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Hybrid Powertrains and Hydrogen Fuel Cells
An Anonymous Coward writes "Nice article from cars.com detailing a panel dicussion with reps from Chrysler Group, Ford, General Motors and American Honda agreeing that hybrid powertrains and hydrogen fuel cells are the future of automotive propulsion, and discussing their companies' different approaches in both areas."
Please oh please, whatever you do just don't make them like this
Starsucks
Indeed!
Living out here in farm country we routinely deal with a large amount of "bio-mass" (I like that term, gonna make this farmboy sound educated down at The Well some evening). To be able to readily utilize it to produce hydrogen before spreading it on the fields would be a good thing. It could also help stabilize the rural economies.
Right now ethanol plants and soybean processing plants are being constructed to provide for the increasing demands of renewable fuels and lubricants. Let's face it, internal combustion engines will be around for some time. Anything we can do to wean ourselves off of imported oil while at the same time benefiting agriculture and the rural communities is a good thing, IMHO.
WRT hydrogen powered vehicles. Since the byproduct is water, perhaps it would be a good idea to collect the water as the car is driven until the next refueling stop. Imagine in the larger cities where commuters would exchange the collected water for a portion of their fuel at each refill. The water collected is then delivered to the community water supply and filtered. This could have a positive impact on the future of water use in the larger urban areas lessening the demand on ground water wells and reservoirs.
Think of the impact several million cars, not to mention large trucks and other vehicles contributing to the water supply in this way rather than fouling the air could have...
"Insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting a different result."
Heh. This mildly amusing, and mildy insulting, bit of spin-doctoring aside, it's good to see that the American auto makers aren't actually light-years behind their Japanese counterparts anymore. They've closed the gap to just a few generations. :-)
Sure, everyone's in a love fest for H2, which will be fantastic when its viable, but no one in America wants to talk about passenger diesels. My Golf TDI gets 40MPG even under my lead foot, will outperform any gas/electic hybrid, has much more cargo space (and passenger space). As far as emmissions go, the hybrids are much greener, but the modern passenger diesel emits less greenhouse gasses then the average gas car. Sure it emits more NOX, but with better fuel and better pollution control systems coming in 2006, this will become a non issue.
The byproduct of fuel cells is water, which would be spat back out into the atmosphere, which would increase local humidity, which would increase cloud formation, which would increase the planet's albedo, which would cause the surface to cool and a new ice age to start.
And we ain't got no woolly mammoths left to eat round the campfire.
> Then you run it though the electic motor.
> This gives about 40% efficiency under ideal conditions.
No. 90%. Minimum. Electric motors are way more efficient than thermal energy ones. Don't know about your other numbers, though.
> Electric uses much more energy and pollutes much more than gasoline.
> Gasoline powered cars now are very low emission.
> The coal plants that would power electic cars are not.
Hey, loaded today, aren't we? Cars became the primary source of pollution in cities as anti-polluting laws forced filters on industries. Cars, in my city, are restrained from downtown (only pedestrians allowed) *and* until recently were left home one day-a-week to fight air polltuion.
Which coal plants? My country doesn't have them. We use dams. Pretty clean (albeit dangerous to wildlife). Instead of getting oil to pollute your country, go to international warmer waters and get sun/wind or hydrogen energy. It costs roughly the same to transport, but it's nearer and free.
Electric or hybrid cars are great because you recover energy when climbing down (very important in cities with irregular relief, like San Francisco) or when deaccelerating (important everywhere).
Don't use too much common sense -- you'll look, well, very common.
While I like these ideas, projects like this make me think that we haven't even approached the limits of efficiency in fossil fuel engines. This thing might be a concept, but VW made it now, it runs on normal diesel fuel, and gets nearly 240 MPG. This is the kind of thing that we need to explore in the near-term. While I think that pie-in-the-sky exotics are sexy, I also think that they won't be ready for production or have a working support infrastructure for years - here is something we could do now to cut our fuel usage.
This one company I have been keeping my eye on called Millennium Cell has a technology called Hydrogen on Demand that seems pretty cool. They invented a way to store hydrogen in a borax solution and extract it only when needed to generate energy. The cool thing about Millennium Cell's technology is that they figured out a lot of other issues competing fuel cell companies have not. For example, they can retrofit an internal combustion engine to run on hydrogen, and it's exhaust would be 100% free of carbon monoxide. They also even worked in gas stations into the equation and have figured out how to retrofit them to "refill" the hydrogen fuel cells. Also of note is that their fuel cells have a range similar to that of a full tank of gas, and takes up slightly smaller area of space. Definitely some cool R&D going on out there...
--Jon
Several people have pointed out that electric cars simply shift the point where pollution is generated from the car to the power plant. But there's a big difference between electric and hydrogen in this regard: Hydrogen can be shipped.
With wall-powered electric cars, the power generation has to occur relatively nearby - say, within a few hundred miles. With hydrogen, the power generation can occur anywhere in the world. Hydrogen canisters can be transported via container shipping.
What this means is that if the U.S. were to convert to hydrogen power, it would allow all the power generation (and therefore pollution) to be moved offshore. In essence, all the pollution from the U.S. automotive fleet could be shipped to the Third World, in exchange for hard currency - which is the traditional method used for getting rid of the rest of the "not in my backyard" unpleasant underside of the affluent U.S. (and for that matter Western European) lifestyle.
Economically, it's a win all round - though of course environmentalists will probably disagree.
-Graham
As others have stated, turbines arn't that great at accelerating/decelerating.
However, at one point chrysler was investigating using them in a hybrid vehicle, where the turbine was essentially an electric generator and the drivetrain was powered by electics.
Didn't do too bad, averaged about 50mpg, but the gas/electric hybrid they were toying with was able to achieve 70mpg.
Too bad they havn't decided to bring any of that technology to the market....
Hydrogen fuel cells are all the rage. But can you buy one of the shelf today? Biodiesel is here now. Not only that, you can make it yourself! Biodiesel should be included as a bridge technology as well as hybrids...better yet a biodiesel hybrid!!!
check these out:
http://www.biodiesel.org/default2.htm
http://www.veggievan.org/