BMW Shows Off World's Fastest Hydrogen Car

loid_void writes "According to Reuters and others BMW unveiled the world's fastest hydrogen-powered car at the Paris auto show on Wednesday, dubbed the H2R, capable of exceeding 300 kilometers (185 miles) per hour. The are also working with Shell on hydrogen dispensing stations. '"Our drive toward the future is called hydrogen," BMW management board member Burkhard Goeschel said before the tarp slowly slipped off the teardrop-shaped body of the sleek race car.' All I want to know, does it come with an iPod hookup?"

Comments

boom

[caldfyr]

When you run head-on into something at 185 will the hydrogen fireball be a different color than a gasolene one?

Re:boom

[caldfyr]

What the no-sense-of-humor poster above you was trying to say is that hydrogen burns cooler than gasolene and does so clearly (invisibly). What he failed to consider is that while hydrogen dissipates rapidly and needs a dense concentration to ignite, there is a perfectly dense mixture of it in the fuel cell. ANYTHING will explode when supplied with enough energy, even a hydrogen fuel cell. Quite a bit of energy is transferred by going from really fast to not moving in 0.25 seconds, and a lot of energy is transferred when you're rear ended by a tractor trailer at the red light. Just because it may be safer doesn't mean it is perfect. No need for anyone to go hydrogen fanboi on any /.ers

Re:boom

[pyrrhonist]

Maybe it would have gently settled to the ground, giving people enough time to think about not panicing and jump to their deaths.

I'd just like to point out that 66% of the people on board the Hindenburg survived.

I'm not saying that more people couldn't have been saved, I'm just pointing out that the number of survivors is a lot higher than most people think.

Re:boom

[trburkholder]

From: Google Cache of Van Vorst and Bain theory

Furthermore, the substance used to coat the cotton skin -- a process known as "doping" which makes the fabric taut and more durable -- was extremely flammable. A combination of iron oxide, cellulose acetate and aluminum powder, "the total mixture might well serve as a respectable rocket propellant," Van Vorst said.

Iron oxide and aluminum powder are commonly referred to as thermite and are used for producing molten iron at temperatures well in excess of aluminum's 660 C melting point. However, there is a rebuttal to this argument which indicates that the paint lacked the requisite proportions for the thermite reaction.

Isn't -

[thewldisntenuff]

Hydrogen pretty dangerous stuff? I mean, I know it's quite explosive....(From what I recall from freshman chem :) ) Does anyone remember the Hindenberg?

Which brings my question - how do you stablize hydrogen so it's not so explosive?.....A car accident could spell disaster if not properly contained...Or am I wrong?

-thewldisntenufff

Re:Isn't -

[slacktide]

Isn't gasoline pretty dangerous stuff? I mean, I know it's quite explosive....(From what I recall from freshman chem :) ) Does anyone remember the multiple gasoline explosions that occur every day??

Which brings my question - how do you stablize gasoline so it's not so explosive?.....A car accident could spell disaster if not properly contained...Or am I wrong?

Re:Isn't -

[davejenkins]

Does anyone remember the Hindenberg?

While the hydrogen contents of the Hindenberg certainly didn't help matters, that wasn't the main problem. The skin of the Zeppelin had been cured and doped with an aluminum oxide compound that is pretty much identical to solid rocket fuel (although this flammable quality wasn't known at the time).

Go back and watch the film again-- the skin ignites and burns quickly-- rather than the whole structure exploding/popping like a ping in a balloon.

Re:Isn't -

[at_18]

Does anyone remember the Hindenberg?

Hydrogen was not the cause for the Hindenberg disaster. Hydrogen burns without any visibile flame or smoeke. In the Hindenberg case, what burned was the external paint, which had a chemical composition quite similar to nitroglicerine (it wasn't known at the time).

Even more sad, most the deaths from that disaster were people jumping down while the ship was still in the air. Most of those who remained in the airship survived.

Re:Isn't -

[csguy314]

Actually, with the hydrogen being in stable fuelcells,

Ahhh, good old /., where people feel compelled to post before rtfa. The car doesn't use fuel cells for the engine. It's an hydrogen combustion engine.
The article says that BMW is researching fuel cells as well, but it's concentrating on combustion engines "because the sum total of its features and characteristics offers the largest number of advantages and benefits all in one."

