Slashdot Mirror
Hydrogen Fuel Cells Hit the Road
caffeined writes "Well, it looks like Honda is doing a real test of their fuel-cell car. A family in California is renting the car for $500/mo. Honda is charging them so that they take it seriously - an executive explained that if it were free they might not get the kind of feedback they want. If someone is paying for something and they're not happy - then you're going to hear about it. This is apparently the first fuel-cell car on the road anywhere in the world, according to Honda."
They need to try this in more than warm, sunny southern California. My sister has a Prius and loves it, though the battery sometimes doesn't respond well to being parked outside overnight in sub-zero. You also have to wonder what cumulative effect road salt ions will play. Seems the ions in the sea air in California like my 12v battery a lot, I do wonder how hybrids are doing with their higher voltage.
Still, it's promising. I wished they gave us a little tip off on how the trial is going rather than all the peripheral issues, but I suppose Honda wants to keep as much of that confidential as possible.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Forcing users to pay to beta test.
According to the article, most manufacturers are still up in the air about this technology. Only Ford is bullish, and believe they will be in the open market by 2010. If they can avoid bankruptcy.
It would certainly be nice, but I do think 2010 is a bit soon.
I wonder who will be the first to car jack this million dollar test car and take it to Mexico.
What happens if a hydrogen-powered car is in an accident? Can the fuel cell 'rupture' and explode, ala The Hindenburg? If it can, then ...
Oh the humanity!
Go, and never darken my towels again! -- Rufus
There have been a few fuel cell cars on the road in Vancouver, BC for a few months already.
"Nyquil - The stuffy, sneezy, why-the-hell-is-the-room-spinning medicine."
Charge them $500 a month to have the car blow up upon impact and kill the whole family. Sheesh.
You're right, we should stick to powering our cars with a nice, non-volatile, non-explosive substance like gasoline.
I don't know about them being the first. Coming back from San Francisco to Sacramento a few weeks ago, I passed two Mercedes - looked european, very compact cars with fuel cell in big letters painted on the side.
From TFA
Spallino was at the wheel of his silver Honda FCX, a car worth about $1 million that looks like a cross between a compact - say, a Volkswagen Golf - and a cinder block.
For that sort of cash I'd like to get more that than a Volksie Golf, at least a Passat.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
You should not have to modify a reasonably modern diesel engine to run biodiesel. Volkswagon's TDI engine can run straight biodiesel (or a blend of bio and petro, which is MUCH more commonly available) straight from the factory. If they put that engine in a Cabrio from the mid to late 90s, it should burn biodiesel just fine with no mods. The hard part is finding the reasonably-priced VW TDI...
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
http://corporate.honda.com/environment/fuel_cells. aspx?id=fuel_cells_fcxr e_pow.html (chassis)
f irstcat=false&kw=05familyfcx (image gallery)
http://www.honda.co.jp/FCX/ (Flash in Japanese)
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/10/hondas_mo
http://world.honda.com/news/2005/4050629.html (with family)
http://www.hondanews.com/CatID2045?view=p&page=1&
Enjoy!
I've found that the best engines for running on biodiesel are the Peugeot XUD engines. You get them in some Volvos, Renaults, Citroëns, Dacia and of course Peugeots. Ideally you want one with a Bosch fuel pump - the Lucas ones don't last nearly as long, for some reason. Failing that, find a diesel VW Golf or Passat.
Basically you are looking for any late 80s-to-mid-90s European diesel, preferably with the Bosch pump.
There have been fuel-cell busses running in Vancouver for a few years, too.
Must have something to do with Ballard...
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Charge them $500 a month to have the car blow up upon impact and kill the whole family.
Now there's a line of hyperbole if I've ever heard it. I imagine that they've done crash tests on this car to determine the exact dangers of this happening. At the very least, I've seen the early crash tests done to decide if hydrogen was feasible or not. The result of the tests was that *if* the hydrogen were to ignite, its direction (up) would be safe as long as the passengers weren't sitting on it. It actually ended up being *safer* than gasoline, as the gasoline cars continued burning long past the initial ignition.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
If someone is paying for something and they're not happy - then you're going to hear about it.
So if you want honest feedback on your sexual prowess from your girlfriend then you should charge a fee, eh? Hmmm. I am intrigued by this concept and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
matches my lifestyle
older $5,000 diesel convertible
Good luck. The type of people who bought diesels in the past didn't buy convertibles.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
There is a big sticker under the bonnet of my Citroën Xantia saying it's expressly forbidden to use it in the US or Canada, so they may be out of luck finding one.
Off topic, but for those of you who RTFA, did you notice the three column layout? It's done with javascript so I'm assuming it's dynamic and they can apply it to any text making the posting of any article in three column format possible.
Certainly interesting to me as getting a columned layout with just HTML/CSS is impossible (AFAIK). Worth checking into I'd think.
A sibling of mine had a convertible diesel VW Rabbit. Not sure if that's the lifestyle the OP is looking for, though.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Charge them $500 a month to have the car blow up upon impact and kill the whole family.
I think you have your car manufacturers mixed up.
This is Honda, not Ford
I think they've already dealt with that.
I will be one of the first to buy a hydrogen powered vehicle, its a great idea whose time has come!
No more wars, pollution and death for OIL!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Yeah, Biodiesel sure looks good on paper (I live in Santa Cruz, CA, a hot-bed of biodiesel activism)--you can burn recycled fast-food deep-fryer oil, the exhaust smells like french fries (less sulfur).
One problem: I got behind a biodiesel-burning Benz the other day. Thought to myself: Hmmm...smells like french fries. Then my eyes and nose started burning.
Less sulfur is good, but it's still diesel--still lots of carbon, CO2, etc. Some folks attribute increases in childhood asthma to all the diesel we burn.
So, biodiesel=good--a step in the right direction--but, we still need to structure our lives and society so that we drive less (way less) and rely less on burning feul (however sexy).
Nothing interesting to say...MUST...NOT...REPLY...ohtheheckwithit.
If someone is paying for something and they're not happy - then you're going to hear about it.
Yes, tell that to every Office Space worker who's watched management throw good money after bad. God forbid that we admit we're unhappy with the results of all that spending....
What I say does not represent the views of my employers, my friends, my cats, or myself.
Hasn't there been something like a dozen or stories in the past 5 years about the problems that faced the Hindenburg, the burning of Hydrogen, the Underwriter's Laboratories testing of both a Gasoline and Hydrogen fueled automobile, just to name a few.
Get with it people, this is afterall a news site that claims "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."
This is the kind of crap that we "Nerds" are supposed to know.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Their marketing department need to rethink the name of the car, Hindenburg, just does not seem right. :)
'Jetson'.
So how did Honda pick the Spallinos?
The normality of the Spallino family appealed to the company, which wanted to see how the vehicle held up under the stresses of family driving.
"I use it for everyday life," said Sandy Spallino, "just little one-mile jaunts here and there."
Very, very stressfull driving indeed.
Uncopyrightable: The longest word you can write without repeating a letter.
I don't know how unsafe the car is, but I do question the legality of it. State gov'ts, particularly California, have stringent requirements for car safety. How does this pass the testing and registration requirements in order for it to be driven on the street? I know a non-production vehicle doesn't need to conform to the same standards, but it still can't pose a hazard to others. I'm not saying it's a rolling bomb, but does the state or the general public have any reassurance that this thing can survive a crash? The guy driving it seems to place his faith solely in the company itself without asking for any proof. I'd be quite ticked if my state allowed standard safety rules to be circumvented for the sake of a company test trial, particularly when it could affect people who aren't in the car.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Seeing as how we have solar panels, wind power, and hydro power as pipelines to the sun. Shoots, we even have tidal power( which is actually lunar), and nuclear (which is big bang power).
As to the hydrogen itself, we are loaded with it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It was a joke. Obviously they're at the point where the car is safe enough to be TEST drove by living humans. So I should hope they're past the point where the car blows up upon impact. But I found it ironic that someone might pay to be a guinea pig and find out in a real-world situation.
Not everything can be tested in a laboratory or computer model...
You're nothing; like me.
Since 61% of all electricity in California is produced using fossil fuel how is this really helping us right now?
