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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?"
When you run head-on into something at 185 will the hydrogen fireball be a different color than a gasolene one?
German engineering and hydrogen.
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
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?
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...
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.
Actually, with the hydrogen being in stable fuelcells,
/., where people feel compelled to post before rtfa. The car doesn't use fuel cells for the engine. It's an hydrogen combustion engine.
Ahhh, good old
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."
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
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/
I'll make you a deal. You pray to God for help and I'll stop the moment he shows up.
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?
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.
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