Fuel-cell Vehicles for Americans

hey writes "An article titled Fuel-cell vehicles run clean, but is their future clear? in the Japan Times says Honda is leasing fuel-cell cars to individual Americans. The article mentions: 'Honda officials said it is easier for the automaker to start leasing in the U.S. because there are more hydrogen gas installations there than in Japan.'"

Comments

Re:Hydrogen installations in the US?

[vansloot]

They designed specifically for advancing the future of fuel cell vehicles:

http://www.cafcp.org/aboutus.html

They have 15 installations now, and have 9 more planned.

http://www.cafcp.org/fuel-vehl_map.html

There are 65 fuel cell vehicles in California.

FCV's

[rerunn]

Good explanation of alternative fuel vehicles here: http://www.midamericanenergy.com/eew/more/alt.html

Here's a good snippet regarding Fuel Cells:

FCVs are twice as efficient as gasoline or diesel engines, and they produce no pollutants or carbon dioxide. The only tailpipe emission is water vapor. The biggest challenge now facing the developers of FCVs is where to get the hydrogen.

Hydrogen is plentiful in fossil fuels such as methane and natural gas. At the present time, fossil fuels are the most convenient source of hydrogen. But using fossil fuels to produce hydrogen creates pollution and adds to the consumption of nonrenewable resources

Some points about hydrogen

[orzetto]

If it takes more oil to obtain hydrogen in proper form than just refining it to diesel or gasoline and using it in an internal combustion engine, is it going to help?

Here we go again...

• Gas engines have low efficiencies, between 30 and 10%. FCs have higher, about 50+%. So what you lose in the refinery you more than make up in the engine.
• FCs are quiet. Acoustic pollution is not a secondary issue in many cities.
• Hydrogen can be made out of many things. Oil is one. Natural gas another one. Nuclear, hydro, tidal, wind--you can make hydrogen out of pretty much anything, while you cannot make gasoline out of electricity. The keyword is flexibility: your country could gradually go over from oil to renewable, always delivering hydrogen as a fuel.

Re:Oil isn't the only source of energy.

[Spectra72]

I'm no fan of the Bush Administration, but the "Bush is against anything but oil" rhetoric is getting stale. Try to stay current on what the White House is saying ok? Right now, the plan is Four-Fold: 1) tax incentives for hybrid and clean diesel vehicles 2) Increase domestic production capabilities 3) explore alternative fuels (hydrogen cells, ethanol, bio-diesel 4) help other countries become more fuel efficient & help them improve their energy outputs.

Now, one can certainly debate those points and any priority you would give to each. One can debate the amount of money set aside for each of them (1.2 billion for hydrogen as an example). What is not debatable is the nonsense of "the US government would want you to believe otherwise", that's tinfoil hattery of the first order.

Price note

[Alsee]

The article cites the current cost to produce this fuel cell car at about 100 million Yen each. Based on current exchange rates that is about:
512,000 UK,
740,000 Euro,
890,000 US,
1,090,000 Canadian,
1,200,000 Australian,
1,300,000,000 Iraqi (yes, that's B as in Billion).

The insane cost is to a large extent due to the use of Palladium in the fuel cells and other exotic metals.

The cars do not appear to be available for actual sale. They are being leased for aroud $500 US per month, at a substantial loss. This is a massively subsidized testing program, not a viable product.

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Re:Oil isn't the only source of energy.

[fireweaver]

If you base your nuclear power on burning thorium (3 times more common than uranium), you gain certain advantages such as no plutonium production, less radioactive garbage to contend with, and greater safety.

http://www.cavendishscience.org/bks/nuc/thrupdat.h tm

The thorium fuel cycle has been known since the 1950s but was discarded due to cold-war politics in favour of uranium burning reactors that bred plutonium. Additionally, thorium reactors can be used to get rid of existing plutonium in a safe manner.

So if the Indian and Russian experiments pan out (and it looks like they will), expect nuclear power to become a more attractive option. Perhaps the Iranians could jump on the thorium bandwagon as well; it would go some way towards keeping that madman in Washingtom at bay.