Only 28% of the electricity is created using nuclear or hydro power sources.
So if more and more people start driving electric cars in California we'll have to burn even more fossils and quite a bit of it is the good old polluter named coal.
Not that I have anything against a better car runs on renewable energy, but I think it would be better to start with creating more electricity that doesn't come from fossils.
-- Sir! I'm only telling you once, step down from the soap box. This is your last warning...
Hydrogen comes from electricity.
Incremental electric demand comes from oil & natural gas.
Using hydrogen cars will just shift the fossil fuel burning to the power plant rather than the car.
So I'm wondering, other than sounding like cool space age technology, where is the benefit?
You do know that hydrogen is SAFER than gasoline in terms of ruptured tanks and explosions and fires, right?
Let's see... better to have the fuel stick around in puddles under your crashed vehicle, or disperse quickly into the atmosphere leaving no danger at all behind? Hmm.
- Peter
INsigNIFICANT
You don't have to do any modification to run on diodeisel. Now if you want to run on straight used vegatable you need two tanks, one plain deisel (or biodeisel) to get the engine started and warmed up and regular vegtable oil for once the car is fully warmed up and something to switch between the two.
"These things don't work worth a [beep] in Minnesota, or Winnipeg, or anywhere else cold."
0 05/200521_e.htm
http://www.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/media/newsreleases/2
How come no one's trying to develop an air car? That is, you store the energy in compressed air. You could charge it with any kind of electricity, and no pollution would be emitted from the car while driving. Google "air car". The efficiency (ratio of output mechanical energy to stored energy) would be much higher, and because you just plug it in to recharge, the energy is much cheaper. All technology is already available except you may need a stronger tank for bigger loads.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
Er,
a te/807675.html).
For hydrogen to explode, it needs oxygen.
If the tank ruptures, the gas as light as it is would expand throughout the air very very quickly.
This isn't like lighting a balloon filled with hydrogen with a candle and watching the brief poof of flame.
This is like having a candle five feet away from a balloon filled with hydrogen and popping the balloon. That is, if there is a fire involved in the collission.
How often do collisions result in fire? I did a little bit of research into this, but the best I could find was that "crashes with fires are relatively rare" (http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/regrev/evalu
To explore this a little further:
What causes a fire in an automotive accident? Faulty gas tanks and fuel lines. This results in leakage. The vapors (which are MUCH heavier than hydrogen) then get sparked by something. This ignites the vapors, leading back to the fuel tank which then catches fire. I've witnessed car fires before (a few months ago, a car in the parking lot of my apartment complex caught fire). The fire burned for 10 minutes before fire response arrived. In that time, the fire spread from one car to the two cars on either side. It took fire response about five minutes to put the fires out. During this 15 minute time period, the materials that were burning included the interior of the car, under the hood, and the tires. The only violent explosions that occurred were the tires exploding.
I'm theorizing the reason the gas tanks didn't ignite is that gasoline requires a very oxygen rich environment. Gasoline requires a 1.4% - 7.6% concentration in air for it to be explosive. Any less than this and it will merely ignite; any more than this and there isn't enough oxygen for it to explode. It will simply ignite. The pre-existing fire probably used up most of the oxygen near the fuel lines. There was probably a phenomenon similar to what you see with an oil well - a jet of flame from the fuel line. Hollywood car explosions just don't happen.
Now, on to hydrogen.
Hydrogen, being much lighter than air (as opposed to natural gas or gasoline vapors), dissipates very quickly in air. At concentrations of less than 10%, it would require the same ammount of energy to ignite as would natural gas. The main point here, is that hydrogen dissipates so quickly that the concentration would very quickly reach less than 4% (the lower limit of explosivity). The likelyhood of explosions is much less likely than with even gasoline because of this.
Hydrogen Fuel Cells do not use any sparking or arcing componants. Similarly, the engine is a simple electronic engine. If something shorted, it could spark - but there is no combustion inherent in a fuel cell car. This limits the chances of even igniting the hydrogen in the case of a leak.
Fuel cells are also equipped with automatic shutoffs in case a leak is detected. This can't help if the storage tank itself is ruptured, but that would be difficult (Normal air tanks for scuba divers are very difficult to rupture, and tanks used to transport flamable liquid are even more difficult to rupture).
The myth of the exploding hydrogen car can be linked to two things: the hindenberg and the hydrogen bomb.
The hindenberg burned, rather than exploded. The color of the flame was wrong for hydrogen to be the propellant. It's very likely that it was the flamable fabric covering the zeppelin that ignited, not a leaking hydrogen tank.
A hydrogen bomb requires special isotopes of H2, and very high temperatures. Neither of which would be found in a car fire or a hydrogen fuel cell car.
For more on hydrogen fuel cell safety: http://sanewsletters.com/FCIR/fcirfctpart1.pdf
In the meantime, stop propogating myth and FUD.
You're right, we should stick to powering our cars with a nice, non-volatile, non-explosive substance like gasoline.
Gasoline has plenty of energy, but it's pretty stable stuff. There are plenty of misconceptions brought about by overzealous safety police (like all the "no smoking within 50 ft" rules), stupid movies and outright lies... remember when NBC put the explosives on the GM trucks to show how their side tanks would explode?
Gasoline burns pretty well but short of dropping a lit cigarette in it, it's pretty safe. And you can put a match out in diesel fuel.
Look at it this way: if you're going to rely on *any* internal power source, comparable to gasoline, it's going to have about as much energy as gasoline.
Out of curiousity, how much does hydrogen fuel go a gallon? How many MPH does one of these hydrogen cars get? Given the current price as gas (though it's dropping), any cheaper fuel source is looking pretty attractive. Honda, if you're looking to test one of these in NYC, let me know... :)
Shameless plug for my photos on Flickr
Hydrogen is no worse than gasoline - you have to store potential energy somehow, you know. Everyone thinks hydrogen is a lousy fuel because of the Hindenburg explosion. And hydrogen wasn't the only reason the Hindenburg exploded. It was designed poorly in such a way that it accumulated static charge, and they painted the surface with a chemical substance that is almost the same thing as thermite. See for yourself.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
According to the Financial Times on Jul6th this year Platinum is an essential catalyst for Hydrogen Fuel Cells and there is only enough Platinum left on and in Earth for a 10 year Hydrogen car economy.0 0000e2511c8.html
Ft article :
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/97b0b9ce-edbb-11d9-9ff5-
Sure current Fuel cells require a lot and advancements in the technology may reduce the amount needed but this will just spin it out a bit - it will only be decades at the most.
So we will have to change everything again if Hydrogen is adopted.
Why not Biodiesel? A Carbon Neutral technology that requires little change to the current Infrastructure and will work with current Diesel engines.
Hydrogen for cars is clearly a dead duck, why then is it being foisted upon us ?
It was a joke.
:-)
:-)
Ah. If there's anything I've learned about posting online, it's that you've gotta be obvious with those tipoffs, or it doesn't quite come through the way you mean it.
But I found it ironic that someone might pay to be a guinea pig and find out in a real-world situation.
I think it's kind of a neat idea myself. How many times do car manufacturers release beta quality vehicles for drivers to shake out for them? (e.g. Oldsmobile is GM's beta program.) This way Honda will get the feedback it needs sooner, and without actually deploying a product. Plus they get free publicity for the unusal nature of the experiment.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
My experience with biodiesel has been limited to tractors and farm equipment, so take what I have to say with that mind. We never once modified the engines to use biodiesel. We just filled up the tank with a mixture of peanut oil, canola oil or what ever happened to be a cheap bulk purchase and ethanol. Turn the key and voila! You now have a biodiesel vehicle. Mind you, the ethanol was there mostly to make it easier to start, but you can run on pure vegetable oil with some modifications. That said we used an 80/20 mix of oil to ethanol and ran it. Perhaps your car would run on the same or similar formulation?
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
The Grandparent post is right in their sentiment. They need to test this in more than just sunny temperate california. It has nothing to do with how hydrogen reacts to extreme climates, but it has everything to do with how the Car reacts to extreme climates.
:)
We have enough posts on how people like MS aren't testing their software enough, but now we criticize someone who thinks they should be testing more?
