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Indeed. What about efficiency? Something in the back of my mind tells me that current hydrogen fuel cells are not very energy efficient when the entire process from power source to vehicle motion is considered. But that's not a rigorous analysis. Just something I might have read once. I did a quick web search and came up with this -- https://www.greenoptimistic.co... -- which certainly seems to indicate that H-Fuel-Cells have some problems. But I'm not sure that it's the full story. Anyone actually know anything about the efficiency of H-Fuel-Cells when used to power trains?

My mistake. Apparently gasoline vehicles are built around a skateboard like this. Silly me for not knowing that!

My mistake. "The engines are in front" - my dang lying eyes convinced me that they were built into the skateboard between the wheels. Silly me for trusting them! My dang eyes also lied to me about there being a frunk where you'd normally find an engine on an ICE. I better have them checked out.

Silly, silly me.

And you're right. It totally makes sense to continue to build highly suboptimal vehicles, with poorer handling, space usage, assembly economics, and shorter range, indefinitely, rather than designing for an entirely different powertrain and using that as the basis for all of your upcoming EVs. Your logic is impeccable: spend a fortune developing and refining the new powertrain, making huge gigafactories, etc, but then jam all your hardware developed at high cost into a vehicle that wasn't designed for it because you can't be bothered to do a design refresh.

It's so obvious now. I'm such a fool.

H2 is very inefficient compared to batteries.
This diagram explains it in detail...
http://cdn.greenoptimistic.com...
Bottom line, only about 20% efficient compared to battery 69% efficient.
More detail here:
http://www.greenoptimistic.com...

H2 is very inefficient compared to batteries.
This diagram explains it in detail...
http://cdn.greenoptimistic.com...
Bottom line, only about 20% efficient compared to battery 69% efficient.
More detail here:
http://www.greenoptimistic.com...

http://www.greenoptimistic.com...
2012 increased efficiency in PZE design by 25% by reducing coating area.

And, then it says, you just put hundreds of thousands of these things under highways, and start reaping a non-trivial amount of electricity

Long term, if solar keeps improving the way it does I would expect cars just have their own panels:
http://www.greenoptimistic.com...

But it's still a long way away.

http://www.greenoptimistic.com...

I posted a brief list of some interesting new storage technologies last week:

There have been MANY teams working on this, for several years, with lots of VC/R&D, and several new products are going to hit the market it the next couple of years: liquid metal batteries, sodium ion batteries, compressed air storage, sodium air batteries, artificial leaf, another artificial leaf, flywheels, super-capacitors, etc... Most of these are intended for grid-level storage, but a few are quite suitable for transportation as well. In particular, sodium-air batteries have the advantage of light weight, since one of their reactants (air) is available on the fly. And the two "artificial leaf" technologies can be used to create fuel from sunlight.

[posting as AC here, to preserve mod points]

some hybrids pump engine noise through speakers to appease the driver

They do that for safety too, not just to appease the driver. Domino's Pizza in the Netherlands made a marketing coup with this a few years ago when they switched to electric delivery scooters. They added audio of a guy going "VROOoooooommmmmm! Lecker-lecker-lecker... Vrrrooooommmm!" (Apparently, "lecker" means "yummy" in Dutch.)

invent some better ways to store more energy

There have been MANY teams working on this, for several years, with lots of VC/R&D, and several new products are going to hit the market it the next couple of years: liquid metal batteries, sodium ion batteries, compressed air storage, sodium air batteries, artificial leaf, another artificial leaf, flywheels, super-capacitors, etc... Most of these are intended for grid-level storage, but a few are quite suitable for transportation as well. In particular, sodium-air batteries have the advantage of light weight, since one of their reactants (air) is available on the fly. And the two "artificial leaf" technologies can be used to create fuel from sunlight.

The other fire involved tripping over a 50 pound metal spike at 70mph, causing it to upend violently and drive itself through the underside of the car with the force of a cannon.

