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- Jammerdelray, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1it's a good move but the untied states alone cannot accomplish this...it will take all nations to adopt it when the technology behind it advances alot more
- Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Hydrogen cars still have some real obstacles to overcome.
One is a simple matter of range. Hydrogen fuel-cell powered cars, at present, can only get a little more than half of the driving distance of a gasoline powered engine, assuming equal amounts of hydrogen and gasoline by weight. Yes, hydrogen is cheaper to produce, but if you have to use twice as much of it then the benefits aren't as great. This can't be solved by simply using bigger tanks in the cars either, as that adds weight to the car which reduces its efficency rather sharply.
Secondly, while wind powered electrolysis is indeed a good, clean, way to generate hydrogen from water, if you were to convert every car overnight, there's simply not enough space to stick all these windmills. Yes, you could have a freakin' ton of them in the American southwest, and get enough power to do it, but then you have the issue of transporting this hydrogen all over the country. For it to be economically feasible, every region needs to have hydrogen generating plants relatively close by, and a lot of areas simply are not suited to wind production. Electricity travels a long way on power lines, but not cross country. Admittedly, many areas with an overabundance of clean power (southeast US, for example, has tons of water generated power thanks to the TVA, and could produce lots more with some major engineering efforts) could make it quite feasible for those regions, but simple population pressure in the bigger cities would make it infeasible for lots of reasons. Can't substitute non-clean power (like coal) for electrolysis either, as that simply moves the pollution production out of the car and into the power plant. And it'd produce more pollution rather than less, as the hydrogen electrolysis stage is less efficent than burning gasoline, by a long shot.
Fuel cells also have a problem in that they do give up power at high efficency, but they don't do so quickly. An electric car powered by a hydrogen fuel cell has a max speed of around 70mph or so without using batteries to assist. Average freeway speeds across the country are far higher than that, speed limits aside.
There's basically no chance of hydrogen explosions being a problem however, which is the usual boogeyman trotted out in these discussions. It's a simple matter of overengineering your production system. And when a hydrogen producing plant does go up in flames, it generally only destroys the plant. Hydrogen explosions go upwards fast and produce less heat than gasoline fires. Look at the plant in St. Louis that blew all to hell last week. Utterly destroyed the plant, and made lots of debris, but the damage was largely confined to the plant itself. Looked scary as hell on CNN, but the actual damage was confined to one area. - bontux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I bet you will if oil goes 100+ dollars a barrel. Sadly this will probably be the real driving force behind any change.
- b00m, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Prices would have to be reduced on cars with hydrogen fuel cells. This could be accomplished by removing all taxes on these cars.
- Visigoth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is all well and good but I wouldn't start buying stock yet. There are more issues to solve before the buying public is ready to strap themselves in to an air gas bomb and drive down main street. Forget about an Apollo program for the cars and support a new space program, the technology developed in the necessary research will trickle out and the cars will become a reality.
- DeVryGuy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Thing is, the technology really needs to advance a hell of a lot more and a hell of a lot faster. The new hydrogen based infrastructure needs to be in place at least partially before the rising cost of oil puts our economy in shambles.
- DWatch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Probably the best way to get America, then the world, off gas it to make it financially obvious to the consumer. Make vehicle inspections manditory for every state, and charge the vehicle owners a tax based on emmisions from the tail pipe. Hydrogen internal combustion engines and fuel cells would be the least polluting. Followed by other exotic fuels, like ethanol, biodeisel, etc. Hybrid cars would be next, followed by the average car on the road today, then way, way up on the list of polluters is older cars that have no emmision control devices. They would pay the highest fees. The only wildcard, battery powered cars. You would have to have someway of verifying the electricity to charge the car came from a renewable source, and not a gas or coal powered source.
- NotalesS, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0SOrry but i'll never trade in my RX-7 for a hydreden car.
- Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0drall.kj: Excess water vapor, unlike CO2, will cause it to rain more frequently, because the air can only sustain so much water vapor. At some point, it falls out. So it's not a greenhouse gas, as such. As for excess cloud cover, the area under the cloud cools off when it rains, the cloud itself raises the earth's albedo and reflects more sunlight back into space.
CO2 is not really a greenhouse gas either though. Excess levels can cause warming, yes, however those levels balance out over time as the excess warmth and excess CO2 causes increased plant growth. It might not be good for humans, that's up for debate, but it's definitely good for plant life. - IraqManiac, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0hello environmentalists! I mean yeah, these hydrogen powered cars will save the planet!
stupid - drall.kj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0ignore all the tech. Problems and infrastructure problems with hydrogen. Hydrogen cars still produce green house gases. Water Vapor in the atmosphere can still affect the climate just like C02.
At night if the sky is full of cloud, due to the extra water from all the hydrogen cars, then the planet can not cool off.
I do think that fuel cell are the future but they are not free of all environmental problems
just my opinion, we all no that opinions are like @$$ holes - DWatch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0doh...sorry for the tripple post :(
stupid me - DWatch, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Probably the best way to get America, then the world, off gas it to make it financially obvious to the consumer. Make vehicle inspections manditory for every state, and charge the vehicle owners a tax based on emmisions from the tail pipe. Hydrogen internal combustion engines and fuel cells would be the least polluting. Followed by other exotic fuels, like ethanol, biodeisel, etc. Hybrid cars would be next, followed by the average car on the road today, then way, way up on the list of polluters is older cars that have no emmision control devices. They would pay the highest fees. The only wildcard, battery powered cars. You would have to have someway of verifying the electricity to charge the car came from a renewable source, and not a gas or coal powered source.
- DWatch, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Probably the best way to get America, then the world, off gas it to make it financially obvious to the consumer. Make vehicle inspections mandatory for every state, and charge the vehicle owners a tax based on emissions from the tail pipe. Hydrogen internal combustion engines and fuel cells would be the least polluting. Followed by other exotic fuels, like ethanol, biodeisel, etc. Hybrid cars would be next, followed by the average car on the road today, then way, way up on the list of polluters is older cars that have no emission control devices. They would pay the highest fees. The only wild card, battery powered cars. You would have to have someway of verifying the electricity to charge the car came from a renewable source, and not a gas or coal powered source.
Throw in a bonus for high-mileage cars. After all, its not wise to make an emission free car (that still requires energy to produce the hydrogen) and make it a completely inefficient hot rod type car that gets 1 mile to a kilo of hydrogen.
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