You might think Honda would do this, but be cautious. This is brand new technology, of course, and businesses love to cut corners in order to make it to market on time.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
My favorite, I think, is the scene in "Die Hard 2" where the airplane, desperately out of fuel, running on vapors, makes an emergency landing and crashes into the tarmac... and explodes in a gigantic ball of flame.
Hollywood just likes it with things explode.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Diesel's release more Carbons per gallon then Gas. But Diesel engines are a good deal more efficient then and can provide greater power at a lower rate of consumption. So at the end of the day the amount of carbons released from a Golf TDI will be lower then that of a Honda Accord.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
If you had RTFA, you too would know this. What's even more interesting is the fact the local fire department will not let them use the new fill station!
RTFA
NO, don't respond, don't type another uniformed, obviously ignorant comment. Just RTFA.
Please do not take this the wrong way, but do you think that honda will want "safe sex goddess" for their tester to be introduced to the media later?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
But what alternatives are there to fuel cells, when the oil runs out? Artificial petroleum, maybe?
Well the easiest (and that is a very relative term) are ethanol or biodiesel. Both are liquid fuels, meaning our entire infrastructure designed for handling liquids doesn't need to be replaced (gas pumps, tanker trucks, pipelines, etc.). They are carbon neutral, meaning the carbon released during combustion is the same carbon that the original plants absorbed as they grew (ie no net carbon increase in the atmosphere). Both run in cars that are manufactured TODAY (sometimes with slight modifications), and both are dinosaur-petroleum free. Instead of sending your money overseas to some royal family half a world away, your money goes to local farmers for growing the biomass that these fuels are derived from.
Both still have their problems, of course...and there is debate about whether either can replace oil on a large scale, but there is a lot of potential there, and if the energy balance is there, then they seem like the most obvious alternatives. Unfortunately, neither get the same kind of press hydrogen does.
teeker
In addition, it lets you shift from a dependency on oil to a variety of other fuels: coal, wind, hydro, etc. Even if it isn't cost-effective in terms of miles per dollar, there are externalities to take into account:
* The price of the occasional war
* The price of terrorism sponsored by some OPEC states
* The price of dependency on oil importing stations (e.g. New Orleans)
Really, I'm not trying to start a flame war here over the necessity of the Iraq war or to cast blame on any state in particular. But if the US reduces its dependency on a fossil fuel from a very volatile region it may do more good than just the immediate environmental and economic effects.
[quote]This is apparently the first fuel-cell car on the road anywhere in the world, according to Honda.[/quote] A hydrogen powered bus is rolling down the streets in Amsterdam, since 2004.
THAT'S GOTTA HURT!
here's a pic of a fuel-cell car after a nasty road accident which killed 4 people.
4 0-1128519068.jpg
http://www.visforvoltage.com/forums/uploads/post-
notice the hydrogen bottle. notice it's still whole.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
so how do you expect slashdotters them to get feedback from hotsexnow.avi on the hard drive?
Maybe something along the lines of Sex is Safer in a Honda? And they could give a glove box full of condoms with Honda logos for each new auto purchase.
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co
... you live in Canada?
I'd say that looks like it could be an entry for a Fark Photoshop contest.
You're nothing; like me.
Jim Motavalli drove one for the NYT. The article is now a pay item, but this was back in June and he had it for a week in the Fairfield CT area. Ya'd think Danny Hakim also of the NYT would have known this. Note to the Spallinos: DON"T RUN OUT OF FUEL. Motavelli's ran out and had to be trucked to near Albany just to reload it. The local FD probably doesn't know what hoops to jump thru yet. I'll bet there's a gases dealer nearby that could put a simple hydrogen station to shame. I'd worry about the local propane or natural gas tanks based on energy density and sheer amounts long before I'd worry about a hydrogen tank (it's about 2:1 energy per mass hydrogen : natural gas)
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
BMW and others offer engines and conversion packages to make dual-fuel vehicles using internal combustion engines that work on both hydrogen and gasoline. The fuel cell vehicle has the potential to be more energy efficient, but over the next few decades, if hydrogen catches on, I think the vast majority of hydrogen-technology users will NOT be using expensive and new fuel-cell technology. They'll be using fairly normal cars (maybe even the cars they have now) with dual-fuel engines that don't require any more platinum than they do now (and if the hydrogen infrastructure grows to the extent that we can stop burning gasoline, they won't need any at all -- no more pesky catalytic converters). In the very long run, if America can finally get off the idea of having a separate car for every individual on the road, we will solve both the fuels problem and the platinum-availability problem. I don't see platinum as a limiting factor at all.
Whose evaluation do you trust more?
Movie critic who doesn't have to pay to see films, or your friend who has to shell out hard-earned cash to see it? The movie critic will bring in all kinds of esoteric critical theory crap because they never actually directed a movie but always wanted to, and now they're just out to prove how much they know about the meta theory of film.
Music critic who doesn't have to pay to review an album, and in fact gets paid to write a review, or your friend who had to pay for it? The critic knows everything there is to know about the genre and the artist, but he's listened to thousands of albums and is interested primarily in showing his mastery of artful language and his ability to place the album in some sort of hierarchy with other music by other bands.
Making the testers pay keeps their opinions honest. They won't be tempted to blow off little annoyances, and they'll be more inclined to appreciate the things about the vehicle that they really like.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
So if the hydrogen container can survive the crash, why don't they make the entire car out of that stuff?
It's the old "black box" question!
Well put. Have you seen the mythbusters where they try to ignite a gas tank by shooting it? No regular bullet would do it. It took tracer rounds, and even then, it simply burned (no explosion).
Gasoline explosions are surprisingly hard to get. It enters the atmosphere so slowly (in comparison to things like hydrogen or propane) that it's hard to get a stochiometric ratio before the wind blows it away. Gasoline will burn furiously, mind you, as it's very dense - it just doesn't like to explode.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
You, sir, need to check you facts. While I agree with the Water being important, it also should be pointed out that it takes your precious WATER to grow crops as well. And BioDiesel is not just a fancy name for a mixture of oil and either ethanol, kerosene, or petro-diesel. Biodiesel is a different product, created by using oils such as animal, plant or other organic oils. What you are thinking about are biodiesel blends. "you might have to give it a bit of a spray " spray of what? /sigh Do you know the amount of energy required for ethanol? Consider Farming, distilling, transport etc. Ethanol is not very viable at his point, it survives on subsudies. Biodiesel is more viable, but we have a country that is gas based. I would love to see more biodiesel, but people need to buy diuesels first.
I would rather ride his wife
FUD about water-powered vehicles aside ...
Biodiesel is just a fancy name of a mixture of oil and either ethanol, kerosene, or petro-diesel.
That is just flat-out wrong.
Biodiesel
>>
Biodiesel is fuel made from renewable resources such as vegetable oils or animal fats. It is biodegradable and non-toxic, and has significantly fewer emissions than petroleum-based diesel when burned.
>>
For those who are interested here is a picture of the car: http://www.ballard.com/media/image_gallery/full-in fo/Honda_FCX_Demo.jpg
hah! that would rule, driving a giant yellow bottle to work. paint "XXX" on the side. no, wait, then people would think you're vin diesel.
i don't think anyone could reasonably argue that they hit you because 'they didn't see you'...'yeah, that jerk in the giant glowing yellow bottle just came outta nowhere'
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
they've been doing that for a long time, it is all javascript, using the handler on the resize. did you notice that the columns re-lay themselves out when you resize the window. and the end columns are the previous/ next buttons, so you can click anywhere in the last column and move to the next page.
IHT has got article reading very right.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
I work about ten seconds away from Ballard's two buildings in Burnaby, British Columbia and I've been seeing Civics in the neighborhood with "H2" logos and the like for years.
Largely irrelevant, but it makes me feel super cool...
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
However, I am a little concerned with the reports that the planet is retaining more energy than is lost to outer-space. If you consider the total energy to be X and the energy lost to space X - Epsilon (E), then you have the equation X > X - E. At some point, if X - E doesn't change to X + E, the planet will become a burnt crisp.
