Innovation- Practitioner Article-Harvesting Vehicles’ Waste Heat

Harvesting Vehicles' Waste Heat. By: Docksai, Rick, Futurist, 00163317, Jul/Aug2012, Vol. 46, Issue 4

The purpose of the article, “Harvesting Vehicles’ Waste Heat”, is about how General Motors have recently researched ways to increase energy efficiency of a car by creating a new technology for the exhaust system. This is an important issue because of the rise of environmental concern due to the increases of emissions into the atmosphere by the use of fossil fuels as a source of energy. The articles states that half to three-fourths of the energy that is conducted by an automobile is lost from the exhaust pipe, which is why GM decided to fully research ways this can be improved. The company Dynallow is assisting GM with researching ways to improve and design a thermal recovery system which will recycle the energy to power the car’s air conditioning system or radio.   The U.S. Government has also recently granted GM $8 million dollars to fund the project for further research and development on this issue. The findings from this article suggest that this new technology would be ideal for diesel trucks, mass transit, and even farm vehicles like tractors. The author also suggests since cars are only driven sporadically, the technology would be the most beneficial for transportation systems like railroads, which are always running.

Although there needs to be a more efficient way for a car or other mode of transportation to manage fuel and energy, this new technology has many implications that could cause more harm than help the cause. I believe that the first issue is the funding for the research. Even though GM is receiving incentives from the government to implement this project, I believe that there should also be outside money involved from the private sector. When the government plays venture capitalist, usually the end results do not always come out positive. Why do alternative energy projects have to depend on government money to get jump started? The problem is, when the company cannot find a cost efficient solution to this problem they are researching, the government then has to tax the people to pay for this debt. Another implication may be that end product will take years for the average consumer to afford, which is really the largest target market of the automobile industry. So with that said, there would most likely be negative cash flow for the first 5 years that it is available for the consumer to purchase. The cost of development and research as well as inputs to create it for each vehicle model will outweigh the revenue they will receive from sales. I believe that if GM and the other vehicle companies are so passionate about developing this type of technology, they need to first asses how much this will cost after the government funds run out.