Re:Isn't -

[caseih]

Yes it is true that the Hindenberg had rocket fuel -coated skin, which did burn rapidly and transmitted the fire throughout the structure. However, recent research has hypothesized that the skin played little role in actually starting the fire. The probable cause is actually leaking fuel from the engine fuel tanks, due to previous damage caused when they were experimenting with catching and releasing airplanes from the underside. This leaked fuel would have got into the lower areas, near the hydrogen gas. Once the fire started, it spread rapidly through the damaged areas and eventually ignited the hydrogen bags. Apparently if you examine the footage, you'll find the fire starting out on the bottom of the ship.

Apparently the new Zepplin airship is due to be launched in the next few years. While it is helium-based (to satisfy the paranoid public), it is still three-times the size of the original Hindenberg. Should be a cool ship to see. If they could find a way to still use some hydrogen, though, they'd be able carry much more cargo, although the specs without hydrogen still allow it to carry 3 times the cargo of a 747.

I wouldn't worry a bit about hydrogen in cars for day to day driving. However, paramedics and accident response teams will have to be aware of procedures for dealing with these things, just like with electric cars.

Re:Isn't -

[DavidTC]

That's the gag. You have a gas leak while your car's sitting in the garage, you might have a mess and possibly a flameout.

You have a hydrogen leak, and someone walks in and flips on the light switch...

I hope, if they're going to do this, they're at least going to have the sense to perfume the hydrogen, like they do natural gas, so we can go 'Oh, crap, hydrogen leak' and run like hell.

I don't really understand the logic of hydrogen cars. If we have hydrogen, we can effortlessly convert that to 100% clean electricity via burning. So why the hell don't we just do that at the power plant?

I mean, I'd understand if we had some magical source of hydrogen, and we didn't want to lose power though the overhead of power transfer and batteries...but we don't. We have absolutely no way of getting hydrogen, outside of fossil fuels, that doesn't use up more electricity than we put into it. I've never heard of any way even proposed to get said hydrogen.

The entire concept is completely illogical, it sounds like someone realized you can burn hydrogen and get water, slept through an enviromental film, and built a 'clean' car. Hey, I can build a car that takes a continual supply of D batteries, by that logic it's a clean car.

And I have to point out the same applies to anything, thanks to thermodynamics. Everything on earth either exists at the lowest energy state, or at least will stay there if we make energy from it. We can't go around breaking up H20 and burning the H to get power, and anyone who's ever had any physics will easily explain why.

The only exceptions are things that are ultimately powered by the ouside, such as solar, wind, water, and tidal power. (Although geothermal, while a closed cycle, is not incredibly likely to run down in any measurable time. And the same with fussion and fission.)

What is it with.....

[phamNewan]

German engineering and hydrogen.

Not if well designed and tested

[stryders]

I wouldn't compare a giant bag full of hydrogen to a modern car engineered by a company well known for its safety engineering. Here's an older article that discusses their safety (scroll a bit) on CNN

Vroom

[cynic10508]

I'm going outside right now to change the VTEC sticker on my Civic to read "HTEC".

Re:Vroom

[Stevyn]

Hydrogen Timing Electronic Control?

Eh hell, those rice boys will put a sticker that says anything on their cars.

Let's see how long...

[avalys]

Let's see how long it takes before some Slashdotter uses this opportunity to "accidentally" inform us that he drives a BMW.

Pollution

[samtihen]

What I find moderately interesting about the hydrogen fuel idea is that, despite the fact that it emits only steam as a byproduct, it still takes a lot of energy to produce hydrogen. As a result, it pretty much will cause pollution regardless.

Don't get me wrong, this still reduces our dependence on oil, and will be a huge help to city pollution, but I think we need to quickly figure out some way to make hydrogen cheaply and cleanly. Maybe nuclear powered hydrogen production plants? Just thinking...

Re:Pollution

[Phanatic1a]

Actually hydro power is pretty efecient if you have the resources.