2 H2O -> 2 H2 + O2 (electrolysis of water)
2 H2 + O2 -> 2 H2O (combustion of hydrogen in air)
you get the water back. i was worried about that too initially, but i think i've read somewhere that the only emission from hydrogen vehicles is water. the combustion reaction works out that way, and i'll bet that fuel cells put out water too.
From Wikipedia:
Environmental benefits in comparison to petroleum based fuels include:
* Biodiesel reduces emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) by approximately 50% and carbon dioxide by 78.45% on a net lifecycle basis because the carbon in biodiesel emissions is recycled from carbon that was already in the atmosphere, rather than being new carbon from petroleum that was sequestered in the earth's crust. (Sheehan, 1998)
* Biodiesel contains fewer aromatic hydrocarbons: benzofluoranthene: 56% reduction; Benzopyrenes: 71% reduction.
* It also eliminates sulfur emissions (SO2), because biodiesel doesn't include sulfur.
* Biodiesel reduces by as much as 65% the emission of particulates (small particles of solid combustion products).
* Biodiesel does produce more NOx emissions than petrodiesel, but these emissions can be reduced through the use of catalytic converters. Petrodiesel vehicles have generally not included catalytic converters because the sulfur content in that fuel destroys the devices, but biodiesel does not contain sulfur. The increase in NOx emmisions may also be due to the higher cetane rating of biodiesel. Properly designed and tuned engines may eliminate this increase.
* It has a higher cetane rating than petrodiesel, and therefore ignites more rapidly when injected into the engine.
"So, biodiesel=good--a step in the right direction--but, we still need to structure our lives and society so that we drive less (way less) and rely less on burning feul (however sexy)"
And that, I wholly agree with.
Problem with Ethanol at least is the net energy to manufacture it is greater than the energy you get out, but like 25% or somesuch. Can't find the link now, but that's a big reason Ethanol isn't catching on as quickly. If there becomes a way to even that out, or even invert it so that it takes less energy to manufacture, Ethanol is a pretty good idea. I think Biodiesel here in America will take time for the same reason everything else isn't catching on, inertia. Our entire economy is built around gasoline and dirty diesel, and the cost of this isn't great enough to warrant a complete switch yet. I'd be all over alt fuel cars if they were feasible (mostly for ease of refuelling really), but for now, I stick with my 21 mpg car. Someday, that will change.
Bah
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
http://world.honda.com/FuelCell/
Also, an article on this story at Honda's website: http://world.honda.com/news/2005/4050629.html
Very wrong. A pure electric car properly designed works very VERY well for the average city commuter. It's simply that americans dont want a single seater commuter but to drive an escalade XL with 3rd axle and 8 more inches of width for that all american vision blockage of the other drivers.
having an efficient vehicle that can do 70mph for highway driving is not desired by the typical american even though it will work perfectly fine and have enough charge to return home with spare capacity.
And these vehiclescan be bought today. charged in your garage off of 120Vac and even carry home several bags of groceries.
I call that practical, not the oversized messes we drive today.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That seems a lot to lease a car -- I'm not sure what the incentive would be to do it if I were the driver. You can lease a nice car for a lot less money. I understand the motive of making sure the user bitches about every little thing, but they would probably do that at a reasonable rate, no? This almost seems like punishment.
If everybody in the US drove cars this size for their commuting, even with a gas engine, there would probably be no oil capacity problem and no demand for a fuel cell car. Just persuading people to drive European size cars would make a huge difference. But presumably the real hidden benefit of the fuel cell to the auto makers is that it will ultimately enable them to keep right on making SUVs and suburban trucks.
Pining for the fjords
the only emission from hydrogen vehicles is water.
this is something that really bothers me. technically, yes the only product of burning hydrogen is water. well, the only products of burning gasoline is carbon dioxide and water. the trouble is, that in the cylinder, there's alot of regular air that's compressed and heated. air contains nitrogen. the heat from burning the gasoline makes the nitrogen and oxygen in the air combine and make the NOx (smog). guess what will happen in a hydrogen car? yup, you'll have nitrogen from the air in there and you'll still make smog. granted, you'll make fewer other pollutants like soot and the associated hydrocarbons, but in reality those are pretty much controlled for now with all the emissions controls. so don't buy the marketing crap that says that H2 cars will save the environment, they may help a little, but not very much.
Getting more out of ethanol than the fuels you used is easy: just use 1990s production techniques or better.
That means on the farm you have things like diesel tractors that get better use of the fuel, hybrid crops that yield nearly twice as much. Precision fertializer application so you don't waste it where the ground is fertil.
At the plant you use a dry milling process, your total return is about 167% of the energy input. Or you wet milling, but use all the other results from wet milling, and call ethanol a by-product that would otherwise be waste, so you don't count all the costs (though this is a bogus argument - but even without it you are looking at about a 110% payback of energy)
In the lab 250% payback has been done, but not all of this is ready for production use.
Actually sunny California is probably the perfect place to test this out?
First, California has a relatively progressive set of rules that allow for testing new technologies and cars. California also has a high amount of pollution and thus a need for water cars that will bring down their high carbon levels.
As the heart of Americas car culture, California has already tried a large number of possible solutions to the problem, with only a moderate success. One or five or even a thousand water/electric hybirds won't make a lot of differance, but it is a start.
Finally, who knows what the conditions will be as global warming takes over. Everything slows down at -40, but as temps go down, these temps head north. And since the problem is that it is the US that uses most of the oil that is causing the warming, the testing should be done in a place where the conditions are similar to where the real need for such cars is located.
"Where did this apple come from?"
--Alan Turing
Until you have a clean, renewable source of hydrogen you haven't solved any problem at all by building a hydrogen fuelled car. You've only moved the pollution source, and likely lost energy in the conversion and transportation.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
We don't get to many day's below 50 let alone freezing down here.
You seem to be bearing up well considering......
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Biodiesel has a big flaw: the efficiency of the production method.
1) Plants aren't that efficient at turning sunlight into energy. They don't really need to be for their purposes, and they ignore certain wavelengths (such as green) altogether.
2) Once you have the plant, you need to turn it into diesel. Again, this is highly inefficient.
3) Once you have diesel, you must turn it into energy. Combustion engines are less efficient than fuel cells or power plant turbines.
Consider how much land we use for farming. Then consider how much more energy our cars use than we do.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Don't forget about global warming, the underlying problem in the first place!
As temps go up, winter temps go down and the frost/cold ranges move steadily north.
"Where did this apple come from?"
--Alan Turing
With current technology, it requires quite a lot of electricity to create the Hydrogen based economy, as opposed to a 'flirtation' with it. If the US wanted to move its transportation sector to Hydrogen, it would require massive power plant building.
Are they going to build coal burning power plants? Not in California, and recently California told it's out-of-state electrical suppliers to clean up their act.
Will they build Natural Gas burning power plants? With the expected rise in prices and shortening of supply due to distribution problems and higher demand, I don't think so.
Will Wind and Solar, etc;, create enough power to create the Hydrogen necessary? Not on your life.
What we have left is Nuclear.
To quote a now not so famous industrial band: "Connect the God Damned dots!"
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Umm, yeah. The same reaction does happen for fuel cells as well. (Of course it depends on your fuel in the cell, just assume hydrogen.)
Howver, no-one ever mentions that water is a green house gas ;-) Ban the hybrids!
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Me too! But so far I've had no luck finding a car that runs on cheap vodka.
But blocking vision is why I drive!
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
So if even a small fraction of US cars convert to another energy source, this would considerably lower the strain on the gasoline supply chain and probably lower the oil price -- at least until OPEP tightens the supply.
Naturally, you need that other energy source. If all you do is generate H2 from oil (or natural gas), then you accomplish nothing. You need nuclear power plants. They are not cheap (at almost $2 per watt, they are more expensive than natural gas plant), but they are considerably cheaper than solar arrays ($5/Watt), and they operate 24 hours a day whereas solar plants don't (a solar plant would need triple generating capacity and energy storage to be able to supply electricity at night -- generate 3x the energy during the day, store it, release 1x the energy at night, roughly).
More nuclear power plants would allow emerging countries to bootstrap their economy faster. Costly oil is really harming them right now. Mundane things like irrigation programs require pumps that run on electricity, which itself comes from oil. Expensive oil means no pumps, no irrigation, no crop.
