Spinal Tap's Tufnel gets new Honda hydrogen car Japanese motor mammoth Honda has announced "production commencement" for its new hydrogen fuel-cell car, the FCX Clarity. The second one off the line will go to noted film femme and children's authoress Jamie Lee Curtis - and her much more famous husband Christopher Guest. “Our customers are true pioneers and leaders in the …
At the moment, they may be making hydrogen from burning natural gas and the like, but once things get going, hydrogen cars will allow the hydrogen to be produced in places with abundant hydroelectricity, the way heavy water and aluminum get made. And there will eventually be hydrogen fueling stations in places outside California as well. The hydrogen car is an essential link in a chain that would let us abolish fossil fuel use, even though it can't do that by itself.
You are correct. Many people seem to want to jump from today into 10 years from now instantly and fail to acknowledge the progression of processes.
Too bad that so many people fall victim to propaganda from existing establishments and don't think for themselves. While their failures suck for the world, the work well for me as their limited vision and understanding make them great employees...
Making a container that will hold the Hydrogen is VERY difficult. Because the molecule is so small, it leaks through everything. To top it all off, it will react with the container, and make its contact surface VERY brittle. People have been working on this for YEARS. The other problem is that when you (attempt) to store it, it isn't very dense. The volume of a container which might hold 10 gallons of gasoline (UK: Petrol) won't store the amount of Hydrogen that the gasoline will allow you to travel. That says NOTHING to the weight of the container necessary.
No, at the densities of storage, it won't be lighter than air.
P.S. You don't want to be around when it blows up either (if you can see the explosion).
Any electric vehicle has tens of kilowatts of power available with a bit of soldering (careful!). Ideal to drive a giant PA capable of deafening an entire suburb.
(But I'll start to believe hydrogen cars when an appreciable quantity of the hydrogen currently used in the fertiliser and chemical industries is produced electrolytically, rather than by natural gas reforming).
One of the posters asked about the number of hydrogn refueling stations.
Here is a list of hydrogen refueling statuons.
http://www.fuelcells.org/info/charts/h2fuelingstations.pdf
Here is a searchable list of hydrogen stations.
http://www.hydrogenassociation.org/general/fuelingSearch.asp
Here is a link to Honda Home Enrgy Station.
http://world.honda.com/FuelCell/HomeEnergyStation/
Yes there are usable hydrogen storage tanks that do not leak.
Please do a little reading if you are interested in modern fuel cell technology. Fuel cells are being used in cars, buses, boats, trains and stationary power generation.
http://www.fuelcells.org/
The links below provides recent fuel cell news.
http://www.fuelcells.org/news/updates.html
http://www.fuelcelltoday.com/
Many of the skeptical comments that have been posted do not take into account the recent scientific advances that been made in the use of hydrogen fuel cells. If some of the problems that people have mentioned had not been solved, we would not have Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota and others producing fuel cell vehicles.
There will be fuel cell vehicles mass produced within the next several years. If you look at the trials, the companies doing the research have proposed several methods of generating and using hydrogen. the methods that have worked have been kept.
I am a bit confused as to the interest in hydrogen technology.
We generate electricity, to electolyse water, to make hydrogen, which is used to make electricity to drive the car.
Surely battery technology must be getting near the point where filling your car with electricity directly is the better option?
No distribution of gas, no complicated fuel cell technology, no risk of explosion etc.
hasn't been mentioned for a while. There was a US lab where they managed to interstitially adsorb and store more hydrogen inside a metallic or graphite nanostructure lattice than as cryogenic liquid hydrogen. The lab blew up one day, unfortunately. Did I tell you that I met Stanley Pons, nice chap, mine's the furry arctic coat with the excess of neutrons...
I can't be the only one getting tired of this: "gas" is short for "gasoline," and "petrol" is short for "petroleum." If you refine your petroleum before putting it in your car, then you are at least as far off the mark as the person who puts liquid "gas" in his. If we can accept colloquial use from the last hundred years, then they will both do.
I hate to rain on the parade as this is, overall, good.
But hydrogen is not a replacement for fuel, it's an energy carrier and so competes with battery powered cars. The fuel companies have a huge investment in their filling station infrastructure - it allows them to reach their consumers directly, and it's essential to them they keep this. That's why they want hydrogen, and that's why Bush is supporting it.
A plug-in car removes this relationship - you'd fill up at home, overnight. Your power would come from the grid, with a small top up generator and/or recharge stations for longer trips.
This is way, way more efficient than the electrolysis and fuel cell required for hydrogen. Batteries are easier to store, and easier to upgrade as technology improves. It removes the stranglehold Exxon, BP et al have on transportation. And it's completely future proof - electricity *is* energy. It's not going to become outdated.
Anything that distracts from this is a problem.
Frankly I don't understand why the big electricity companies aren't dropping everything they can into battery research and frantically lobbying car manufacturers to develop battery-powered cars. It would make them a fortune.
"The car itself is zero-emission"
BUT (big but) what about the emissions from the factory that made it, or indeed the power station that generated the electricity for the factory?
Isn't it less ecologically damaging to use cars that have already been made, than to burn up resources to make new ones?
Flame for those burning resources, of course
"I am a bit confused as to the interest in hydrogen technology.
We generate electricity, to electolyse water, to make hydrogen, which is used to make electricity to drive the car.
Surely battery technology must getting near the point where filling your car with electricity directly is the better option?
No distribution of gas, no complicated fuel cell technology, no risk of explosion etc."
battryes take time to charge up you can just fill up the tank with hydrogen again and off you go
No. Energy used during production of a car is about 11% of it's total energy footprint over its lifetime, and production of electricity at a large powerstation is vastly more efficient than production of kinetic energy in an internal combustion engine.
Centralised power generation, it's the only way to go.
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