NASA Tests Hydrogen-Fueled BMW

Rio sends us word that NASA has completed an 8-week test of a fleet of BMW luxury sedans powered by liquid hydrogen at Kennedy Space Center. The new BMW Hydrogen 7 sedan uses the same fuel that powers the space shuttle and reduces CO2 emissions by 90 percent, according to a news release. Its engine can burn gasoline or liquid hydrogen and can switch seamlessly between the two. From the article: "One hundred BMW Hydrogen 7s have been built, and 25 are used in test programs in the US. The cars have already covered more than 1.3 million miles in test programs around the globe."

Comments

How efficient are they?

[ThatFunkyMunki]

Hydrogen may be clean to use and get, but is it energy efficient to use it?

Re:How efficient are they?

[skorf]

Not really.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Monkey]

According to the specs on this car, it uses 3.6 kg of hydrogen per 100 km.

Re:How efficient are they?

[JustNiz]

Who cares? The planet is not short of energy. The sun keeps giving us gazillions of jiggawatts for free.
The important issue here is reducing CO2 to stop the environmental damage we're doing, not making travel cheaper to the end-user.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Praedon]

Oh snap!! I wish I wasn't absent when they taught metric the one day ever in my Soviet American school... Now I will never know what that means!!!!!

Re:How efficient are they?

[Ginger Unicorn]

so that's $7.20 per 100km. Or £3.55 for 62 miles in english. Equivalent in petrol about 62 mpg. That's not bad at all.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great. What I want to know though is, how much energy does it take to produce the liquid hydrogen. That's the real key here. I want to know if there's any real net energy savings by using this. There's a lot more too it than simply how far your car goes per kg.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Opportunist]

Well, how "clean" is it, really?

I'm not an expert on H2 refining, but the methods I know either create quite nasty and poisonous waste products or need incredible amounts of power. So unless we got some very clean and efficient way to generate power to get this clean H2, we're just back at square one. And unless I didn't sleep through physics, the 2nd law of thermodynamics tells me that this better be some really, really clean way of generating H2.

It's a bit like the electric motor. Sure, it's the most efficient kind of engine, converting more than 95% of the energy put into it into movement, but first of all someone has to generate that electricity to run it. And that means... 2nd thermodynamic law, it would have been probably more efficient and less waste heat producing to use the primary energy source to generate movement instead of converting it to power and then use an electric motor.

Now, it might be more efficient if you convert energy large scale than in the small scale of a combustion engine. But the question remains: Where do we get clean H2? H2 isn't available naturally on earth. It has to be refined out of molecules containing it. Water would offer itself, being quite abundant and cheap, and all that's required to get H2 out of water is electricity. Which gets us back to the question, how do we get clean electricity?

Solar power? Would be cheap, but the production of those solar cells is creating a horrible amount of waste and they're far from efficient. Wind power? Even worse. And pretty much everything else isn't CO2 neutral.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Monkey]

And to lamely reply to my own comment, this article at Motor Trend has a FAQ about liquid hydrogen in the context of using it to power automobiles.

According TFA, 1 kg of H2 has roughly the same energy content as a gallon of gasoline. The cost per kg is estimated at $3.50 /kg using the natural gas reformation process to create it or $6.50 /kg using electrolysis. This cost is expected to drop if there is widespread adoption of the fuel source.

Re:How efficient are they?

[apodyopsis]

Not very. Electric cars are about 4 times more efficient and you can power them easily from many sources : wind, solar, mains, water wheel/turbine.

Allow me the shamelessy crib some info from wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle

Political considerations

Most all of today's hydrogen is produced using fossil energy resources.[20] While some advocate hydrogen produced from non-fossil resources, there could be public resistance or technological barriers to the implementation of such methods. For example, the United States Department of Energy currently supports research and development aimed at producing hydrogen utilizing heat from generation IV reactors. Such nuclear power plants could be configured to cogenerate hydrogen and electricity. Hydrogen produced in this fashion would still incur the costs associated with transportation and compression or liquefaction assuming direct (molecular) hydrogen is the on-board fuel. Recently, alternative methods of creating hydrogen directly from sunlight and water through a metallic catalyst have been announced. This may eventually provide an economical, direct conversion of solar energy into hydrogen, a very clean solution for hydrogen production.

