Despite Bush touting (ie, public opinion poll pandering?) hydrogen powered cars and GM’s agressive push for them, they aren’t just around the corner by a long shot.
There’s something in the water
City energy coordinator Dave Konkle says the hydrogen-fueled Ford Focus that’s in the city of Ann Arbor’s fleet is a vast improvement over earlier models of the futuristic technology.
“We definitely feel like we are driving a prototype vehicle, but for the most part it drives pretty well,” said Konkle, who has driven earlier versions of fuel-cell cars that had scant power.
But that doesn’t mean pollution-free cars running on the most plentiful element in the universe are around the corner. In fact, the city’s loaner from Ford Motor Co. is proof of the challenges to fuel-cell powered vehicles.
Current fuel cells need almost pure hydrogen, which is difficult to produce. The easiest way to get it is to break down natural gas but cars already can – and do – run on natural gas, and it is following oil’s price trajectory.
The materials to make fuel cells are costly, there’s a lack of infrastructure in place to create and transport hydrogen, which likely would have to be liquefied through a super-cooling process. And keeping it that cold would take lots of energy, defeating the purpose of using hydrogen in the first place.
The ideal way to get hydrogen is from water, but that requires a lot of energy, and then it has to be stored somewhere and transported, Mader said.
His group is working on projects where hydrogen is created as a byproduct of nuclear power production. The plants create huge amounts of heat that require cooling with water anyway. Hydrogen could be created under those conditions.
And no one has been able to tackle the hydrogen storage problem easily.
How soon before we’re told we NEED to build nuclear power plants to provide fuel to power our cars?
There are similarities between this and the early adoption of automobiles. There were electric, steam and internal combustion automobiles. Due to developing technologies it was unclear which would triumph. The market sorted it out based on usability and economy. The problem is that R&D is much more expensive today and major investments should have been made decades ago in these technologies. Fuel had been much higher in most parts of the world for decades. The solutions there has been small vehicles coupled with efficient use. A small car with the latest generation 2 cylinder diesel is very efficient. If we attack the culture of transportation in this country we could buy significant time for newer technologies to mature. It will take massive Federal intervention to move this forward quickly. We all know how well that goes.
The rising price of gasoline is finally starting to reflect the true price that society is paying for the automobile. It may get to be so expensive that we will have to get rid of private cars altogether. Would that really be a bad thing? What would the world be like without them?
One of my several careers before retirement was in Traffic Management. The foolishness of wasting critical time and effort, right now, on an unwieldy solution like this hydrogen boondoggle is confounding. Even someone as corrupt as Bush should realize the essential question of distribution.
The broad range of solutions — whether it be E85, biodiesel, even vehicles partially or wholly powered by electricity — can be managed via existing infrastructure.
Spending several thousand dollars to add another tank/pump to an existing service station is no big deal. It’s what Brazil did during their transition to an alcohol-fuel-based economy. Adding a vehicle-specific outlet to your garage or parking place to top-up batteries is negligible compared to developing a whole new class of transport, safety requirements and standards to move hydrogen, liquified or otherwise about the land.
Just to add another class of profits for Big Oil. They must think Americans are idio.. oh. Never mind.
“It may get to be so expensive that we will have to get rid of private cars altogether. Would that really be a bad thing? What would the world be like without them?”
Let see, people would not be able to get to their jobs and mass transit is only the answer if you live in a city. So yeah, it would be a bad thing.
America’s a big, spread out place. How would you implement mass-transit (gag) anywhere outside a city?
Maybe someone can explain to me why we do not have a hydrogen internal combustion engine? Is it just too unsafe? They had vehicles like this running in the 70’s, and they supposedly worked great. Why are we bothering with fuel cells when hydrogen is more powerful for combustion than petrol anyway?
@8 – Step out of the big city and people think mass transit is just for the poor. The reason that mass transit projects fail in this country is becuase when they are adopted no one rides them. Americans have all sorts of excuses why they can’t ride the train. ” I have to stop and get things on the way home” is one I hear the most.
Now that I am out of the big city, the people around me will not walk one block to the store for a soda. In S.F. You wouldn’t get in your car to go accross town. Go figure. High Speed Rail from LA to Vegas, and people will still drive on the long high way, to pay to park when the get there.
Eideard, I agree that converting to a hydrogen economy is a pipe dream. I’m more in favor of moving to battery-powered vehicles, although the technology isn’t quite there yet.
However, if a major breakthrough in battery efficiency were announced today, giving vehicles a 400-mile range on a 4-hour charge from a battery weighing only 50 pounds, we still couldn’t shift to electric vehicles. Why? Because we can’t replace the gasoline Btu’s with electric kW-hours.
Using the government’s 2004 statistics, our daily gasoline consumption is nine million barrels per day. This converts to 14 million megawatt-hours per day, which is 56% of the U.S. electric generating capacity.
In my state, the power company is whining about the demand consumers are placing upon the infrastructure just from replacing swamp coolers with air conditioners. Imagine what would happen if a sizeable portion of the population started plugging in their car.
If replacing gasoline with hydrogen or electricity is this country’s goal, then where is the 10-year plan for a 50% increase in our generating capacity?
With standardized design you can have safe nuclear energy. France is an example fo that and we could learn from their efforts.
