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Feel the noise

There's no question about it, electric cars will soon be with us and will grow in number as oil runs out, but the issue taxing engineers and lawmakers is what about the noise - or rather the lack of it.

EVs are lovely and quiet to ride in but the problem for pedestrians is that they can't hear them coming.

Everyone seems to agree that they will need a noise, but what sort and can you actually engineer a noise in when most legal requirements call for it to be taken out.

I have a noise, but it is currently being patented so I cannot tell you what it is. But it is not like a car. We were tasked with coming up with a noise that is recognisable and modern.

We will start small scale production of hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicles in 2010. We currently have around 60 fuel cell vehicles being evaluated on the road in the USA and Korea showing positive results in terms of performance and efficiency.

We are already achieving more than 400 miles on a single tank of hydrogen and we plan to start producing about 1,000 vehicles a year from 2012 and 10,000 annually from 2015.

Hyundai-Kia's first fuel cell vehicles 10 years ago cost around £600,000 each to make. By 2008 this had reduced to half that. Our target is to get that down to around £35,000 by 2015 - and costs will also come down as we build volume.

In South Korea 40 hydrogen fuelling stations are being set up around the country although the infrastructure issue there is easier to solve. More than half of the country's population lives in or around the capital city which where most stations will be set up. The remainder will be in a few of the other larger Korean cities.

In Europe a number of carmakers, including Renault-Nissan, Ford, Opel, Toyota, Daimler and Ford, as well as the Hyundai Motor Group, have signed a letter of understanding with fuel providers to guarantee volume production of fuel cell vehicles by 2015 in order to make the establishment of filling stations viable.

Safety of hydrogen powered cars is another factor. Because the fuel cell vehicles are still so expensive to make we can't waste too many of them in crash testing.

But we have been able to do some, including setting fire to them to monitor any explosive effects and the results have been very satisfactory.

As for durability, HMG is targeting a 10-year life span although  tests have shown the fuel cells generally last longer.

The electric motor will generate around 100 kilowatts of power although they will degrade by about 20% in the first few years. This is not a problem. Cars on the road today use only around 10-15 kilowatts in normal driving and perhaps 30-35kw on the motorway. Full power is only needed for very fast acceleration.

Generally the cost of ownership should be lower than conventional internal combustion engines. The fuel is cheaper, you don't need to put oil in them and they are easy to maintain.

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