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Ford Airstream Electric Concept Car

Posted by kdawson on from the fill-it-up-with-H2 dept.

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."

2 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Plug in electric cars. by mgv · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  2. Confusing Article by Tesla15 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.