MIT study: Diesel Beats Hydrogen For Green Car Power

An anonymous reader writes "Bummer story on Science Blog for people looking to gas up on the H. Even with aggressive research, the hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle will not be better than the diesel hybrid -- a vehicle powered by a conventional engine supplemented by an electric motor -- in terms of total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, says a new MIT study. If we need to curb greenhouse gases within the next 20 years, improving mainstream gasoline and diesel engines and transmissions and expanding the use of hybrids is the way to go."

Comments

Two points

[Froze]

One, this result assumes that the production of H is a derivative of fossil fuels. that is currently the only economical means to do so, however! Fusion energy is not only the most enviromentally sound means of producing energy, but it has a higher energy density than just about any other energy production technology (barring matter/antimatter etc.) We all know that fusion has been somewhat pie in the sky, but it is a viable alternative and less than 20 years away. See http://www.iter.org

Two, Until we can light the fusion flame and keep a sustained burn, I would seroiusly love to have on of these. A hybrid bike that gets 180mpg and will do 0-60 in 6 seconds.

Re:Let the political ranting begin

[bcboy]

> (where zero means we moved the emmissions out of our neighborhood and over to the poor area where the power plants are located).

A single point of emission is easier to clean than millions of points of emission, and there are advantages of scale.

There are also higher air quality demands in high population areas that are better addressed by zero emissions vehicles. With millions of cars in a city, it makes sense to move the points of emission such that air quality is safe in all of California, instead of having localized unsafe areas.

While at school at Caltech, I got an up-close and personal view of the problems in LA. The mountains trap the air, leading to a thick haze right over Pasadena. Zero emissions vehicles are a very good technology to address this problem.

I quit ranting and ran numbers ages ago

[Spamalamadingdong]

The argument was that a better reduction would be had for lower cost by pushing for hybrids. Reaction was swift with the eco-types crying foul even though the switch to hybrid will yield far better results (ie. we can do it on a far larger scale sooner and using our existing infrastructure and it will yield great results).

Tell me something I don't know. My position on this subject was proclaimed publicly on the 'net better than a decade ago. Back then we still had sucky batteries that a century of physics and chemistry research hadn't improved by more than a relatively small increment; it was painfully clear that the CARB was populated by idiots thinking that their mandates could accomplish in a decade what a hundred years of science could not. I argued that hybrids were the only way to go, because chemical fuels were still the only way to store sufficient energy within the mass/size constraints of practical vehicles. The constant-load characteristic of hybrids also improves emissions, which is CARB's first mandate.

I have since refined my analysis; it appears quite practical to have a half-electric (not merely hybrid) vehicle which can run a substantial distance on batteries alone (perhaps 20 miles) and then start up a sustainer engine for the rest. This offers the prospect of cars which have the option of charging from the wall, but don't have to, and also have the option of burning fuel for short trips, but don't have to do that either; you could get around locally even with a total fuel cutoff (as long as there was electricity) and of course you could still get around in a blackout. The real irony is that CARB is still cluelessly glued to the absolutist position, and when they could not achieve it they had no fallback; because their Holy Grail was unattainable, they wound up attaining much less than they could easily have done. If they really want to promote greenhouse-gas reduction they should just tax gasoline up to $5/gallon and watch everyone start buying hybrids.