Brits unveil 'revolutionary' hydrogen-powered car A UK startup is banking on a hydrogen-powered automotive future with its "Rasa" - a "revolutionary" vehicle whose production prototype hit the streets earlier this week. Featuring a carbon-fibre monocoque frame, four electric motors powered by an 8.5 kW hydrogen fuel cell and regenerative braking, the Rasa (as in "tabula …
I think it needs a good re-packaging, tuck everything away nicely to create room for a small boot at the back, and at the same time redesign the rear end to make it rather less eye-searingly ugly.
So, a good first step, certainly. If they can produce one with room for three bags of shopping, and some means of fuelling up (perhaps a solar/wind powered electrolysis plant at home?), it would make a good second car for our use.
GJC
This is just the Brits' new Reliant Robin.
Funny you should say that. That is exactly the first thing that I came to mind.
Strange, it looks nothing like it but my brain insisted "That's a bloody Reliant Robin!".
Except its truly disgusting looking. At least Robin had some charm (or amusement factor) and you could fit some luggage/cargo in it.
Performance is on par with Robin as well. Ok Robin didn't quite make 3 digit mpg I don't think.
"redesign the rear end to make it rather less eye-searingly ugly."
I was thinking that too. Then I remembered the horrible boxy cars we had 30 years ago and we thought they looked "cool" then. Maybe in 20 years this car will be seen as perfectly normal. There's no accounting for taste :-)
It's also rather reminiscent of the "future cars" from old SciFi, especially from the 50's and 60's, but also see the cars as driven by Col. Straker in UFO
Then again, they thought women on moon-base would be wearing silver miniskirts and purple wigs and men in submarines would wear string vests :-)
re. shopping kids dogs - you got it all wrong, this is when a technology is waaaay matured. Now it's for those i-trend-setters with excess cash but short of ideas how to spend it. And look, you can link to facebook!
p.s. all that said, it's good people are trying this and that, sooner or later one technology takes root...
it's good people are trying this and that, sooner or later one technology takes root
Not if it's looking this fugly. I assume the design will have been accompanied by statements like "a fusion of future design and aerodynamics", but fugly is far more efficient in conveying how it looks.
The very first thing you must consider when you attempt a change is that you make it incremental. Massive change, also known as a revolution, is usually accompanied by a lot of blood, and is typically executed by people who lack any green credentials.
Yup, one fugly motherhubbard
I don't see it panning out for the boyos behind this:
1) no hydrogen infrastructure
2) there are much bigger players already in this field, Mercedes, at least one of the big Japanese automakers
3) hydrogen production only scales if it is done by cracking hydrocarbons using large amounts of energy
You can forget all your yoghurt weaving notions of doing it with renewables and electrolysis of water. It's not just about liberating the hydrogen, takes a shitload of energy to compress it to the point where it has reasonable energy density.
Nice idea but best left to the big boys.
1) no hydrogen infrastructure
2) there are much bigger players already in this field, Mercedes, at least one of the big Japanese automakers
3) hydrogen production only scales if it is done by cracking hydrocarbons using large amounts of energy
1 and 3 also apply to 2, surely? So that leaves your main argument as them having to give it up because bigger companies are already doing it?
Not necessarily.
If 1) were solved then 2) would be less of a problem, 3) was more me hinting at the un-greeness of these apparently eco-friendly ideas.
Unless, what you actually meant to say was '2 applies to 1 and 3, surely?' In which case guilty as charged but it doesn't mean that there is no point in me listing each separately because each is it's own challenge (and 3 provides me with a jumping off point to have a go at the yoghurt weavers)
How soluble is it in natural gas?
I presume that turning it into clathrates would render it inoperable?
Good storage stats for that though, I imagine. What it need is a frame made of 3 inch tubing and flat running boards. Add a seat and a steering device and you have a London utility vehicle. Putting pedals on it will allow you to illegally get away with using it on a pavement. Or at least the cycle lanes.
Can someone help me get out of here? my whole day is setting.
This post has been deleted by its author
Which is where we're headed anyway, with autonomous cars. Even if private ownership of an autonomous car will be possible, the rewards for people who pimp out their cars in their downtime (e.g 10:00-16:00 weekdays when they are at work, and 19:00-06:00 when they are at home) will blur the boundaries further.
However, for MrsJP, whose sight isn't good enough to drive, the idea of mobility as a service isn't as cringeworthy as the (presumably fully able) author suggests.
Where's the "bring it on" icon ?
>Which is where we're headed anyway, with autonomous cars.
I'd wager that XaaS (where x='just about anything') is where we're ultimately heading. Stability of fortunes depends on predictable flows of revenue, so there's an incentive (structure looming) for manufacturers to create objects with a reliably-knowable, but limited, lifetime and--instead of selling the object--renting the services provided by that object.
Of possible interest, if only to illustrate the seed-crystal of the relevant mindset:
@eff.org 'Federal Circuit: Patent Owners Can Prevent You from Owning Anything'
The move toward requiring manufacturers to shoulder some of the costs of recycling their wares inclines in the same general direction: if manufacturers build in the Nexus-6 quality, and never actually relinquish title to the object (instead charging for the services the object provides), they end up already owning the necessary resources that go into later versions of what they produce. There's even an incentive for them to build in recyclability, to streamline the whole process of converting their old kit into new kit. The game then becomes a game like Risk, where the territory is the entire relevant resource space.
>Even if private ownership of an autonomous car will be possible, the rewards for people who pimp out their cars in their downtime
This will be marginal if everyone needs their own car to get to work, as everyone would have a car to pimp out - massive oversupply and little demand. The days of half the population staying at home to keep the household going are over, courtesy of deregulated mortgage markets. I suspect the largest impact would be on public transport, with demand for buses dropping to zilch due to some autonomous car/Uber combination. That's assuming you can easily remove all the soft furnishings and so on to prevent them being sloshed with beer, ripped off or otherwise rendered unpleasant by "the neerdowells who don't have a job."
It would probably kill off the courier market. Amazon's dream come true as you can send your car to the warehouse to pick the dongle up.
"Why does every mad concept car have to have gull-wing doors?"
To insure that none of the occupants escape hydrogen immolation in the case of a roll over, would be my guess. That is, to eliminate the potentially noisiest complainers.
Since the days of the mighty M 300 SL gullwing, they just haven't been able to resist it.
Designed by designed by some whalesong and jostick group after a particularly bad nightmare, a cheese supper and violent overdosing on something nasty you mean.
An engineer might have made it a bit ugly, but he'd have made the shape practical.
---> icon - burn it with fire before all the hydrogen evaporates.
"Designed by engineers, would be my guess."
There's a garage near us is currently restoring a real air-cooled 911 Turbo. Now that's designed by engineers, and in its day it could practically cause spontaneous orgasms in both sexes. It still looks pretty good.
This thing has been designed by aerodynamicists, which is a whole other ball game, if you see what I mean.
Oh, I don't know. It has a certain panache about it.
It's clearly got that anything to minimize aerodynamic drag look to it. Then again with less than 12 horsepower from the fuel cell they aren't really able to do the slightly pointed brick that is a minivan and still be able to approach highway speeds. No, I get the feeling that this is the perfect car for commuting the way so many people do, alone with the occasional stop for coffee, milk, bread, etc. along the way. Forget stopping by Ikea for anything as even if it would fit it would likely be too heavy.
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