Some in Washington advocate schemes[22] other than hydrogen vehicles to replace the petroleum-based internal combustion engine vehicles. Plug-in hydrids, for example, would augment today's hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles with greater battery capacity to enable increased use of the vehicle's electric traction motor and reduced reliance on the combustion engine. The batteries would be charged via the electric grid when the vehicle is parked. Electric power transmission is about 95 percent efficient and the infrastructure is already in place (though substantial grid expansion would be needed if a sizeable fleet of plug-in hybrids were to be deployed.) Tackling the current drawbacks of electric cars or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles is believed by some to be easier than developing a whole new hydrogen infrastructure that mimics the obsolete model of oil distribution. Thermodynamically, a plug-in hybrid transportation system would face the same thermodynamic hurdles as would a system of hydrogen vehicles relying on electrolysis for its molecular hydrogen. The current electric grid, which is dominated by fossil energy resources in the United States, has a fuel-to-power efficiency of roughly 40 percent. Both the plug-in hybrids and the electrolytic hydrogen system would be subject to these comparative inefficiencies.

Hydrogen infrastructure

In order to distribute hydrogen to cars, the current gasoline fueling system would need to be replaced, or at least significantly supplemented with hydrogen fuel stations. Hydrogen stations are being built in various places around the world. Private and state initiatives like California's "California Hydrogen Highway" are already starting the infrastructure transition in advance of any manufacturers mass producing hydrogen cars. Replacement of the existing extensive gasoline fuel station infrastructure would cost a half trillion U.S. dollars in the United States alone.

note: this is the EV1 argument from "who killed the electric car". Because a hydrogen cell powered vehicle would mandate an engine with many replaceable parts and a company owned refueling infrastructure it would allow control and money making for the large oil corporations who killed the electric car mandate and promote hydrogen vehicles. It is simply not in their best interests to allow the consumers to get vehicles with a low maintenance cost and which they can refuel from multiple sources which make the companies little or no money.

Hydrogen production cost

Molecular hydrogen can be derived chemically from a feed stock such as methanol but can also be produced from water. Current technologies utilize between 25 to 50 percent of the higher heating value to produce

Re:How efficient are they?

[Lumpy]

It doesn't matter.
The reductions in C02 must happen very soon. Very soon as in human time not planet time. This vehicle will make a zero impact on C02 pollution because it can not be afforded by 90% of the population. hybrids that will slow down C02 production can not be afforded by 85% of the population and high efficiency small cars are not being produced and marketed. The Smart is FINALLY making it to the USA but at a price that makes it unaffordable. It needs to be sold at $9000.00US or less to make it so that the top 40% of the US population can afford it, the bottom 60% of the population has a $5000.00 car or less as their max affordable price. That means used and worn out gas guzzlers that also spew extra hydrocarbons because the also burn oil as well.

These BMW's are "neat" concepts and great examples that the technology can in fact work well. but it's 100% useless if they cant produce a sub $9000.00 RETAIL price car and figure out how to get all the old cars off the road.

Honestly until the figure out how to get all existing cars to be clean and high efficiency within a 5 year period, all these engineering attempts are nothing more than High IQ circle jerks.

at least they can make the Hydrogen BMW's capable of having AC that can withstand 85 DegC outside temperatures while keeping the interior cool so we can travel farther south than the 26th parallel without dying from the heat. Anyone have tires that can withstand continuous 100degC??

Joking :-) we wont get the planet that hot.

Re:How efficient are they?

[zentigger]

They are not are not at all efficient to use. In fact about 1.2 to 1.4x the amount of energy is required to produce the hydrogen as the hydrogen is capable of releasing. So, of course, the emissions associated with the production of that hydrogen are also released.

The advantage comes as large scale production of "clean" energy (ie. wind/solar/tidal) is developed. It is hardly practical to install solar panels on the roof of your car, but a large solar plant in the middle of the desert could easily produce enough "clean" energy for a significant volume of hydrogen production.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

We're fucked then! Might as well not do anything.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Spazmania]

Can't be very efficient. The combination of pressure and refrigeration necessary to keep hydrogen liquified is excessive. The car will consume a lot of energy while idle, just to keep the stored hydrogen from explosively evaporating into a gas.

On the other hand, if the cost and environmental impact of producing electricity could be reduced by 90% that might not be such a bad deal.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Monkey]

I think the key to making this affordable is having an abundance of renewable, non hydrocarbon generated electrical power, such as hydro, wind, nuclear etc. to create H2 using electrolysis.

Re:How efficient are they?

[MillionthMonkey]

According to the specs on this car, it uses 3.6 kg of hydrogen per 100 km.

To liquefy 3.5 kg of gaseous hydrogen, one would need an additional 1.5 kg even with a 100% efficient isothermal compression process. If hydrogen takes off we'll have to build a network of steam pipes like the one that exploded in New York recently. Con Ed pumps its waste heat through those pipes to large customers who use it for cheaply heating large buildings like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 30% is too much overhead to ignore.

Re:How efficient are they?