So next time you meet a well-fed person opposing nuclear power, remind him/her that because of this attitude, millions of people are starving and rotting in abject poverty.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
From their FAQ's:
Q How does the Greasecar system work?
A The Greasecar system is a two tank fuel system. The vehicles existing diesel tank and filter will supply diesel fuel to the engine at start up and shut down. After start up radiator fluid will transfer heat from the engine to the heat exchangers in the Greasecar fuel system. These heat exchangers will heat the vegetable oil in the fuel filter, lines and fuel tank. The heat will reduce the viscosity of vegetable oil so that it is similar to diesel and can be injected into the engine properly. When the vehicle is being shut down for a period long enough for the fuel to cool the vegetable oil must be purged from the fuel system and replaced with diesel for the next start up.
Irony? Yea, it's like goldy and bronzy, only it's made of iron!
Fossil fuels are wasteful and are old technology.
Many things (but not all) that are produced by fossil fuels can be produced by more earth friendly resources.
If countries that rely on oil for their primary source of income will soon realize other means of creating income, it is inevitable that this will happen.
I guess I should have been more careful, I didn't realize how many people were going to defend the oil industry here.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
BMW has been playing with hydrogen powered vehicles for the past 3 years. Not just the little 3s either, they have been running the big 7 series, v8 and v12 motors with an emphasis on drivability not just fuel efficiency. Public availability has yet to be announced. however, there is a large consumer market that will drive any old POS as long as it gets good gas mileage, that must be why honda is the first in... :)
I can't understand why the Japanese or especially the European car makers haven't made a Diesel Hybrid. You would have the best of both worlds. Use renewable BioDiesel for fuel for hiway driving while your city driving is powered by the hybrid tech. What could be simpler. No "retooling" of the trasportation sector and most current Diesel engines work fine with B10 and B20 or even higher.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
guess what happens to hydrogen when it's combusted.
The Hindenburg
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman
unless you are using solar power to generate the electricty to separate H20 into H (which will never happen), then hydrogen is USELESS!!! why dont people realize that? What is the big hype about Hydrogen somone please tell me. It doesnt solve anything.
Last summer we hit over 110 degrees in my town on numerous occasions. We hit over 100 degrees nearly every day.
We are too low of an elevation to get snow but we get well below 32 degrees in the winter. Im not saying you guys dont get colder winters over there but we have you beat when it comes to extreme high temps and we get a good range of extremes.
My point was that its not a consistent 70-80 degrees here with sunny skies year long. This is as good a place to test a car as anywhere.
However this is just one test of many to come. Odds are they will have this thing running in nearly every enviroment before you see it at your local car dealership so this argument is pointless.
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be. -PF
actually a VW TDI Jetta is about 19 grand and a Golf is about 16k.
problem for me is that I do not want to have 50 gallon barrels of B100 shipped to my house every few weeks to keep a fuel supply going, and petro diesel is crazy expensive now that China has exploded into the industrial revolution.
sure, B100 is about 70 cents a gallon, but it is a lot of hassle.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Gods, are you an oil company shill or what? Vegetable oil is NOT biodiesel. Pouring canola oil into your tank is one of the quickest ways to fsck up your engine. Biodiesel is made from vegetable oils which go through a chemical process known as transesterification, where the glycerin is replaced with a methyl ion.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
You're correct about Nuclear being the only realistic power source to \kreate\ the Hydrogen economy. However, I guess it's not worth wasting anyones time discussing the problems with current Nuclear tech, waste being the main one. Ask anyone living in or near Las Vegas or Utah's Wasatch Front about Nuclear waste and you'll get a negative opinion. Why don't we ship the waste, overland in trains and trucks, to where you live?
Also, your comment about the well fed person is absolute \krap\ in my book. Don't try to play the "I'm proposing Nuclear because I care about the worlds hungry" card.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Links:
http://www.crest.org/hydrogen/index.html
http://www.h2fuelcells.org/learn.php
http://www.humboldt.edu/~serc/related.html
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
You would never guess that Jon Spallino drives what is probably the most expensive car in this city, known for its automotive excess. Or that he is the world's most technologically advanced computer. The above is the beginning of TFA as I misread it.
Posting as a coward suits you well.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I couldn't agree more...my wife's from SoCal (Irvine, to be exact), and I definitely wouldn't consider it an ideal testbed for effects of weather on new power/propulsion technology. It does crack me up to hear her family freak out about rain or below-50 (degrees F) temperatures though.
Hell, the last few winters have been tame by Chicago standards, but I bet a nice 6:30am, -20 degree, 3mph commute up the Kennedy would still give this Honda a run for its money.
And I wonder how it would stand up to being doused with a 35-degree Lake Michigan wave on outbound Lake Shore Drive's Oak St. curve....
Incidentally, CHICAGO... January 2, 1999...LARGEST SNOWSTORM TO HIT THE CHICAGO AREA: that was my first winter living in Chicago...talk about your rude awakenings. I haven't experienced bitter cold like that since then, especially considering the last couple mild winters...let's knock on wood that I didn't just challenge the weather gods to do their worst.
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
Last year we go 19.2 inches of snow, in about 12 hours. I think it was a record. This is, of course, in Minnesota. A few years ago my friends experienced a 12 foot snow-dift against the west side of their house. Needless to say it caused flooods soon after.
I do remember a day that was -40 and had a nasty wind, making it about -70F windchill. You can get frostbit in less than a minute. Most diesel things can't run at that temp, like school busses and trains.
And we do have 100+ days here too. Not that common, but what's worse than 100F+ is 80%+ humidity with that. It feels like a sauna. Your body sweats, but it doesn't evaporate. You can't stay dry.
I know a guy who's in the grease disposal business (seriously)... most of it currently goes back into cattle feed (that's right, cattle fatten on cattle oil), but at today's high prices using it for fuel become feasible. The only issue he mentioned was you have to burn some real diesel before letting the engine cool down or the cow grease will congeal and clog it up.
A buddy of mine was loaned one last winter and we went for a spin. I think it was a GEM brand. I think this was an early model, very sparse interior. No insulation (had heavy jacket on - december in vermont) and not lockable, but very functional and fun to drive. Would probably handle most "around town" driving just fine.
Which would be a great argument - if fuel cells worked by burning hydrogen in some sort of internal combustion engine. Which, of course, they do not. Insightful my ass.
Where can I buy one? I live in Nashville, TN and from what I understand the only electric vehicle on the market, the EV-1 was in California and they took them back from everyone who leased one. I'd love a one-seater electric car for my commute to work. Or the Smart car, whenever that is officially released in the U.S. for purchase. (I keep checking for availability). Not everyone in America is interested in horsepower and big vehicles. There are people who care about the environment too.
I'd like models and price lists, as well as dealers that I can actually buy them from. Thanks!
And somewhat off-topic but can someone tell me why in the hell CA won't allow the selling of small diesel engine powered cars here? I was all set to get a brand new TDI Golf VW two years ago and I was told the year previous that they had been band for sale in California. WTF? EPA? Therre seems to be no shortage of sales (and power modding) of those goddamned useless Ford and Hummer diesel SUV tanks here. Why can't I have my little veedub getting ~50 MPG? Oh, and to date, VW's site still states no diesel sales in CA. Bastards!
You are also NOT looking in the US/Canada. There are almost no such creatures here.
Another amazing thing, to me anyway, is that diesel is more expensive than gas on the west coast. Yup, I have to pay US$ 3.16/US gallon for diesel in Portland, while everybody gets their gas for 2.50 or less.
On the other hand, I would not trade my old GD300 for anything new on the roads these days, so I don't really mind.
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
And hydrogen bombs aren't burning hydrogen anyway -- they're fusing two hydrogen atoms together to make helium: fusion. The massive temperatures required to give the atoms enough energy to fuse are created by the splitting of uranium/plutonium/whatever atoms into lighter metals: fission.
I am sure I have seen a few, and I mean FEW, diesel Golfs on th eWest Coast. If push came to shove ... buy a convertible Golf and a nonconvertible diesel one ... "swap" engines. Done.
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
And precisely where you do think the oil comes from - Peanut Oil, Canola Oil, etc....
