What is Digg?113 Comments
- prisoner24601, on 10/11/2007, -1/+22@ aliengoods
If you seriously believe GM is going to be putting fuel cell cars on the streets you're delusional.
As unusual as it may be in the corporate world today, GM is one gigantic corporation that is shaking the "business as usual" mindset. They genuinely have read the handwriting on the wall and understand the future isn't going to be one where CAFE standards are anywhere near as low as they are today. The best part is that they have (though some serious hard knocks like the EV1 project) learned a lot about how to leapfrog what is out there today. The Prius is nice, but a serial hybrid is going to be a radical improvement over parallel hybrids. Having an all-electric drive will radically reduce maintenance, eliminate the transmission entirely, and (eventually) replace one central drive motor with four smaller ones embedded one in each wheel.
Your kids are going to look back on the cars we drive today and laugh like we do at a horse and buggy. And the GM Volt is going to be the very first production model that really brings us into a whole new (and radically superior) generation of cars.
You can criticize, but it's clear you neither understand the technology nor the realities of the current auto industry. Change is *going* to happen and kudos to GM for understanding that and being determined to lead the way. - pathy, on 10/11/2007, -3/+22aliengoods,
I'd say they wouldn't mind taking away a few Prius sales. - PaulC, on 10/11/2007, -2/+20Aliengoods, why would they invest millions in R&D and have 500 engineers working on a technology that they don't plan on using?
- prisoner24601, on 10/11/2007, -1/+18@ TheMadRhino
There are just too many problems with fuel cell technology.
I really think that our grandparent's generation have every right to rise up and hand a gigantic philosophical smackdown to this entire generation. Their attitude was "yes we CAN go to the moon" and they did. The basic chemistry behind fuel cells is incredibly simple and all that needs to be done now is to resolve the durability and compactness issues. These are not trivial, but they are only a fraction of the challenges that we have solved in the past and what's at stake here is actually far more important that a trip to the moon was.
We absolutely CAN do this, and I'll be at my local Chevy dealer to buy a Volt just as soon as they are ready. And the genius of the Volt design is the modularity of the system. GM will resolve all the electric drive and battery issues while using a traditional gas generator to do the battery charging. They will have successfully transitioned from parallel hybrids (gas + electric drivetrain) to serial hybrid (all-electric drivetrain where gas is used only to generate electricity) even before the fuel cells are even ready. They don't NEED fuel cells for the first generation, but even Volt 1.0 with a gas electricity generator will be radically more fuel efficient than the Prius type technology. Then when the fuel cells are perfected, the Volt 2.0 will come out with only ONE change which is that the gar electricity generator module will be pulled out and replaced with a fuel cell module.
GM is handling this in an absolutely BRILLIANT manner. They deserve congratulations and encouragement. - drjekelmrhyde, on 10/11/2007, -2/+16Volt
- rwallen, on 10/11/2007, -3/+15In an old article from 2004 I remember reading they expected to be in production by 2008. It seems like they are on track.
- bobcrotch, on 10/11/2007, -2/+13yay for the feel good article of the day
- Volred, on 10/11/2007, -1/+12This sounds like something you would do in a simcity game.
* move 500 workers from R&D to production
* increase taxes 1%
* build more roads - BESTenemy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10 Why do they keep pursuing an inefficient technology? Cause it's the closest thing they can get to the existing financial infrastructure model. Having something new, yet have cars require a corporate fuel suppier, frequent service, hight internal complexity that prevents people from tampering with their own vehicles.
Electric cars are too cheap to produce, need no maintanence. I've been at the UBC 12th annual electric car convention 6 days ago. There was a 1950's Detroit electric carriage. The thing was in perfect shape, in running condition. Throughout exploitation the batteries been only replaced once. Get that - once in over 50 years!!! Only because the metal casing of the original ones had rusted through.
Now, which car manufacturer, in the right mind, would sell a car that lasted for 50 years with no service required?
There were some modern fleet cars there too. The only liquid under the hood was washer fluid. 3 component deal - battery, current controller, motor and in half the cases - transmission. Simple designs.
At this point the most viable option is doing home conversions of gas cars into electric. Can be done under $7000 in less than 200 hours.
Waiting for car manufacturers to step in is pointless. They're not going to switch to anything that would reduce their profits. For them, the only economically viable option is hydrogen, cause then they can still be the dealer, the service man and the fuel supplier. That's all they care about. - graviplana, on 10/11/2007, -4/+14Watch this company turn it around within 10 years. Great news.
- cosmicpoet, on 10/11/2007, -1/+10The turn around began a few years ago. Sadly, most large corporate turn-arounds start with a large lay-off. The hope is, however, that the lay-offs, coupled with new product launches (the '08 CTS from Cadillac) will turn the company around to the point where they can, I don't know, HIRE people back and become a force again.