It's also devastating to downstream ecologies. A major hydroelectric project like Three Gorges is an ecological disaster.

Without developing a breeder reactor the uranium will run out as well.

Okay, so develop a breeder reactor. Running in a breeder reactor, uranium would be economical at costs of $1,000 per pound (1983 dollars), and would contribute 0.03 cents per kilowatt-hour to the cost of electricity.

Or, don't develop a breeder reactor. Uranium could be extracted from seawater for far less than that, around $200-400 per pound, and there's enough of it currently in the oceans to supply the planet's current electrical needs for millions of years. Hell, if we extract 16,000 tons of it per year, that's enough to supply twice the world's energy consumption, 25 times its electrical demand.

misses the point of hydrogen

[uujjj]

A hydrogen car that uses an ICE misses the whole point. It doesn't improve efficiency much, given that it is still limited by the thermal efficiency of a heat engine. Moreover, although burning hydrogen doesn't produce carbon emmisions, producing hydrogen does. Finally, the higher combustion temperature increases the formation of NOx pollutants.

The reason for all the effort to create a new hydrogen fueling infrastructure is to take advantage of fuel cells/electric motors. A car with a hydrogen burning ICE is just an ordinary car that you can't refill at a gas station.

Re:next step...

[Depris]

Somebody already invented a car that was cheap and lasted a lot longer than conventional parts. He died broke when all the car companies lobbied against him because of the economic consequences.

Their was also a movie by Francis Ford Coppla about him with Jeff Bridges:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096316/

How to keep it cool?

[Dog's_Breakfast]

From the BMW web site:

"...the specially insulated 140-liter tank for the liquid hydrogen provides a range of 400 kilometers....By cooling hydrogen to -253 degrees Celsius, hydrogen is shrunk to a thousandth of its original volume. 70 layers of aluminum and fiberglass sheets between the exterior and interior vehicle walls insure that the liquid hydrogen remains at extremely low temperatures."

What I don't understand is how they manage to keep it at such a low temperature. If the tank warmed up to the normal temperature of the surrounding environment, the pressure inside the tank would be 1000 times greater than sea level. Wouldn't that pose a danger of explosion?

hydrogen dissipates faster

[SuperBanana]

A car accident could spell disaster if not properly contained...Or am I wrong?

In the unlikely event that the car's structure was intruded enough to damage the tank, the leaking hydrogen would escape upwards and dissipate extremely rapidly. This makes it rather difficult to be ignited by, say, sparking from electrics or hot components in the engine compartment. There is no environmental impact and no cleanup- the hydrogen harmlessly dissipates up into the environment.

In a car accident with gasoline, the gasoline pools on the ground and vapors are heavier than air. That makes them very easy to ignite. Gasoline(especially with MTBE) is cancerous and must be cleaned up, and it takes a while to do so because it's so easily ignited.

Hydrogen also requires a much higher fuel/air ratio; ie there has to be a higher concentration.

The main safety problem with hydrogen is that it is molecularly so small that hoses and seals are very hard to make for it. A balloon full of hydrogen would deflate even faster than one filled with Helium...

The REAL problem with hydrogen as a transport fuel is (repeat after me, kids!)...

HYDROGEN IS A NET LOSS FUEL. IT TAKES MUCH MORE ENERGY TO PRODUCE THAN YOU GET BURNING IT.

Oh, and the fact that the main method of production cited by our really smart President is- surprise- natural gas! Well, guess what folks- you gotta use chemicals to get the H2 out of the complex hydrocarbon of LNG, and you gotta put those leftover Carbon (and other elements) into something. Expect to see hydrogen plants which dump lots of waste in the form of toxic catalysts and leftover byproducts. Or just toss it up a smokestack and make it the problem of whoever is 5,000 miles away.

Re:hydrogen dissipates faster

[cbiltcliffe]

The REAL problem with hydrogen as a transport fuel is (repeat after me, kids!)...

HYDROGEN IS A NET LOSS FUEL. IT TAKES MUCH MORE ENERGY TO PRODUCE THAN YOU GET BURNING IT.