;)
I know how to mix it because we used to put in the tractor, combine, harvester, etc. 80% oil and 20% ethanol. I rather suspect that I have more hands on experience with biodiesel than any of you
And most of the ethanol comes from corn stalks digested by a yeast able to break down cellulose. How's that for recycling.....
Another 2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
Biodiesel is the way to go.
Biodiesel is a storage medium. It takes energy to produce it. What are they going to use? Nuclear, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, wind, oil, or coal? Zero point energy is the way to go.
Seriously, your argument is silly. Both hydrogen and biodiesel are energy storage mechanisms, and both require energy to produce.
The town I grew up in had 1199 inches of snow in 1973. It was in the Guiness Book of World Records.
Currently, even though things are really warming up these days, it still averages 30 feet a year. It's not called the Great White North for nothing.
Surely you're joking. Northeastern states (massachusetts, rhode island, new hampshire) will give up salting the roads when you pry the bribes out of their local aldermans' cold dead hands.
NOx emissions only occur when H2 is burned in an internal combustion engine. The high temp involved supports the production of NOx. Fuel cells do not operate at very high temps, so only water is produced. Nice, clean, distilled water.
:q! Oh crap, not again...
The French and the Dutch reprocess their nuclear waste and convert the waste's plutonium into short-life radionucleides. The technology exists. It's there, it's working, it's available for licensing.
I'd much prefer working at a waste reprocessing plant than breathing the air downwind from a coal burning plant: I'd wok in reducing the amount of deadly plutonium on Earth rather than being content with misspelling words starting with a "c" on slashdot.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
1) Plants aren't that efficient at turning sunlight into energy. They don't really need to be for their purposes, and they ignore certain wavelengths (such as green) altogether.
Your point being?
2) Once you have the plant, you need to turn it into diesel. Again, this is highly inefficient.
As opposed to what?
3) Once you have diesel, you must turn it into energy. Combustion engines are less efficient than fuel cells or power plant turbines.
Again what's your point? The most efficient engine is a Sterling engine, but not very practical. Diesel engines are far more efficient than gasoline engines. I could say that current braking technology is very inefficient. It recovers none of the energy used to put the car in motion. Though the Prius uses generators to recapture some of it. And there are flywheel technologies available but again not practical for cars.
Consider how much land we use for farming. Then consider how much more energy our cars use than we do.
I've considered it, but I still don't understand what you are driving at. Consider how much petroleum we use for farming to feed us. Algae has the most potential for producing biodiesel. It can produce 10,000 to 20,000 US gal/acre of oil. And it can be produced with waste or salt water on what would otherwise be unviable land. Ultimately we as a society will have to fundamentally change the way we live. We can improve the efficiency of vehicles up to a certain point and reduce their impact on the environment, but their is going to be a limit on the number of roads and vehicles the US or the entire Earth can support.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Lucas ( the English co. that mfg's electrical parts for autos ) nickname: Prince of Darkness.
emt 377 emt 4
It's simply that americans dont want a single seater commuter
Speak for yourself. I'd love a Tango. Unfortunately, the $85,000 price tag is a bit too, er, steep.
Show me where I can get a good, reasonably performing electric commuter with fair range for under twenty grand and I'm in. And don't even mention those little three wheeled Corbin cars... Nobody in their right mind would merge onto a freeway with traffic moving between 70-80mph in one of those.
Isn't Hydrogen embrittlement a problem that has yet to be addressed?
DNA just wants to be free...
I looked at the specs on their website. 30mi range and top speed of 25mph.
GEM isn't the solution I've been looking for. The don't have enough speed or range. Actually, the GEM give you 540lbs of cargo, but I only need about 300. The person who markets the single seater "to work and back" 50/50* solution will have a waiting market.
*50 miles at 50mph.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Where can I get this Zero point energy? What breakfast cereal must I buy to get it as a toy surprise?
Yes of course it's a storage medium. All you need is solar energy to produce biodiesel. I'm just saying that biodiesel is a better storage medium than hydrogen and it doesn't require developing an entirely new industry to do it. It can be ramped up on a large scale much faster than hydrogen without developing new technologies just minor changes to existing ones. You can buy a car out of a showroom today and run biodiesel in it without modification. Try that with hydrogen.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Ottawa, Ontario can probably beat that. Record low: -32.9 F (-36.1 C), high: 100.0 F (37.8 C), and snowfall: 16.0 inches(40.6 cm). Average yearly snowfall is 87.2 inches (7.3 feet).
Note that these are not exactly very unusual values. It is regularly below -30 C in winter, mid-30 C in summer, and heavy snowfall. I might also add that the humidity is very very high, so the humidex (feels like) is mid-40's in the summer. So the only one not beat is the maximum daily snowfall by a few inches, but temps and average snowfall are worse.
For storms, how about this one:
However, what we don't know is what will the hydrogen do over the lifetime of the car or engine to the engine (and fuel supply system). Hydrogen is what makes water the "universal solvent". Hydrogen atoms migrate through almost (maybe all?) materials known to man. It makes steel brittle. How it will affect an engine running on it over the running life of the engine is a big unknown. Maybe it won't matter at all - or maybe you will need a new engine every couple of years (or a major overhaul).
I would hope the automobile manufacturers have done or will do this kind of a study before releasing these vehicles to the public. It would be in everyone's best interest...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Yeah, I saw that in the article, which I did read first. But "crash tested" to what standards? US? Japanese? Honda's? Anyones? Side? Frontal? It doesn't even say it actually passed, just that it was tested. And they certainly don't provide the info.
My car is crash tested too, but I can look up the reports.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough in the original post. Just because Bill Gates says Internet Exporer is safe doesn't make it so. I don't see why you believe anyone who says something's been crash tested but doesn't provide any proof or further mention thereof.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
The batteries are very nasty, even mre so then current car batteries.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yes of course it's a storage medium. All you need is solar energy to produce biodiesel.
Really? That's all you need? You mean there's no energy requiring or consuming steps between sunlight and biodiesel in the tank? Amazing! Why don't more people know about this liquid light?
You can buy a car out of a showroom today and run biodiesel in it without modification. Try that with hydrogen.
Yes, and then you'd have a car with all of the downsides of internal combustion, just with a fuel from a different source.
Look, I'm all for biodiesel. I have no problem with it whatsoever. In fact, if there was a diesel/electric hybrid car on the market I'd buy it today and run it on biodiesel. But we need to plan for the future. Hydrogen is the best way to go. You get flexibility in energy production (i.e. any process that produces electricity can be used to make hydrogen) and zero toxic emmisions when it's consumed in a fuel cell. Biodiesel has neither of these advantages. So while it's a good small scale and short term solution, it's not the long term way to go. And we need long term solutions.
Southern California may not have road salt, but it has just about every other unfriendly driving condition you can think of. Heat, crazy traffic, crazy traffic enforcement, etc. I think they could have done a lot worse, if "harsh driving environment" was one of the driving forces.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
A pure electric car properly designed works very VERY well for the average city commuter
Really? If that's the case, I have yet to see one. The ones I've seen so far seemed to be aimed at single people who rarely, if ever, leave a metropolitan area. Sorry, but that doesn't fit me, or anyone I know. I need more cargo space than a few bags of groceries. I don't know anyone who doesn't drive on a highway at least every now and again. And I don't know of anyone who never wants to give someone else a ride somewhere.
The problem with the single-seater, hyper-efficient vehicle concept is that people do much more with their cars than commute. They go out with friends. They go on vacation. They haul stuff around. A vehicle that is not capable of doing any of this simply will not be considered by most people.
an escalade XL with 3rd axle
Really? I haven't seen those. Got a link to the product page? I'd love to check them out.
man, i feel quite the fool now.
ripping good show, lads.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
My point being that technologies like wind and solar capture much more energy for a given amount of land used for their production, and often don't have the inefficient intermediate steps (plant->fuel->energy). Solar in particular can make use of otherwise unproductive areas like rooftops (and my mother-in-law, without power since Wilma, would love to have rooftop solar right about now...)
Ultimately we as a society will have to fundamentally change the way we live.
Perhaps, but this isn't an argument for biodiesel over other non-fossil fuel power sources.