There are some large problems with Hydrogen that have to do with physics not politics. Hydrogen takes up a lot of room for the same amount of energy. (like 16 X) Hydrogen is highly explosive and it is diffcult to detect that it is burning.
We need to look at root causes not panaceas. A few years ago I ran across a nice specification for an effecient mass trnasit system (ruff). Basically the problem with mass transit is that for it to be effective you need a fairly high population density. You also need a highly dense area so that driving is such a pain you take mass transit. Reasons people don’t do mass transit:
1. You have to get to the place where you can get on it. If this is several miles away you drive. If you drive you are more likely to not park the car and get on it. On the other end if the place you are going isn’t near the exit point for the mass transit then less incentive to use mass transit.
2. Safety. (late at night people don’t like methods like subways etc.)
3. Hours of operation.
4. Frequency.
The ruff specification addressed those issues and we could impliment it or something like it now. Basically the specification was to have cars with an electric and data pickup from the road. The author had a small concrete inverted V in the middle of the road. On the top was a metal strip to deliver electrical power. Also a method of comunicating with the car. The car could accomadate this V and get power from it. The car was electric.
You would drive from home in your electric car to the “on ramp” there you would indicate your destination. The computer would drive the car onto the ruff system. The inverted V emerges out of the road. The computer knows about the cars on the system and merges the car with other cars. All cars travel at the same rate. You read the paper of whatever. As you near the off ramp the rufff system exists you from the off ramp. Then you drive to your destination. In this manner you effectively extend the range of the eletric car. You also make driving safer and more enjoyable. You can do something else while driving.
Since you can use existing roads you save a ton of money on infrastructure. The specification is general and any car company could follow it. For those who can’t affor a car the city could have their own larger cars or car units. (eg busses, built around the same idea) and use the same system.
Then you just need to generate electric power as you do today.
“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be available. It would mean the atom would have to be shattered at will.”
-Einstein, 1932-
Even the brightest sometimes discount the potentials of creativity, hardwork and perseverence.
#10 – I thought you might say something like that. So you think it’s a good thing to have an entire population that has no freedom of action or independence and instead is completely dependent on others for getting anywhere.
The American sprirt that made this country strong is all about a population of independent go-getters that do for themselves. A “mess” transits system like you envision is the underpinning of exactly the opposite.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Another problem with mass transit is it can’t go everywhere, on every street. In many cities, buses run only on major streets. If you live a half mile from a bus route and your work is several blocks from one, it isn’t practical, especially in cities which experience snow and rain.
And even in a city like Las Vegas where I live which has very extensive bus service, schedules, changing buses, etc makes it unwieldy in many cases. For example, for me to get from my home (West side) to work (near Henderson) takes about 25 minutes. By bus would take probably three hours.
#15, Very good reasoning.
The only thing I might add to the battery requirements would be the need for a relatively fast charging system. If it is going to take several hours to recharge the vehicle, there is too much of a disincentive for using solely battery powered vehicles. If the car could get a couple hundred miles @ 60 mph from a half hour charge, it would virtually eliminate the long distance factor.
My Reply:
I don’t believe that nuclear energy is an environmental problem. Fossil fuels are the problem, no matter what Big Oil, Big Brother, Big Money or any other Big Fat Liars say. Also, if somebody does get sick from radiation, it is always caused by the Government’s test-detonating nuclear weapons in violation of international law. A 6-ft concrete wall and a wide buffer zone protects the public from radiation produced from a civilian power plant. Radioactive waste generated from a power plant in captured and safely disposed of.
A nuclear power plant is hundreds of time more fuel-efficient by mass than a conventional coal-fired power plant. However, the fuel is much more expensive to produce, and splitting atoms can’t be cheap. Of course there is the cost for the top-secret, top-security infrastructure and the enormous cost of waste disposal. Nuclear energy is not significantly more cost-efficient than fossil fuels. I think the best option is the renewable energy, such as photovoltaics & biomass energy, which is what Brazil did.
The problem is, photovoltaics and biomass require sunlight. We can’t have our energy relying on the weather! Ahh, that is where diversity comes in: we also need hydroelectric and wind power. Coal isn’t a bad option, either. Burning it directly to produce steam is extremely crude and inefficient. I think the best way is to gasify it and run it through a two-stage gas turbine (which burns the exhaust gasses from the turbine, which is preheated and high in oxygen content), or better yet, a fuel cell.
And yes, a fuel cell is better, because it is an electrochemical conversion device, which generates an electric current directly form oxidation of fuel without steam, mechanical force, or even an alternator.
Mass transport is highly efficient. I think everybody should share the car, or take the bus. It also seems to me that a ship or a train is much more efficient than a plane, brecause a plane attempts to defy gravity by simply blowing hot air. However, as we all know, flying through the air is faster, so it will never fade away.
Yes, some people favor ethanol and some favor batteries, but ethanol requires an internal-combustion engine, which is powered from the hot, expanding gasses, the very definition of inefficient. Batteries are an electrochemical conversion devices, but I think fuel cells are better, simply because hydrogen is found everywhere on Earth and the only wasteproduct is water vapor. It would be ridiculous not to use it. Yes, hydrogen requires energy to extract from water, which involves literally reversing the combustion process, but biomass has the potential of doing that using nothing but solar rays. Brazil is proof that energy independence can become a reality.