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Ford Airstream Electric Concept Car
Not to be upstaged by GM's plug-in electric concept vehicle, Ford has unveiled its own concept. The twists are design by Airstream and a hydrogen-powered fuel cell to charge the battery. From the AutoblogGreen article: "The fuel cell, made by Ballard, turns on automatically when the battery charge dips below 40 percent. With the on-board charger (110/220 VAC), the battery pack can be refilled at home. Ford says the HySeries Drive is 50 percent smaller and less complex than conventional fuel cell system and should have more than double the lifetime."
Seriously, plug in is dead, fuel cell or other self-contained has to be the future. And hybrid has to be the past.
No, its not. There is no self contained sustainable fuel that is remotely viable at this stage.
Your non-renewable options are:
Petrol/Diesel
Natural Gas
Your renewable transport options are:
Hydrogen (*)
Biodiesel & Alcohols (+)
Electricity
Other esoteric energy stores.
The joy of electricity is simple - it piggy backs off whatever we decide to power the world with for fixed structures. That solution may be nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal or hydroelectric. It really doesn't matter, as long as we can store the energy sufficiently well in a car to get around. If you think that is going to be too hard, explain to me why its going to be easier to store hydrogen, because I see alot more things running off batteries now that hydrogen energy sources.
Just my opinions here,
Happy to see what others think,
Michael
(*) Right now all hydrogen is formed from hydrocarbon sources. Its hard to hold as it destroys the metals that hold it in compressed form. It loses most of the energy put into it in the compression cycle to get it into its container so that you only get about 30% of the energy put in.
(+) Definitely an option for some parts of the world, but not really going to work well for many countries as they don't have enough arable land to make all the biomass. And to make it replace fossil fuels for cars will require so much water to irrigate the crops we will probably have to start building massive numbers of desalination plants, etc. Personally I'd rather keep the land areas untouched and go for renewables, but some countries do manage this option ok.
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
The article and summary both clearly say that the fuel cell charges the battery, and not the other way round.
This article was confusing to me also until I read the press release by Ford-http://media.ford.com/newsroom/release_displa y.cfm?release=25150. This is a hybrid in that it is powered by a Li-Ion battery and a Hydrogen fuel cell. There is a "350-bar hydrogen tank that supplies 4.5 kg of useable hydrogen". So you can plug it into the wall to recharge the battery but you must recharge the fuel tank with hydrogen. Also the battery only gives you a distance of 25 miles whereas the Fuel cell gives you 280 miles. There is no electrolysis.
Where did you get the idea that there's a gasoline powertrain from?
Off-peak would mean "at night". I've lived through a Texas summer; it does get cooler at night, the asphalt roads actually solidify!
A big enough electric-vehicle fleet would let you take advantage of surplus energy at any time of the day, not just at night. This would be great for Texas, because Texas wind could supply 1190 billion KWh/year, about 30% of US electric demand by itself. Take 20% of that (238 billion kWh), use it to charge vehicles consuming ~400 Wh/mile (much more than current EV's) for a state average of perhaps 20,000 miles/year, and you can run about 30 million vehicles on nothing but electricity. (You'd need about 90 GW of wind generation at 30% capacity factor, but today's ramp rate will have us there in 15 years or less.)
You can also use surplus juice to make ice for A/C the next day, or next week. You just keep topping up the bank whenever energy is available, and if you run too low you start up the extra fossil-fired plants. Meanwhile, you save $billions on expensive and depleting natural gas and the oil Texas now has to import from hostile countries.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
The EV1 is impractical for a number of reasons, most problematic are the batteries themselves, strangely absolved in the mockumentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" 1) Because of the charge-discharge strain placed on the batteries, they would have required an expensive replacement every 25000 miles. Gradually the car's range would dwindle to uselessness, just like a laptop battery does with age as well. 2) When talking about emissions, the 2004+ Prius actually beats out the EV for emissions according to the EPA's website. 3) Finally, the biggest problem is recharge time. I full charge required anywhere from 12-16 hours, a fact completely left out of the "so-called-documentary" "Who Killed the Electric Car?" In reality, the Prius solved many of the problems encountered by the EV1 by keeping the gasoline engine. Improvements in emissions from the petrol engine improved the exhaust and the keeping a constant charge to the batteries extends the lifespan of the batteries.