In some ways I think Australia may turn out to be the bellwether for alternative power. The Aussies have some uranium, but otherwise they're a net importer of energy. Meanwhile, they have a lot of sunlit land per person, as well has areas like the bay off of Darwin that could house thousands of windmills. It's also in Australia that the massive solar power tower is being planned.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
For some reason.. I expected to find some more info on the car. But no, just arguing about who has the worst weather. Who cares? If you don't like your weather - move.
According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations, you could get at least 300 miles (480 km) before refueling. But let's say you could only get 100. With all the savings of not using gasoline (spend about 25% as much on fuel per mile), I'm sure a lot of people would be willing to swap out one car for an air car if it's just goint to be used to get to and from work, and just recharge it when you get home. You could recharge it anywhere there's an outlet, so you wouldn't even have to wait for that.
I admit I'm fuzzy on the maintainance (sp).
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
From the article: "Cars powered by fuel cells are electric cars that do not rely on batteries, but that instead generate their own electricity. Fuel cells combine hydrogen and oxygen from the air in a chemical reaction, with water vapor as their only emission, at least from the tailpipe."
Sounds like these fuel cells would be ideal to power a hybrid vehicle, where most of the energy for propulsion is drawn from the battery. These fuel cells won't be replacing batteries as we know them - they will be replacing Internal Combustion Engines (ICE).
Who cares about, solar, hydrogen or biofuel powered cars. What I want to see is a methane powered vehicle.
"
having an efficient vehicle that can do 70mph for highway driving is not desired by the typical american even though it will work perfectly fine"
acceleration for passing, lane changing, and getting on the freeway are inportant, and 70 won't cut it.
"I call that practical, not the oversized messes we drive today."
I call it a tragic accident waiting to happen.
They really aren't safe in a collision, espcially with an SUV.
Plau I not only need to buy grocieries, I need to fit a family of 4 in there as well, and I need power so that having a full vehical doesn't make the handling, acceleration, and braking hazardious.
WHen they craete a fual cell car where it looks like the passengers might have a chande of surviving if they are in an accident, call me.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Technically, he's correct. Major stakeholders in the oil business do own bits of some car companies.
Two of the largest shareholders of DalmierChrysler are oil-producing states in the Middle-East - Kuwait and Dubai. Hemi anyone?
IMO, that's why you'll find Chrysler's big push will still focus on petrol and disel engines. To prove a point, the Jeep Liberty is going to have the option of a Merc disel engine this year.
--- Dan
It's still worth seeing if it will run on biodiesel, or even straight waste veg oil. I used my old Citroën CX 25DTR (2.5 litre turbo diesel) on 100% waste veg oil with only a slight hit in cold starting, and 75% WVO/25% mineral diesel with no loss of power or hard starting at all. No smoke under heavy acceleration, either. Keep in mind that this was the car I used to haul broken Yank Tanks around with, on a big heavy recovery trailer (400kg in the trailer alone)...
And precisely where you do think the oil comes from - Peanut Oil, Canola Oil, etc....
er... Yeah. However, those are quite a bit different, philosophically if not empirically, than the black stuff that bubbles out of the ground and people go to war over.
Biodiesel also produces fewer pollutants then petro-diesel, so there really isn't any "just a fancy name" about it.
Honda is one of the companies furthest behind in fuel cell technology among the majors. For example, DaimlerChrysler (really just Mercedes back then), has had fuel-cell buses for sale to European customers since late in 2000. These days, GM seems to be the furthest ahead.
What an honor!
Of course, Minneapolis. Minneapolis has had single storm snowfalls over 28" and over 20" in 24 hours, both in 1982 and probably the same storm that hit Chicago. Average annual snowfall is over 48". Minneapolis has hit at least -40 F (damn cold to be waiting for the bus!), MN also tops 100 at times during the summer, although the average for July is only around 75.
Chicago would probably be harder on a car used for commuting though, I'm pretty sure traffic is worse there. You probably get far worse ice storms being right on the lake there, I could see that being really hard on these hybrids.
Carbons of course are harmless too. People might find the massive visible carbon particulate emmissions of 30y/o design, low-technology diesels aesthetically objectionable but it's basically inert dust and settles out of air just like any other dust. Modern diesels do not produce the visbile particulates unless owner has modified them for more power or something (those Dodge rams with like 500hp and black exhaust you may have seen one it's popular thing to do)
On emmissions that really count though like the "poisonous" gases and carbon-dioxide, diesels are actually cleaner than gasoline engines of even smaller output.
This Is Old News
Honda has had the Honda FCX out for awhile now. There is dozen or so people who is driving one.
For information on Hydrogen, http://www.hydrogennow.org/
\
TFA is about a fuel-cell, more like a refillable battery, not an hydrogen burning internal combustion engine so there are no NOx. Most of smog is peroxidised hydrocarbond anyways.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
It's not Chloride ions (from aquaeous solution of NaCl) but many other ions present in sea water which become air-borne. Michigan, where my sister lives, salts the roads, but it isn't just NaCl either. Exposed metals near the ocean often show corrosion, depending upon which ions they react most readily with. Electrical wiring often becomes noisy thanks to the presence of the ions. They also settle all over my pickup overnight, even though it's parked in a car port.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Ultra capacitor eh? Wake me up when the 'flux' capacity shows up. I got an election in 2000 to get to. :-)
sri
1) WHere do you think we will be getting the energy for hydrogen seperation?
Nuclear power. Sure its a stop gap until we figure out fusion in 500 years, but if our descendants don't figure out technological solutions for the waste then they won't be able to survive anyways.
2) How many wars have started directly because of oil supply? ANd what is the death toll for these wars as opposed to the more traditional "agression" wars?
Depends... Technically 10 of millions. Germany attacked the Soviet Union for its resources in WWII. Partially for the grain in the Ukraine and the living space, but Hitler was really keen on getting oil fiels in Kiev and in the Baku fields in the Caucasus. Even so much to dictate military strategy on it. He held back the forces going to Moscow to take the Kiev pocket in 1941 in order to secure this. Secondly the Baku fields were a major issue in the 1942 campaign with Stalingrad.
There were ideology reasons behind this, but oil was a big factor for the German invasion.
The Iraq/Iran war was over highly rich oil territory that Saddam wanted to grab. He also wanted to topple the revolutionaries in Tehran that stated they wanted to overthrow him... But mostly oil was the key objective. A few million died in that war mind you.
Iraq attacked Kuwait over a border dispute with slant drilling over the border and debts and oil production vs price issues. You know where that got us...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_war
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
you forgot to mention the the main waste product of ethanol production, distiller's dried grain, is excellent cattle feed; and most corn is field corn grown to feed cattle anyways. Calling that a bogus argument would be debatable because the farmers would be spending energy to grow the corn with or without ethanol production in the middle.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
the comment above his mentioned combustion, and when taken in context is still insightful.
Why don't they give the ETs for this car? I would love to know how its top speed and 1/4 mile times. I guess that with a 100kW power-plant, or about 140 HP, the practical rating is closer to 50kW, or 70 HP. On second thought, I don't want to know the numbers.
_ 1021vow.html
Secondly, why do they give the car such a crappy look. What is wrong with the sexy convertible two-seater look, like a Miata or Triumph Spitfire? Something like this:
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2003/10/21/cx_dl
Not ready to sell the '70 GTO yet.
No kidding - as another poster pointed NOx != smog; smog is from particulate exhaust, such as Diesel and umburned HC.
NOx contributes to greenhouse gasses and global warming, not smog.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
You should be able to run Biodiesel with out any conversion But if you want to run SVO (straight vegetable oil) then you need a conversion kit. http://www.greasecar.com/
The Aussies have some uranium, but otherwise they're a net importer of energy.
Actually we have massive supplies of coal and natural gas and most of our electricity is generated using these two fuels, as well as 'fueling' a significant export industry. We also have around 40% of the world's known uranium reserves. Unfortunately we are only exporting the uranium - not using it for our own nuclear power (we have one nuclear reactor in Sydney that's used for scientific and medical research). Even more unfortunately because we have so much coal and natural gas electricity we generate is very cheap and there hasn't been much effort to setup wave, wind, solar or geothermal power stations. We are a net importer of oil though.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
Estimated cost of a 35% efficient fuel cell stack (ie worse than a good internal combustion engine) is $5000/kW or more. So for a 15 kW system, which will need some batteries as well for peak current draw, you are looking at $75000.
