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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.
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.
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!
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
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...
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.
We hear this argument on Slashdot every time this is brought up, and every time it's equally wrong: electricity is produced by many means, many of them renewable or non-polluting, like nuclear energy. Furthermore, natural gas creates less CO2 than gasoline or diesel. Also, and very importantly, producing electrical energy in any powerplant, is much more efficient than transforming the thermal energy into motion, in cars.
Finally, it is relatively easy to shift the source of electrical energy from carbon to nuclear and perhaps solar and wind. It is IMPOSSIBLE to do that if cars stay the same, i.e. gasoline-based.
Moving from gasoline to fuel cell is an enabler, it allows for a shift from polluting to non-polluting technology. If you don't have that enabler, you will never be able to do the shift.
Sigged!
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".
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.
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!
The better way to put it is that Hydrogen can come from electricity. The are are other sources of Hydrogen and electrolysing water is actually very inefficient. The more common and less costly method and easier to do on a large scale is exctracting it from coal. USA has immense coal reserves. The only byproduct of Hydrogen production from coal is carbon dioxide.
Because all the CO2 that is produced from this is produce in bulk quantities at a central location, rather than by millions of individual automobiles, it is practical to collect the CO2 and pump it back into the ground. On top of that, pumping CO2 into an oil reserve reduced the viscosity of the oil, allowing it to be pumped at a greater rate, creating an economic benefit and our foreign oil dependency is reduced in two different ways.
So, the benefits are both in the environment, the economy, and in national security.
- Thomas;
___ This sig is in boldface to emphasize its importance!
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.
Ugh. You are confusing a gasoline fuel cell with a hydrogen fuel cell. You'll find they are very different things.
GMC is the only one who refuses to go along with fuel cells.
That is blatantly false. For one thing, GMC is a division of GM. For another, if you actually researched you'd find that GM is footing the largest part of the hydrogen fuel cell research. Honda is busy putting cars out and getting PR, GM is busy investing money in figuring out how to deliver hydrogen to the world efficiently.
Also it should be mentioned that the oil industry owns stock in these American automobile companies so they have a financial incentive to create gas guzzlers.
I don't know about this first-hand, but given the track record of your post I wouldn't take only your word for it.