C'mon GM, show 'em that Detroit can make good cars again. - jackmon, on 10/11/2007, -3/+10Why is everyone who mentions the difficulty of obtaining hydrogen getting dugg down?
I guess I'll get dugg down for this. - misterdiggles, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8Agreed. Hydrogen is actually very difficult to obtain. It's expensive right now to produce. I think there's a troll from GM lurking around
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8Volt!
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8Volt ftw
- ikzeidegek, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6Because the world loves to believe there are free and easy fixes. Surely the guy who first said that bloodletting is not the perfect remedy for all afflictions would have gotten dug down very badly.
- brimg87, on 10/11/2007, -3/+8This isn't the 80s, have you looked at a GM car lately? Aura, Sky, Acadia, Lucerne, CTS, 08 Vue, 08 Malibu, Silverado? I could go on, but I think you get it.
- ilselu1, on 10/11/2007, -3/+8As a salesperson of 2 GM brands, I am excited about this in more ways that one. I look forward to GM taking the lead in the consumer hydrogen market as they did in the transit buses, and also looking forward to being able to say, "Sure" when someone comes through the door asking if we sell a Hybrid vehicle. I'm not talking about a hybrid Tahoe either.
- SilasTomorrow, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6GM is working really hard, and succeeding, but some of you ignorant sods keep parroting "GM builds crap" without knowing what you are talking about. They are building some damn nice cars right now!
They are going both directions, both electric + flex-fuel (gas or ethanol), AND the hydrogen fuel-cell. It is a real effort, and they know that if they don't keep building cars that SAVE FUEL and WORK, they are going to get their ass kicked into history. What kills me is that some of you probably would like that, but I'm amazed that because they built some ***** products in the past, that they are beyond redemption in your eyes. Give credit where credit is due. - brimg87, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6...Even though GM produces more cars that get over 30 MPG than any other manufacturer... Facts people, facts!
- Chandon, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Here's how that statistic works:
There's a requirement in the USA for average mileage of cars sold. This average mileage is higher than what the car companies would be selling otherwise, so the car manufacturers had two choices: 1.) Raise their mileage slightly across the product line. 2.) Offer a couple of extremely high mileage vehicles. ;; GM chose #1, Toyota chose #2. So GM has a bunch of cars in the 30-35 mpg range, and Toyota has one in the 50-55mpg range and a bunch in the 20-25 mpg range - yes, that means that by buying a Prius you allow Toyota to sell another Tundra Crewmax. - SonicRush, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4I say we use nuclear power to make the hydrogen, and then launch the radioactive waste into the sun.
- Chandon, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Here's the thing: There's no advantage to producing Hydrogen. All it does is makes you do one more energy conversion - which means more efficiency losses. The only exception I can think of is if our only power source is nuclear, but the luddite activists won't even let us build more nukes, much less all nukes.
The thing to compare Hydrogen cars to is Diesel cars. With Diesel, there's a path to a more environmentally-sound, efficient, and cheaper production method than anything yet proposed for Hydrogen (algae ponds), and it requires no technology changes on the part of the end user - todays diesel cars will keep working forever. If you want to have cleaner / more efficient cars, people can move to plug-in diesel / electric hybrids at their leisure, those will work fine with any diesel fuel. And we already have the distribution system in place.
As for government policy to speed this up: 1.) States like California and Massachussetts need to stop discriminating against diesel engines for having different emissions profiles than gasoline engines. Today, diesel is cleaner overall but emits enough more sulphur than gasoline to fail the gasoline-centric emissions standards in those states. 2.) Slowly move taxes from diesel fuel to gasoline to promote uptake of diesel vehicles. Once demand for diesel goes up, biodiesel supply will go up too. - marm0t, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6They are making an effort to progress this technology. I don't understand why some of you can go and say "Look at the EV1 its going to happen again!" Its that same kind of attitude that would have kept us from going to space or following through with other projects and technologies that failed on their first attempts. This is a new and experimental technology, rarely if ever do people get this stuff right the first time.
Edit: Prisoner had the same idea - glmory, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4"1kg of hydrogen use less water than making 1 gallon of gas."
It is not the water that is the issue. It is the energy. You waste energy on the conversion, and the vast majority of energy comes from fossil fuels. Until we replace our reliance on fossil fuels for electricity Hydrogen is nothing but wishful thinking.