This one's easy to spin: "Tesla hits piece of metal on the road, catches fire." Problem was it hit a piece of metal on the road while going incredibly fast--fast enough for a piece of mild steel to puncture a 1/4 inch aluminum plate. Go find a 6mm thick piece of aluminum and try putting a nail through it. In theory, if the metal flipped upwards, it would skid off the bottom of the plate; if the ground end caught so it rotated, it would still skid across the aluminum plate. In reality, if you hit it hard enough, it'll either create a dimple or (more likely) it'll hit with enough force to wedge itself, creating enough friction that it tilts upward rather than skids--and if you're moving fast enough, that's enough energy to drive the fucking thing through the underside of the battery.

The other fires--fires caused by faulty wiring or wall chargers, who knows--were caused at the wall.

So the plate was replaced by a plate that can withstand retarded morons who should not be driving. That's basically what it amounts to. If you see a rusty trailer hitch in the road, try not to hit it so hard that it lifts your car up into the air. You should also try not to crash into a concrete barrier wall at 110mph, then through a reinforced buttressed concrete wall, then headlong into a tree. These are things they recommend against doing in driver's ed.

Toyota has managed to reduce the amount of platinum in the fuel cell to about 30g, just over $1,600 worth and is looking to reduce this even further.

I wonder what makes the cars cost $50k-$100k then. Is it just the low volume production? Are there things about fuel cells other than the platinum that make them expensive?

They already found out 2 years ago that readily available chicken feathers, when carbonized, make perfect carbon nanotubes to store hydrogen. I wonder if using platinum doping with that will have more benefits than costs associated to it. See http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2009/06/25/carbonized-chicken-feathers-hydrogen-storage/ for details on the feathers.

Make it shiny and you've got one hell of an energy collector.
  Solar Cooker
  Solar Furnace
  Solar Destruction

Why keep banging out heads into the PV wall when you can have cheap hybrid panels that convert 75% of incident energy?

http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2009/04/21/zenithsolar-solar-panels/

Settle for your 20% PV electricity and focus on capturing waste heat.

If you are saying, "That's negligible", you are only proving the point that our rationalization for using these alternative energies does not consider the effects on a grand scale. Driving from my house to work also has a negligible environmental effect. Or if I burn my trash, it doesn't have a single noticeable affect on the environment. You start to notice the affect when your system of energy collection and use starts to scale. Instead of debating which energy to use, we should be debating which consequence we can live with and address why we are so hungry for power and is it all really needed?

Here is a short list of just some of the power systems at our disposal and just some of the environmental consequences of a fully scaled system.

Oil: Increased atmospheric carbon in the form of CO and CO2. Finite supply.
Coal: Increased atmospheric carbon in the form of CO and CO2. Finite supply.
HydroElectric: Environmental effects to the ecosystems displaced. Finite viable locations.
Nuclear: Radioactive byproducts in the from collection, usage, and waste is not tolerated by biological systems.
Hydrogen Power: Inefficiencies may damage ozone and have unpredictable atmospheric consequences.
Wind Power: Damage to environment including birds. Large scale deployments will affect weather patterns.
Solar Power: Damage to environment including plants. Effects on convection in atmosphere.

Even if you talk about collecting energy outside the whole environmental system and just 'beaming' it to earth, there is STILL a cost to the fact that you consumed it here and you added some energy to the system that wouldn't normally be here.

Personal conservation is by far the best system of all. It is a system that is agreeable to tree-huggers, Muslims, Christians, poets, and philosophers alike. The only ones who don't like that concept are the despoilers who seek to get gain at the expense of something they wrongly feel that they 'own'.

That may be true. What about nuclear batteries however?

New 'Nuclear Battery' Runs 10 Years, 10 Times More Powerful

Nuclear Battery in Your Laptop

I know they're not available now but it looks like they may not be too far off. (I actually don't know much about these so if someone knows why they wouldn't be viable I'd be interested to know)