pinktentacle.com — With two 65-kilowatt fuel cells and six hydrogen tanks under the floor and a secondary battery on the roof, the clean train emits only water and runs without receiving juice from power lines. The train can travel at a maximum speed of 100 kph (60 mph) for 50 to 100 km (30 to 60 miles) without a hydrogen refill.
Oct 19, 2006 View in Crawl 4
brandnewdiggerOct 20, 2006
After watching that Who killed the Electric Car movie the other day, I was pretty pissed off at the automakers/oil companies until I saw this week's issue of AutoWeek magazine. There is a huge article on the 2008 Honda FCX which they got to drive in. It's a hybrid hydrogen/electric car that looks quite futuristic. It uses Lithium Ion batteries, has a max speed of 100 (but gets there quite fast) and has a max range of 270 miles before you have to refill. They also have a technology for home-based refueling stations that converts natural gas to hydrogen. It also provides electricity and heat for your house! Chevrolet also has a similar concept car (Chevrolet Sequel) that is basically 95% done except they say it will be too costly to produce until 2015-2025. Give me a freaking break! Then how come Honda will be selling basically a clone of this car in 2008? At least Chevy said that if Hydrogen technology fails, this car could easily be converted into 100% electric. But then they'll prolly kill it again by using Sony batteries :D
brishchikOct 20, 2006
Just wondering if you guys are aware that one of the first laws/bills that GWB scraped was Clinton's bill of forcing every car company to produce hybrid cars by 2006, I think. Recently the war prez talked about using hybrid cars and how it'd be helpful for the environment. Just goes to show what a hypocrite this guy is and how powerful grips oil and energy companies have on him and most other politicians, specially republicans. Cheney is nothing but their agent.
Closed AccountOct 20, 2006
Why use fuel cells to power electric engines? Why not directly inject hydrogen into a combustion engine like BMW does?
arpadOct 20, 2006
Sorry naz37, hydro-electric power does generate methane. The reservoir floods lot's of land that has organic material, i.e. plants, which are killed and decompose and give off methane. Quite a bit of methane and for about twenty years after the reservoir is filled.Solar's even worse. Do the arithmetic some time. All you need is a couple of numbers you can find pretty easily and you can figure out how much land has to be covered with solar cells to do generate X kilowatts of electricity. It's gets worse when you work out what's required to generate X kilowatt/hours of electricity. Then you have to have storage capacity and two or three times as much in the way of solar cells as it takes to just generate that electricity. They don't work so good at night and people still want their electricity.I haven't looked at wind power all that much other then to read that people who have to live in any reasonable proximity to wind generators are not fans of wind power. Oh yeah, they're even uglier then high voltage transmission lines and they practically cover the landscape where they're built.What all that means is that wind/solar/hydro aren't the pollution-free magic bullets they're touted to be. Like anything else they have a downside but the environazis (not sure I care for the term but what the hell) never talk about the downside and try to suppress discussion about the downside.
naz37Oct 20, 2006
while methane may be produced by the creation of hydroelectric plant, the volume of gas produced would be tiny compared to the amount of carbon dioxide produced by coal or oil plants.(even given that methane is worse) i live within a kilometer r so from a hydroelectric plant and have never heard of methane being a problem. what you say about solar is right. besides i live Ireland, solar powered calculators have trouble working here. lolwind power is great but it is only part of the solution. in relation to them being an eyesore, a large number of the turbines here are placed off shore where there not visable.ultimately my point was electrically powered vehicles are the way forward. at the moment generating the electicity to power a train with a fuel cell is a good idea as it is easier to store large volumes fuel/energy. having overhead lines is expensive and disruptive to put in place, not to mention a very large amount of the energy is lost due to heat along the wire. Using lithium ion batteries to store the energy to drive a train up to 100km would be far too expensive and would take a very long time to charge.todays battery power is perfect to power a car or motorbike.
arpadOct 20, 2006
Any notion about how much additional base capacity would have to be added to support an electric car fleet? Somebody must've done the calculation.
apeweekOct 20, 2006
Since electric vehicles charge at night, during off-peak power generation, at least 30 million cars can charge before upgrades to the grid are necessary.