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Fuel Cell Car Goes Cross-Country
person-0.9a writes "CNN is currently running a story about Daimler-Chrysler's fuel-cell concept car completing a trek across America. The CNN article is more about the trip, but details about the vehicle can be found here."
Last year, DCX was driving a directly powered hydrogen car all around Germany, but you never hear anything more about it.
From what I remember, the car used liquified hydrogen and achieved normal speeds and fairly comparable mileage to gasoline. The only issue was keeping the liquid hydrogen cold.
Initial rear-end crash tests on this car showed that this wasn't any more dangerous than gasoline nor more explosive.
The European standards body that does this stuff has its results here and one to note is the abysmal results on this MPV. I quote The Voyager did so badly in the frontal impact that it earned no points, making it the worst of the group by some margin. The body structure became unstable and the steering column was driven back into the driver's chest and head.
So while there may be concerns about these cars if all cars had to get decent scores in these tests that it would ensure that everyone was safe. As it is the gap between the worst and the best is enough to make the fuel inside it only one of the considerations in safety.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
As I see it, most of the people who push for hydrogren powered vehicles don't want to make clean cars, they want to make expensive cars. They seem to feel that if they can just make it a legal requirement that all cars cost US$100K and US$10/kilometer, then we will all happily stop driving cars and go back to walking.
Why do I feel this way? Because the folks who push hydrogen never seem to consider the facts that make hydrogen a poor fuel choice, and never consider that better alternatives exist.
First, let's consider the goals of alternative fuels:
Also, let's review the barriers to adoption of any new system:
Now, consider hydrogen in light of those requirements:
Now, let us consider biodiesel - made from peanut oil, canola, corn, hemp, or whatnot.
So, if your goal is to reduce pollution and dependance on a non-renewable resource, you logically would be pressing for biodiesel. So why do so many of these people push for hydrogen? I believe it is because they want cars to be expensive in the mistaken belief that this will push us toward their utopian ideal of us all living in bark houses, wearing bushes and eating bugs.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Gasoline burns like gangbusters. Safety concern is not that hydrogen burns. Concern is focused on hydrogen in the gaseous form (which burns explosively when mixed with oxygen). For gasoline to be explosive, you have to heat it enough to vaporize.
I do get tired of reading that burning hydrogen produces no emissions (NOx and others), but ignoring the fact that hydrogen as to come from somewhere (you can't just pump H2 out of a hole in the ground) that tends to be fossil fuels today in another forms.
Hydrogen is a storage technology, not an energy source. Now, methane based fuel cells are much more interesting because we've got lots of methane (pumped from the ground), but there is not an infinite supply of methane, and lots of CO2 is added to the exhaust mix.
I'm no Luddite. I want microfusion powered cars, or more realistically, some decent storage technology for transportation use, and nuclear or renewable resource for evergy generation.
Here is an article on hydrogen fuel cells and safety, including results of BMW's simulated collisions:
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Many real-life tests have demonstrated the safety of pressurized hydrogen storage. Simulated 55 mph crash tests left the car totaled, but the hydrogen tank intact. To prove the safety of its hydrogen vehicles, BMW tested its hydrogen tanks in a series of accident simulations that included collision, fire and tank ruptures. In all cases, the hydrogen cars fared as well as conventional gasoline vehicles. And hydrogen-fueled cars are designed to preclude the possibility of leaked hydrogen collecting within the vehicle.
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Traveling time was 85 hours over a span of 16 days, an average of about 38 mph, but DaimlerChrysler says the car reached speeds of more than 90 mph.
In other news, late yesterday, state police officials from Nevada arrived in Washington, D.C., for the extradition of the driver of the Daimler-Chrysler fuel cell powered car.
Crime Scene Investigators from Las Vegas confirmed that a vehicle with tires matching those of the unique fuel-cell car was responsible for running over a Wayne Newton billboard near the entrance of the Mustang Ranch.
"We think the testimony the engineers gave to CNN will clinch this case and help to save America from terrorist speeders."
"Provided by the management for your protection."
An alternative fuel cell technology extracts hydrogen from hydrocarbons on the way to combustion. These are more likely to see implementation because there is a hydrocarbon deliver infrastructure in place. Probably will start with laptop fuel cell batteries that have triple lifetime over alternatives.
