PARIS MOTOR SHOW 2002. It's the kind of car GM hopes to have in affordable production by the year 2010. It is already driveable. It is powered by a fuel cell that drives an electric motor that in turn drives the wheels. It looks real. And the people who are going to be buying it are currently aged between 6-15. So the company decided to let the youngsters name it.

Now, that's real lateral thinking.

“We brought the 11-15 year-old group into our design studios and put together the most creative environment we could imagine,” says Bill Ochalek, a manager in GM research and planning. “We filled a room with all kinds of toys, videos, bean bag chairs, and loaded them up with pop and candy. Three hours later we had more than 300 names - ideas the adults would never have arrived at on their own. From a creative standpoint, I think it was just the kind of brainstorming needed.”

With the 6-8 year-olds, they brought them to the Detroit Science Centre and got them to shape cars out of clay and paint them. While they were playing, they came up with unique names.

The final choice out of too many to puzzle you with here was Hy-Wire. “Hydrogen fuel cell propulsion and by-wire technology, says Aleksei Dachyshyn, age 14, who came up with the name. “Why not combine critical bits of key technologies and create a new name? That’s Hy-Wire.”

If that youngster sounds a bit ahead of the posse for his age, it might be because he's the son of Delf Dodge, director of planning and program management at General Motors. He'd be kind of close to the whole thing.

But, as GM's VP for research and development and planning Larry Burns says, it does also reflect how GM is walking the high wire on this one, on the edge of a risk worth taking.

He's the guy (above) who first showed Trish and I the AUTOnomy concept car at Geneva earlier this year, and who impressed us with his own personal enthusiasm for the future of fuel cell automotive propulsion. It's catching - he made us enthusiastic.

The Hy-Wire we saw at Paris last week is AUTOnomy's award winning skateboard chassis now clad in a real car shape. And one of the first things you notice is the extraordinary amount of room inside. That's because mechanical bulk is gone. Any connections between controls and the movements and handling of the car is electronic. The fuel cell components, motors, and suspension management systems are all concealed in the 11" thick 'skateboard' platform.

The accelerator, brakes, and steering systems are all in one on a central support unit which allows them to be shiftede from one side of the car to the other, and which locate themselves centrally for ease of exiting the car. There are no pedals.

There's no engine in the normal sense, either, so the front seat passengers can stretch their legs all the way into the 'engine compartment'. The driver can see all the way to the road right in front of the car, because where the radiator grille would be is a glass panel (as there is in the rear too, but that would make luggage too visible). And small TV screens allow him intimate visibility of the corners of the car. Should make a heck of a difference in parking, maybe even a bit more than Nissan already has with its rear camera.

The driver controls and operates the vehicle via two vertical grips on the 'X-Drive' control module. The grips, fixed to leather-covered mounts, are positioned each side of a color monitor that provides the driver with the important data. So there's no need for a dashboard either.

The car was developed as a driveable concept vehicle in just eight months from its introduction in Detroit.

"This shows our commitment to this technology and the speed at which we are progressing,” says Rick Wagoner, GM’s president and CEO. “With AUTOnomy, GM shared a vision. Hy-wire accelerates our progress with a functional proof of concept which strengthens our confidence in our ability to gain marketplace acceptance of production fuel cell vehicles.”

GM designers and engineers in the United States developed the vehicle chassis and body design, as well as the engineering and electrical system integration. Engineers at GM’s research facility in Mainz-Kastel, Germany, integrated the fuel-cell propulsion system, which is the same as designed for the HydroGen3 concept, based on an Opel Zafira and shown for the first time at the 2001 Frankfurt Motor Show.

American designers also worked closely with Italian design house Stile Bertone in Turin, where the body was built. The SKF Group, headquartered in Sweden, developed the by-wire technology in the Netherlands and in Italy.

A single docking port provides the electrical connection between the all-aluminum chassis and the fiberglass body. Mechanically, there are 10 body attachment linkages.

The fuel cell stack, which produces a continuously available power of 94kW, is installed in the back of the chassis. The 3-phase 60kW electric motor drives the front wheels and is installed transversely between them. Three cylindrical 5,000psi hydrogen storage tanks are located centrally in the chassis.

Putting all technical elements into the chassis provides a low center of gravity, giving high safety and driving dynamics potential. Passive safety requirements will be fulfilled using impact-absorbing elements, so-called crash boxes, at a later stage of development.

Most of the powertrain load has been evenly distributed between the front and rear of the chassis so there is a lower center of gravity for the whole vehicle, without sacrificing ground clearance. This contributes to the overall safety of the vehicle by enabling superior handling, while resisting rollover forces, even with tall bodies attached.

And that's another advantage of the Hy-Wire design - there's an extraordinarily flexible bodystyle potential, even the chance to change bodies every few years while retaining a platform and drivetrain that is likely to have a working life of at least 20 years.

That saving in resources itself almost matches the environmental advantage of using practically-limitless hydrogen as a fuel in a non-combustion manner that produces no toxic emissions.

GM has more than 30 patents in progress covering business models, technologies and manufacturing processes related to the AUTOnomy/Hy-Wire concept and more inventions are being added all the time.

The essential 'by-wire' technologies are already in place, proven in aircraft systems, and include similar back-up systems in case of electronic failure.

There has long been a cynicism amongst driving public and journalists alike that the motor industry only pays lip service to alternative propulsion systems, because of the investment already in place in conventional engine manufacture.

A driving programme of the Hy-Wire for motoring journalists begins before the end of the year in Europe. That itself is proof that GM is serious about this one.

I'd better be there. I have seen the car, and I want to drive it.

I want to drive it NOW, because I don't have the time to wait that those kids who were given the fun time to name it have.

Besides, I believe.

(What else do I have to say, Larry?)