[WED Fan]

The really sad news is that the BMW is also planned to be the replace for the shuttle fleet when it is retired in 2010.

Re:How efficient are they?

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

I don't think there are any solar powered hydrogen plants. The key to reducing CO2 is to reduce it's use in the production and supply chain.

If the hydrogen plant is supplied by a coal or natural gas plant, there may be little or no reduction in the net CO2 emission throughout production.

As to the supply chain, if the hydrogen car is inefficient, the trucks that deliver the hydrogen (probably burning diesel) will need to make more trips to maintain the same demand as gasoline, increasing the net CO2 per kg.

Don't be so shortsighted. The solution is not so simple as "Everybody needs to drive a different car!"

Re:How efficient are they?

[Chris Burke]

And unless I didn't sleep through physics, the 2nd law of thermodynamics tells me that this better be some really, really clean way of generating H2.

It's a bit like the electric motor. Sure, it's the most efficient kind of engine, converting more than 95% of the energy put into it into movement, but first of all someone has to generate that electricity to run it. And that means... 2nd thermodynamic law, it would have been probably more efficient and less waste heat producing to use the primary energy source to generate movement instead of converting it to power and then use an electric motor.

The 2nd Law says nothing about how efficient a process is, only that it will not be 100%.

A power plant is more efficient than an automobile ICE. Even if both are burning hydrocarbons dug up from the ground, the power plant will be more efficient and produce less pollution largely due to the scale. It's much easier to add expensive and heavy scrubbers to a coal plant smoke stack than to the exhaust system of a car. It's easier to make an efficient engine when the weight of the engine is not a concern.

So your 95% efficient electric engine times a 40% efficient coal plant is better than your 35% efficient ICE with much better emissions controls to boot. And that's using coal, which I'm certainly not a fan of.

Which leads me to the big advantage of electricity-based transportation (whether it's electric batteries or electrically produced hydrogen from water) which is that once you have decoupled power generation from transportation, when you bring online new environmentally friendly power plants you can use this new source seamlessly with no disruption to the transportation infrastructure. Already we're producing far more "green" electricity in this country than we are using "clean" transportation, and this has happened without you even having to be aware when you flick the light switch. We should be so lucky as to be able to do the same with transportation.

Basically what I'm saying is that electric/hydrogen power has efficiency and environmental advantages now, but also has the potential for vast improvements in the future and that's even if you keep the exact same car!

Solar power? Would be cheap, but the production of those solar cells is creating a horrible amount of waste and they're far from efficient. Wind power? Even worse. And pretty much everything else isn't CO2 neutral.

If you're going to look at the environmental cost of solar power, then you should include the environmental cost of acquiring oil. Adding every cost associated with ICE-based cars or coal power plants certainly do not make them look better compared to solar power.

And what's wrong with wind power again? It's not bird deaths, those were never any more than city office buildings produce, and new designs that discourage nesting on the turbines has put it in the noise.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Mr. Bad Example]

> So unless we got some very clean and efficient way to generate power
> to get this clean H2, we're just back at square one.

A man.

Some water.

A very, very sharp axe.

(And yes, it's patented, so no stealing my idea, you insensitive clods.)

Re:How efficient are they?

[Nerviswreck]

Very Good Point.

When myself and a buddy of mine did a research project on the production of CO2, NOx, SOx, and particulate matter of various H2 production methods using a bunch of DOE data, and if my memory serves me correctly we found that using H2 fuel reduced CO2 emissions by about 15% from the most efficient current form of H2 production (Coal Gassification) as the power transfer through the H2 cells was more efficient that burning gas and the gassification process is more efficient than burning fossil fuels. The greatest impact was on SOx and NOx production which went down about 20%.

Although electrolysis seems great, most of the energy in this country is produced from coal or natural gas, which still puts us in the same situation. The one example I can think of where a large amount of clean energy is produced is in the pacific northwest where a significant amount of energy is produced from hydroelectric generators in dams. The American aluminum industry is based up here in the northwest because of the cheap energy which goes wholly unused at night(as aluminum cannot be smelted, it must be electrolyzed from ore into pure Al). In an area like this H2 could be produced cheaply and with a small ecological footprint. Electrolysis, however, is still a very inefficient manufacture method for H2 production.

Well, I guess the best thing to do is to hope for nuclear fusion to finally reach break-even!

--Nerviswreck

Re:How efficient are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing you weren't going for the +1 Funny mod, otherwise you'd be pretty disappointed.

Re:How efficient are they?

[cyfer2000]

"Solar power? Would be cheap, but the production of those solar cells is creating a horrible amount of waste and they're far from efficient. Wind power? Even worse."