I've been evaluating both fuel cell and another technology that is well on its way to mainstream use... biodiesel. http://www.biodiesel.org. This diesel fuel is made from vegetable oil and methonol. It runs on all existing diesel trucks and cars, has a 100% clean production cycle (no fossil fuels required to make it), heck, it can be made with recycled cooking oil! It mixes with petro diesel allowing a easy integration plan (use a little at a time...). Also, its production requires agriculture which equals oxygen... creating a method to take whatever CO2 is produced and convert it.
Now, this isn't as clean as burning pure hydrogen... but is MUCH better than burning gasoline or diesel. It reduces emmissions by more than 50% and eliminates sulfur, odor and reduces the stuff that make smog by a good bit (all this is commonly associated with petro) And when you take a look at what you need to do to produce hydrogen you're looking at producing electricity (fossil fuels/nuclear) or some other chemical process that is harmful. You still end up putting pollution into the air. It seems to me that fuel cells are a way around battery technology, but I feel it is a very inefficient way to do it.
Also, the fuel cell car cost 1 million to build and broke down once? The National Biodiesel Board drove to the nearest Ford dealership, picked up a diesel pickup, filled it with 100% biodiesel and have been driving it around with no problems for 500,000 miles. They just completed there 10th trip across the country! The fuel cell car got up to about 90 MPH... My Jetta TDI (VW) gets up to 90 everyday! The speedometer goes up to 140 and I have no doubts that it can do that. 750 miles per tank, 55 MPG, road rage baby!
So think about it. A fuel source that is renewable, is produced with no waste or by-product, and its growth produces oxygen and cleans the air. Its also a domestic product and is already in use in Europe and the States. It can also be used on all existing diesel vehicles. I say we take all that money we're burning in research and start to build some pumps, fund agriculture and kick start the future!
I think fuel cells are going to be more important in the near term for stationary power generation.
Hmm...
- people who hate SUV's because they can't see over them.... or just get mad when they see someone in a bigger car.
Vehicles that obstruct the view of the road for drivers behind them increase the risk of accidents for themselves and everyone else. In the case of large transport trucks it's unavoidable, but passenger vehicles can avoid this consequence.
- "Limousine environmentalists" who rail against SUV's and "greenhouse gases" while driving one themselves. Al Gore is one of these.
Agreed. I have little respect for those who don't practice what they preach.
- People who want to force automakers to make smaller flimsier dangerous cars with less passenger and cargo capacity that get more miles per gallon.
Smaller cars are only dangerous because they risk being involved in an accident with larger cars. If everyone's cars were smaller, everyone would be safer because collisions would, on average, be less energetic. Also, since smaller cars have shorter braking distances and better handling, the absolute number of accidents might be reduced as well. As far as cargo capacity, I can get myself, my wife, our kid, and a month's worth of groceries in our Honda Civic which gets >35mpg. People who claim they 'need' an SUV to go grocery shopping are lying, plain and simple. It might be useful for buying furniture, but that's not something you do on a regular basis. Rent a truck when you do, it's cheaper than paying for the gas you'll burn in the meantime.
- Centers for science in no-ones interest who perpetuate tentative and unproven manmade global warming theories.
There's a lot of good and bad science thrown around in the debate, but if there's even a chance that it's correct, it seems prudent to look for ways to reduce emissions - if it can be done without excessive cost. Driving more efficient cars is hardly excessively costly, in fact it generally has a negative cost.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
> people who hate SUV's because they can't see over them
More like the other way around--yesterday I was nearly run off the right lane of a freeway by a patriotic American in a good-for-the-economy truck because he couldn't see my sedan over his high passenger window sill.
> or just get mad when they see someone in a bigger car
Yes, because in the end all people are motivated by the same Freudian need for larger things in life. The fact that some people might actually want more compact cars with less inertia and tight suspensions that can be thrown around corners (it's called "h-a-n-d-l-i-n-g") is obviously pure FUD thrown up by inferior foreign auto manufacturers that can't compete with the exquisite American sculptures-in-(lots-of)-steel.
> People who want to force automakers to make smaller flimsier dangerous cars
Structural rigidity decreases with increasing structure size, as any engineer will tell you. IOW, the larger a vehicle, the worse it does in collisions with objects of its own heft. Never mind that current trucks are not even particularly engineering for crashes--they feature inferior crumple zones and body rigidity. They are designed to survive crashes mainly due to the overwhelming odds that they will collide with a much smaller vehicle. Truck-on-truck collisions fare much worse than car-on-car collisions. Of course, in the US trucks are not measured on the same crashworthiness scale anyway, so they don't have to.