A new study might put another road block in front of the prospect of a near term commercial hydrogen vehicle release, while giving the plug-in vehicle movement a nice boost. The study was authored by Ryan McCarthy at the University of California, Davis and published in the Journal of Power Sources. The ground-breaking study, entitled “Determining marginal electricity for near-term plug-in and fuel cell vehicle demands in California: Impacts on vehicle greenhouse gas emissions”, examines the emissions impact of hydrogen and plug-in vehicles versus their gas counterparts.
Lowering carbon emissions to fight warming, along with high fuel prices and global-political instability, has been a key driving factor for the adoption of hybrids and alternative fuels. The new study, though, judged hydrogen vehicles to be an utter failure at that objective, in their current state. The study concluded, “All of the pathways except for [fuel cell vehicles] using hydrogen from electrolysis reduce [greenhouse gas] emissions compared to ICEs and [hybrid electric vehicles].”
It doesn’t dissuade further research into hydrogen vehicles; it simply indicates they are unlikely to be ready for showtime anytime soon.
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Hydrogen is not a power source in itself. It could be thought of as the transport mechanism for another form, such as solar energy. It’s not like we have hydrogen wells to tap.
#32 The entire universe is chock full of hydrogen, it’s everywhere and it’s the most abundant element everywhere. Problem is, here on earth it likes to be combined with other elements. Like oxygen in H20, separate the H from water and you have a huge source of fuel. Unfortunately the process of separation requires energy, so if you use solar and/or wind to get it, you have a huge source of sustainable fuel to burn in your SUV’s.
Hydrogen has always been a fraudulent technology pushed by the oil industry to keep electric battery powered cars out of the hands of the public.
They KNOW it is expensive, they KNOW it has limited range, they KNOW it will never be viable, they KNOW it will never be practical.
What they don’t want you to know is a hydrogen car is just an electric car with an astonishingly expensive and nonviable power source.
Swap it out with a battery and it suddenly becomes cheap and practical. They don’t want to hand over control of energy to the coal, nuclear and alternative energy industry.
There is no natural source of hydrogen gas, it is manufactured. Cracking water, methanol or propane with electrolysis to extract hydrogen uses more energy than that produced as heat by the hydrogen cell and the lost heat and kinetic energy of the electric traction engine of the vehicle. So it is a loose, loose scenario, from the hydrogen generation station to the rubber on the road. GM’s maths, needed help from the beginning, but I guess that they weren’t listening to their engineers.
Futuristic movies predicted flying cars in 2020 … so no worries
After reading through a lot of these posts, it makes me wonder where some of you came up with all these facts and figures. I don’t happen to go along with the naysayers about Hydrogen not being a viable solution to the energy and fuel problem. None of you know what is going to develope in the next 8-10 years.
Just think, if we’d listened to some of you over the years, we’d have clean air, a new ice-age upon us, up to our nipples in horse-shit, and a world-wide shortage of wax for candles. Everyone knows an electric light bulb will never work! Man will never fly, or he’d have wings…right? And oh yeah…electrolyzers in cars making hydrogen for a fuel boost don’t work either do they? Even though, a lot of us have built them, installed them, and found that they do work! The only ones that say they don’t work, are people that have never tried it. http://ebuyersreviews.com/gasconversion/
While some are arguing a case against Hydrogen, the same could be said for electric cars. What happens to the batterys after they are worn out and old, and start laying around and start falling apart? How big is battery going to have to be, so I can drive farther than the city limits where I live?
The technology is coming guys…the sky isn’t falling.