That number has not changed in 4 years.
Where are you going to get the hydrogen from? Nobody has a satisfactory reformulator for hydrocarbons.
Fuel cells are a taxpayer/investor funded daydream.
...Impressed
"There's a sucker born every minute."
Then again, they said they want serious feedback like they might get from a real consumer. That's $30,000 over an assumed 5 year service life (hopefully production models last longer than that, but I think 5 years is the allowable depreciation time for the IRS). That's the cost of a nice sedan.
Indeed, a hybrid is not just an internal combustion engine hooked up to a hydrogen tank. Yet while the power generation process is not the same as combustion, the reaction taking place within a fuel cell also outputs water as a waste product.
As far as I can remember, the reaction goes something like:
2H2 => 4H+ + 4e-
O2 + 4H+ + 4e- => 2H2O
So there's your water
It would not be unusual for a large fleet to get a car prior to job 1, and we also put experimental subsystems (eg new HVACs) into say taxi fleets before they are used elsewhere.
However, your average customer is not going to drive cars long in advance of J1, because they will not be homologated, and will be uninsurable (we are self insured for our employees).
Also it is not unknown for other manufacturers to hire/borrow any early cars that are available and tear them down overnight. Honda have probably got some heavy security on this thing to stop that happening.
My department inherited a Lexus LS 400 that had been through a teardown, nice car, but the array of warning lights that you got because of the mistakes on re-assembly were a bit of a spoiler.
GM's Impact program was much the same idea, I'm sure they now have enough customer data to know how to model electric vehicles accurately.
We do a similar thing, we install a small box that monitors the Can bus (?sp) and saves the results to flash. Then we build up Real World Customer Useage Profiles, and design our durability tests around them.
I think you might be able to have your little veedub, if you are willing to buy it out-of-state. I don't live in CA, so I'm not sure. Check out the forums on http://www.tdiclub.com/ for more info. Also, Consumer Reports did real-world testing on hybrids, and the Prius gets the same, overall average as my VW Jetta TDI with a 5-speed manual: 44MPG.
Gasoline can and does explode, and this include its fumes. How else do you think it could move the pistons in your car's engine?
Granted, it doesn't happen nearly as often as it is does in the movies, and you have to be pretty unlucky to ignite the vapors at a distance, but don't pretend it doesn't happen.
Yeah, why's it got a tailpipe?
I find it very hard to believe that this sentiment is repeatedly echoed here on Slashdot.
A couple things:
- Does nobody on slashdot have a spouse and/or child? A single-seat vehicle is not only impractical, it's pretty much useless. Sure, it's fine for daily commuting (as far as capacity is concerned) for maybe 90% of the population, but anyone that has kids and needs to go shopping needs at least 3 seats worth of space. Look around you sometime: you'll notice many people have children.
- These small electric cars are basically 4-wheeled, caged motorcycles. Basically, they're an unagile motorcycle with a slow and inadequate top speed and a protective role cage (which will likely do more harm than good in a collision due to the fact that you won't be able to fly out of the way of harm). Other drivers won't see you, and unlike a motorcyle, it's quiet, so they won't be able to hear you either.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Yes, it's true. But that's accumulated over the year. With that much snow, it settles and packs down, although it might still be around 20 feet deep. I don't live there anymore ;)
Gasoline won't burn if you drop a cigarette in it; gasoline doesn't even burn in liquid form because there's no oxygen present. The vapors (fumes) however are flammable, which also explains the sibling's gripe about the plane in Die Hard 2 (although there's no question it was purely for gratuitous explosions; and who doesn't like explosions?!?)
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
For the last couple months I've been thinking more of just keeping the truck and getting a motorcycle. I commute via train to work anyway so I'm only driving around town for errands, visits, or out of town trips. I can just about squeaze a month out of one tank if I stay in town and being that I'm close to some stores and such the mighty mountain bike makes for good transportation too. But still, I want that damn TDI VW because, well, ecentricity factor? Who knows, I'm blowing smoke from my orfi.
I'm hoping to see some near future development in diesel-hybrid tech, now that would be interesting. And biodiesel. I understand that it's actually sold at the pump in numerous midwestern locals but I only read that in a news blurb and on some blogs. Hell, with all of the fast food getting pounded down by the SUV pilots out (whilst piloting said behemouths. Christ, they seem to often live in there. I bet some have EVDO, EDGE or UMTS cellular and tellecommute from their living rooms on wheels ;-) )here we have a surplus of one source of biodiesel. Those folks could have their cake (and fries) and eat it to, well to some extent ;-)
First off, I should say I'm one of the lucky people who can ride his bike to work. I live across the river from DC and work in DC, so my commute is only a few miles.
That said, I *do* own a car, a small 2 door focus stick-shift which gets great mileage. My vow, when I bought the car, was to own it long enough that my *next* car would be an alternate fuel vehicle. Be it hydrogen, electric, whatever. I intend to stand by that, even if I have to keep my focus on the road for ten more years ( it's almost 5 years old ).
The issue here is that I live in an apartment. I LOVE apartment life, I don't intend to own a house, ever, unless it's in ( or very near ) a city, as I love city life. As such, the promise of charging an electric from my garage is kind of a deal breaker, since I don't have a garage, and I don't intend to run a power cable from my apartment window to the street.
For alternate fuel vehicles to succeed we need a way to charge or refuel them that doesn't require people to have garages!
Just sayin'
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
Ok AC, I'll bite.
Yes, I did read the article. And no, I haven't read everything else in this thread. I'm responding to one post, not an entire thread.
If you'll read my post, I didn't say that hydrogen wasn't a problem. What I did say was that "hydrogen was not the only reason". I still stand by that. Wikipedia articles tend to present all sides of an argument, so you'll find points both pro and counter in most any article there.
What I get sick of are people hearing about hydrogen cars and going "OMG you're gonna blow up like the Hindenburg!!!11one11!!", and never once realizing that they were sitting on maybe 12 gallons of gasoline all the way to work, which has the explosive potential of two-fifths of a ton of TNT. No kidding.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Whooooweeee... I just looked up an article about fuel cells and it appears BMW builds them fast and quickly. http://www.germancarfans.com/news.cfm/NewsID/2040
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Here is my source
250% in the lab means nothing on the road, but 167% means a lot in reduced oil imports.
Well, Jimmy, I also live on the Wasatch Front, and by the way, you may want to come out of your FPS, Cheetos and Mountain Dew-induced haze once in a while an read the newspaper. Either one will do, the Trib or the DN. Heck, you could even get adventurous and read the SL Weekly. You see Jimmy, not only does Orrin Hatch (a rabid environmentalist by anyones reckoning) oppose the PFS site at Skull Valley (boy, there is some irony for ya) and most of the rest of Utah's hardcore Republican "environmentalists", but also the uber-activist "Earth First" enviro himself, the ultra liberal John Huntsman. You know him, right, the governor of Utah? You live in Utah, right?
Here is a quote from that most activist, liberal, anti-business Governor of ours, who, by the way is a Republican. Who would have known?
that is cold comfort to the hundreds of thousands of Utahns who live immediately downwind from this site.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I agree with the need for waste reprocessing, but of course the Europeans are always ahead of the U.S. in such things. What else is new.
Also, the amount of Mercury coming over from Chinese coal burning power plants alone (forget the US plants) is enough to taint every lake and strem in the western U.S. Try checking the Forest Service, BLM or Fish and Game web sites about Mercury warnings in Lakes and streams that are far from any urban areas.
But what really warms my heart is that your one "slash" to my "dot" (so to speak) is your lame ass attack on my humorous use of the letter K instead of C. Personally, I like the "hard" c sound that a k brings to mind, especially in the word krap.
Oh, and by the way, I wouldn't use any deadly plutonium in my stir fry if I was you...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
(Incidentally, these are broad terms. Solar includes a wide range of things like wind and thermal ocean gradients. Nuclear includes geothermal power and fusion if we ever make it work.)
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates