the process of further development for actual use," a Mazda spokesman said.

The vehicle, based on Mazda's popular Demio compact multipurpose car, will have a maximum speed of 90kmh and a driving range of 160km when fully charged with hydrogen.

A fuel cell produces electricity from an electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. Unlike a conventional combustion engine, it produces no toxic emissions and produces water as its only byproduct.

The process has one big draw-back -- the hydrogen tanks are large and developing an infrastructure to refuel them is expected to be extremely expensive.

Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, is highly flammable.

Automobile industry sources say compact cars will become more popular worldwide due to growing environmental concerns.

Also on Wednesday, the giant Toyota Motor Corp was reported to have received more than 2,000 prelaunch orders for its new low- emission hybrid car, more than double its initial monthly sales target.

Jiji news service said Toyota had received more than 2,000 orders for the Prius -- which uses a combination of a gasoline engine and an electric motor -- and that orders might reach 3,000 cars by the time of the model's launch on December 10.

Most major car companies are investigating fuel cells as alternatives to the internal combustion engine, and several fuel- cell powered buses have been built and are in operation.

Chrysler Corp said in January that it had developed a fuel- cell system that can extract hydrogen from normal gasoline. Chrysler estimated that if the rest of the auto industry adopted the approach, fuel cells could become commercially viable power sources by 2010 to 2015.

Mercedes-Benz, the automobile unit of Daimler-Benz AG, unveiled earlier this year a new small A-Class model fuel-cell car which uses methanol to create hydrogen. Daimler-Benz said it hoped to see commercial production of passenger cars powered by their fuel-cell engines in about eight years.

Toyota Motor Corp has developed two types of electric cars powered by fuel cells. One uses metal hybrid and the other extracts hydrogen from methanol.

Toyota said it does not yet have plans to market the fuel-cell cars.

-- Reuters and Nikkei news agencies