And since GM seems not to do much without government funding, it took a $2.7 million federal award from the Department of Energy to get things moving. According to GM, the money will be used to conduct research into how Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) would generate electricity from the heat in automotive exhaust.
“When you heat up a stretched SMA wire, it shrinks back to its pre-stretched length, and when it cools back down it becomes less stiff and can revert to the original shape,” Jan Aase, GM Vehicle Development Research Laboratory director proudly announced. “A loop of this wire could be used to drive an electric generator to charge a battery.”
Even if the idea of such a contraption has been around for some 30 years, so far only a few devices have been built and they were all too big and inefficient to be practical.
And if you think the "GM seems not to do much without government funding" part was mean and inappropriate, perhaps in GM's own words it would make much more sense.
"This award is significant for the gains in energy efficiency it could bring, and because it signifies how GM is doing business though collaboration and partnership,” Alan Taub, GM vice president of global R&D concluded.
As for the first results, well, we will have to wait for two years (and perhaps more money) or so until we can see some. It took us only 8 years to get to the Moon and back and less time to build the technology to do it, but who's keeping track?
Google News