"If you have a major use for hydrogen, companies will find a cheap efficient way to produce hydrogen"
They already have one. They make it from natural gas. However it is more efficient to just use the natural gas directly. Once again, we are stuck with the situation that we should be putting money into non carbon energy sources, and when that is working than we can come up with dozens of ways to use that energy(batteries, compressed gas, hydrogen, algae biodiesel created from artificial lighting, carbon dioxide chemistry to make hydrocarbons from CO2 and water like plants do).
At the present course we are on in twenty years we will still be getting most our energy from fossil fuels. That is what we should be putting our effort into ending. The billions of dollars on hydrogen powered vehicles is wasted until we get to that point, and likely even when we do get to that point. - Nick42, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4022a is absolutely correct. Hydrogen is NOT an energy source, it's simply a way to store energy, and batteries can do this much better. The whole idea makes no practical sense, it just makes the companies behind it look good to people who don't know any better.
- jeffyjones, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4So why are people digging down comments that think this is a bad idea given the hydrogen supply problem? Give an intellectual argument as to why that isn't true. It doesn't take any brain power to click the thumbs down button.
- grumpyrain, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3I am not sure why a lot of folk here are being dugg down.
Fuel Cells are batteries. With technology available today, they are batteries with significant drawbacks.
While an electric vechicle can get close to 70kWh of usable energy for every 100kWh produced at the power plant, a fuel-cell vechicle using electrolysis and compression can not get 25kWh.
Source: http://www.physorg.com/news85074285.html
That is an incredible inefficiency, an average 'unleaded' family car would have a lower CO2 emission and a fuel cell vehicle using todays energy mix. Clearly it is more efficient to use a Lithium based battery, their main drawbacks being cost and recharge time. In terms of costs, I can assure you that fuel cells lose out well and truly with today's technology. If the batteries that are being touted to have a 10 minute recharge time expected to see commercial use in the next 12 months do eventuate, then the fuel cell to power a vechicle will have a hard time becoming feasible. - PaulC, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5pogfreak, I agree that they might be overhyped. Fuel cells sound awesome, but the question remains as to how they plan on obtaining hydrogen cleanly. Burning fossil fuels to get clean-burning hydrogen just doesn't make sense. The only way to make this technology viable is to use green, renewable energy to separate the hydrogen. Otherwise we're back where we started.
- glmory, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4@error601
want to tell me how to create that much hydrogen without using fossil fuels? Right now all the hydrogen we use comes from natural gas, you are better off burning the natural gas.
Sure, nuclear, solar, and wind could work. No one is putting anywhere near the kind of money into those technologies to make that happen though - Chandon, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Don't lump Biodiesel in with Ethanol.
You can get a diesel vehicle today, Biodiesel can be manufactured with a positive energy balance today. Using currently experimental (but proven) methods like desert algae farms, we could supply the entire fuel demand of the USA without impacting food production. The key thing here is that, unlike stuff like fuel cells, this doesn't require both the cars and the fuel infrastructure to completely change at the same time. - MyNameIsJoe, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2- Build it and he will come.
If you have a major use for hydrogen, companies will find a cheap efficient way to produce hydrogen. People are working on the problem now, but the market for hydrogen is not that big at this point, so the R&D going into solving the problem is also limited. Now that it appears that there could be a major consumer market for hydrogen if the problem of producing hydrogen is solved, there should be a lot more R&D dollars going towards finding the solution. - grumpyrain, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2It is indeed a basic chemistry, but addressing the two methods you suggest.
1. From water, Electrolysis is only about 50% efficient while battery charging is close to 90% efficient.
2. From Natural Gas, you get more energy out of it if you were to just burn it. - JDoggqx, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3@Paul
I watched a program called Future Car on Discovery recently that said there is are hydrogen refueling stations in Iceland that generate the hydrogen on-site via solar cells and electrolysis (IIRC.) If that is true, then production of the Hydrogen might be easier than we think and could remove the cost of infrastructure that gas needs. - arwalke, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2@SonicRush
...better yet, instead of launching nuclear waste into the sun rather dangerously, why don't we just reprocess our spent nuclear fuel to reduce waste, increase the efficiency of the fuel cycle, and oppen Yucca Mountain (much to Harry Reid's consternation) and secure our vast amounts of highly radioactive waste being stored in pools at nuclear power plants across the country? Nuclear's the way to go, we just need to make a few changes to how we deal with the fuel and waste (which reprocessing could drastically reduce). - cyfer2000, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/4212844.html
$3 per kg, 1kg of hydrogen has equivalent amount of energy of 1 gallon gas. You can use fussion, safer fission, wind, solar... to power this thing. - arwalke, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2This, paired with GM's recent investment in new nuclear (fission) power technology, is leading me to believe that fuel cell vehicles may be a real possibility within the next 15-20 years. GM seems to have the right idea on how to tackle environmental issues by bringing the Volt relatively quickly (offering substantial economy improvements) and using that to segue to fuel cell vehicles fueled-up on cheaply produced hydrogen extracted using clean, efficient nuclear power. Kudos to GM.