Every fuel is a net loss fuel. It's just that the energy that's gone into making crude oil, and by extension, gasoline, has been spread over several thousand, million, or billion years, depending on who you talk to.
Hydrogen can easily be generated with a solar panel, a couple of precious metal electrodes, and a big-assed water tank.
Incidentally, this is probably the most energy-efficient chemical conversion that we currently know of, as, with the exception of a small amount of impurities in the water, every single electron pumped off your negative electrode goes into breaking up one water molecule. There's no extra heat generated, there's no light, explosion, nothing. Just pure hydrogen generation.
And the other byproduct, oxygen, would be the least harmful factory byproduct of anything we currently make that could be dumped into the air, water, land, or food supply.

Re:Actually

[MtViewGuy]

While the coating compenents were potentially reactive, they were separated by a layer of material that should have inhibited the reaction from starting.

Alas, the Wikipedia article forgot one aspect: the mounting bolts for the canvas covering were made of steel, which allowed a static discharge to move through the canvas covering VERY quickly. Because the Hindenberg had flown near a thunderstorm just before the explosion, there was a buildup of static electricity on the entire airship and when it discharged the mounting bolts transmitted the static discharge, causing a large portion of the canvas covering to literally explode on the initial explosion.

That's why on the short-lived airship Graf Zeppelin II (LZ 130), the Zeppelin engineers switched to bronze mounting bolts for the canvas covering, so the static discharge would not be transmitted through the mounting bolts.

By the way, the Zeppelin company actually produced an internal report about the Hindenberg explosion and that report cited issues with the potential flammability of the canvas covering doping compound. Alas, that report was quickly surpressed by the Nazi government for various reasons.

Mazda has a hydrogen-powered rotary

[ikekrull]

Mazda's rotary engine is well suited to the combustion of hydrogen, not least because it completely separates the intake, combustion and exhaust stages - with a piston engine there is a lot of potential for catastophic backfire, and high performance without any valve overlap (which would somewhat prevent this) is difficult to acheive.

The renesis (side-ported intake and exhaust - 'normal' rotaries have peripheral exhaust and often intake ports and intake/exhaust port overlap is employed to maximise performance at high revs, resulting in the characteristic 'brap-brap-brap' pulsing idle of a race or drag rotary engine and incredibly poor fuel economy at low revs) rotary engine doesnt suffer from this problem, allowing high-revs, aggressive induction and exhaust port profiles, along withthe light weight and excellent power-weight ratio rotaries inherently possess.

The current hybrid engine in the RX-8 only produces about 120hp when operating on hydrogen which isn't exactly stunning, but bear in mind that the original RX-7 produced less than this, while the last model to roll off the production line produced in excess of 280.

400+ HP is relatively easily acheiveable with proper porting, fueling and turbocharging of the 1.3 litre 13B engine on petrol, and with further development (or even tuning for hydrogen-only operation) it is not too far fetched to imagine the hydrogen-powered rotary performing on par or better than conventional fuels.

More info can be found:

http://rotarynews.com/?q=node/view/216

and a hydrogen--powered RX-8 looks like:

http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/frame.php?file=pi c. php&imagenum=1&carnum=1792

Cool!

[commodoresloat]

Yeah! We could put a windmill on top of the car so it is powered by the movement of the car!

Wait a minute...

Re:Survivors?

[AlinuxNCSU]

Google "hindenburg survivors" perhaps? I mean, come on, there are links on the first results page! They might not give you the number of survivors, but they definitely confirm that there were some.

For the lazy:

http://www.airships.net

http://www.vidicom-tv.com/hindenburg/making_of.htm

http://www.authentichistory.com/audio/1930s/histor y/19370506_Hindenberg_Disaster_Herb_Morrison-short .html

-Alex

Re:Once again, the Germans beat us.

[YrWrstNtmr]

Right

Ford
General Motors
Shelby Cobra
[google, of course, is your friend]

And if you think there is a 'real' difference between, say, Ford and Toyota, or Chrysler and Mercedes, or GM and SAAB....You're sadly mistaken. They share designs all over. The car companies are the epitome of 'multinational'. And it's wise to let the smaller companies pioneer a new concept. They can do it faster. And if it pans out....embrace and extend.