News From the Auto Industry

THE STORY SOUNDS A BIT HOLLYWOOD.

That-the elimination of the block and the elimination of the linkages-in large part, changes the art of the automobile. More than the block is missing.

“A fuel cell stack can be spread around the vehicle and can take any shape you might imagine. It doesn’t have to be bunched up like the cylinders on an internal combustion engine,” says Christopher Borroni-Bird, head of GM’s Design and Technology Fusion Group and program manager of AUTOnomy. No block to design around.

What’s more, the mechanical linkages that have been part and parcel of every car built for the past 100 years-as in the steering system and accel/decel system-aren’t there, either. There’s no steering column to design around. These mechanical linkages have given way to X-by-wire technology, technology that GM’s partner on the AUTOnomy, SKF (Goteborg, Sweden), has transitioned from aircraft to automobiles.

How serious? Consider this: AUTOnomy is a “concept” car. It’s the sort of thing that gets rolled out on the stages of the world’s premier auto shows so that the buying public can get a glimpse of their potential transportation future. Generally, really good concept cars serve as models for much milder production vehicles at some point. Sometimes, the concept cars actually have mechanicals beneath their handcrafted skin. But they are fundamentally models.