- airwalkery2k, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2It's not that I am against fuel cells. They could work--and I'm sure that car companies would love to build them because the complexity of them is equal to the gasoline car.
But GM apparently spent over $1 billion on the EV1 project, according to GM themselves. A lot of this came from the US Government. And yet they didn't even attempt to sell the cars beyond a few leases that were promptly retracted when California stopped its electric car requirement. It's enough to get one skeptical about GM's motives. - misterdiggles, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2They really aren't practical outside of india
- Error601, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Do you people just pull this crap out of you ass? Are you not aware of the GM public transportation systems that are far more environmentally beneficial than an overpriced little buggy?
- Chandon, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4I don't know why 022a is getting dug down here. I haven't seen a good method for producing Hydrogen described, nor have I seen an argument that hydrogen is cheaper to distribute than Diesel (/ Biodiesel).
The method for powering cars that makes the most sense among the ones I've heard is the Diesel / plug-in electric hybrid. We have the infrastructure in place to distribute both diesel fuel and electricity. We can make Diesel out of anything - petroleum, coal, switchgrass, algae farms. We have both diesel vehicles and diesel supply now, so people can start converting today. There's one less inefficient conversion step than hydrogen - for both the electricity and the diesel. - brimg87, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2@misterdiggles
Nice try, actually it means the most individual models, not the amount of cars they build. That means you have more options when you're in the market for a 30+ MPG vehicle from GM than anyone else. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -4/+6Fuel Cells are completely over-hyped. Toyota acknowledges as much, in that they aren't putting all of their resources behind FC development. They believe it's just one part of a number of approaches, and the most efficient vehicles for now and the near future are going to be hybrids. As electrics get better and cheaper, they'll start to take additional marketshare... but seriously, traditional gas and diesel engines aren't exactly going to disappear any time soon. As a matter of fact, super-efficient diesels are more effiecient than current hybrids.
- Nick42, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2The trouble is, people see "it's not practical!" and think "oh, well, people used to say gasoline wasn't practical, and look now!". However, the trouble is not that it couldn't be done. The trouble is that unlike gasoline, hydrogen cannot simply be dug up out of the ground. We have to *spend* significantly *more* energy to create it than we get out of it.
- tmcdigg, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Yes, I agree.. it may very well take bankruptcy of the major 3 US auto makers before fuel cell becomes mass production in the US.... at least one of whom (cough, cough, ford) may not survive
Power to the people! Fuel cells for everyone. But don't kid yourselves.. gasoline ain't going anywhere for quite some time.. the phase-in-phase-out will take 15-50 years.. and sad to say some of us won't be around for those paradise days.. - glmory, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1"022a is absolutely correct. Hydrogen is NOT an energy source, it's simply a way to store energy, and batteries can do this much better. The whole idea makes no practical sense, it just makes the companies behind it look good to people who don't know any better."
I just can't understand why so few people don't see this. We got most of our electricity from fossil fuels. If we use electricity to make hydrogen today we end up putting more carbon into the atmosphere than we would just burning Gasoline. The only way Hydrogen cars make any sense at all is if we manage to produce all our electricity from carbon neutral sources.
What we need to invest in now is Nuclear Fusion, safer Nuclear Fission, Wind, and Solar and perhaps biodiesel from algae. All other ways of producing energy lead to global warming, wars in the middle east, and other such chaos. - glmory, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3Toyota sure has a better environmental record than GM. I would take their opinion on environmental issues to mean a lot more than that of GM.
- Error601, on 10/11/2007, -0/+12009...that's quite a claim. I didn't think anyone was anywhere near cost parity. The next trick will be to get fuel stations to start stocking hydrogen which will probably be kicked off using natural gas. That doesn't help with emissions but gets the money flowing to pay for more infrastructure.
- Loudtyper, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Toyota is doing the safe thing guys, but honda will stay in the game with their fuel cell car that will be released soon.
Until I see a affordable fuel cell on the market, i dont think car makers are going to jump ship on hybrids anytime soon.
http://www.automotive.com/new-cars/27/hybrid/index.html
^^ almost 7 companies, and more in the next year - cyfer2000, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2The technology I mentioned above enables a distributed hydrogen manufacturing. Each gas station can install such a machine, make and store hydrogen locally. There is no distribution needed.
Compare to battery, hydrogen has 4 main advantages. 1, faster refilling. 2, not affected by environment temperature. 3, doesn't wear out after 300 cycles. 4, no disposal pollution.
Also, making 1kg of hydrogen use less water than making 1 gallon of gas. -
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