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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.
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...
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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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 ?
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"
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
An article on the Honda site says "In December 2002, the city of Los Angeles began leasing the first of five Honda FCXs, which are now used in normal, everyday activities by city officials." ... "While the 2005 Honda FCX is our second-generation fuel cell vehicle (FCV), it is the first to be powered by a Honda designed and manufactured fuel cell stack."
So this is a meaningful trial and a significant step but it is far from the "first fuel-cell car on the road".
two things...
1) WHere do you think we will be getting the energy for hydrogen seperation?
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?
Honestly, the wars for oil have contributed very little to the death toll due to violence in our history (even modern history). And fuel cells does not remove our dependence form oil until we can power hydrogen purification plants using wind, solar, or nuclear power.
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.
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.
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
... you live in Canada?
Old news. http://www.smokinggun.com/code/sg_layout.php
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
For the average ICE, short jaunts are a lot more stressful on the engine than longer trips since it never gets up to operating temperature. You'd wear out an engine a lot faster by starting it up, running it hard for a short time, stopping it, and letting it sit a bit than having it run moderately hard at temperature.
I do doubt the same applies to a fuel cell powered car, but that would probably be an advantage for some people who just drive short distances all the time.
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'
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
Me too! But so far I've had no luck finding a car that runs on cheap vodka.
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.
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Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
I'd be happy with just a Hummer.
Don't worry, I'm sure we can think of another reason.
I am not a crackpot.
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.
It's a way to transport energy more cleanly than bio-oils and in a smaller, cheaper package than batteries.
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 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.
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Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
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.