Could you specify how much is "a horrible amount of" please? From what I have known, they are much cleaner than a horse or a donkey. Also the efficiency of commercial solar power cells are much higher than that of the grass or trees.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Calinous]

Right now, not.
      Its big advantages would be very little polution in the place where the car really runs (you won't have smog in big cities, only fog).
      Once the fusion reactors start to produce energy, you could produce hydrogen in a somewhat cheaper way. It might not be as efficient as storing electricity in batteries, but it has some other advantages (like not using rare materials for battery/fuel cell).
  You could have your flying car with a hydrogen based engine when the fusion plants start generating power :)

Re:How efficient are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words:
Nucular

Re:How efficient are they?

[Opportunist]

When you put it that way, I have to agree. Though still, I'm wary that in most publication ralleying support for "clean" power, all you get to see is the final product's eco balance. And that view is skewed, to say the least. Sure, those solar cells don't burn fuel, but they take up enormous space and their creation caused a lot of waste to be produced as well. I really wonder if there has ever been some research done into the "eco balance" of various sources of electricity, from raw materials of the plant to scrapping it.

Wind power plants have another problem, to answer that question right away: They need lots of space, too, are very noisy. Now, that isn't so much of a problem, just put them where they don't bother anyone. The main problem is that they're unreliable. You can't predict winds, and even where it's always windy, you cannot rely on its steady power. Not to mention that if you got too much wind on your hands, you could be in for a total loss.

Power, otoh, has the problem that it's quite hard to store in large quantities. You pretty much have to generate it when it's to be consumed. So wind power, while being quite pleasant on the eco sheet, is no alternative to steady and reliable plants like coal, gas and even nuclear. They have a steady, reliable output that you can even increase and decrease as necessary (within limits). Wind and solar power put you at the mercy of the weather. In some areas more than in others, granted, but still. Which also means that they cannot be used everywhere either. For example, Sweden draws most of its power from water power, Iceland from geothermic power, both quite "clean" sources of energy, but both very dependent on your environment. It's not like you can simply build a water plant somewhere in the Netherlands.

Re:How efficient are they?

[B3ryllium]

Well, there's always nuclear power. One nuclear plant is probably cleaner than the equivalent in coal-fired plants.

Re:How efficient are they?

[MaxCrack]

The engine itself burning Hydrogen has no problem in terms of power or efficiency. The energy efficiency of creating, storing and transporting hydrogen is a problem. It takes more than twice the energy to get it to you as you get out of using it. So where does that energy come from? Power plants, which in the US are largely coal or oil burning. So the over all polution and carbon cost is comparable to a gasoline car.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Fozzyuw]

Oh snap!! I wish I wasn't absent when they taught metric the one day ever in my Soviet American school... Now I will never know what that means!!!!!

Last I checked, most American schools teach how to convert. Usually around the same time you start to learn simple algebra equations with fractions.

For the rest of those, they can use Google for km to miles and kilograms to pounds.

100 kilometers = 62.1371192 miles
3.6 kilograms = 7.93664144 pounds
Of course, that doesn't help much as I have no real reference of pounds to miles as I'm use to fluid measurements. I suspect that the 3.6kg are similar to 'one gallon' in that they consider how many kg's fill a 'tank' on a similar car with petrol.

Of course, if that's true, then a car with an equivalent "15 gallon tank" will take about 120 lbs of hydrogen fuel to fill. Compared to gasoline, which weights ~6.25 lbs per gallon (depending on temperature) will weight in around 93 lbs. for 15 gallons. That is, of course, assuming that 3.6kg take the same percentage of space as 1 gallon of gas in an average car tank.

Cheers,
Fozzy

Re:How efficient are they?

[BytePusher]

Fortunately however, they will begin placing satellites in UELEO(Ultra Extreme Low Earth Orbit) anywhere in the US for about as much as a few tanks of gasoline. This simply involves piloting the new BMW UELEO vehicle to the desired location and depositing the UELEO satellite in UELEO. An added benefit is that UELEO Satellites require no altitude repositioning mechanism because gravity and normal forces cancel providing a static and stable orbit. Another benefit is that owners of UELEO satellites may maintain the satellites themselves as UELEO is easily accesible by the millions of UELEO vehicles already in use. Many experts are anticipating however, NASA will face fierce competition from current private sector UELEO deploying organizations such as UPS and FedEx.

Re:How efficient are they?

[yiantsbro]

Well let's hope the bridge to space isn't built using joint plates.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost as funny as your Mensa application.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Chabil Ha']

Is it efficiency that we're after or dependence on, say, oil? As long as oil (or some other foreign nonrenewable resource) wasn't heavily involved in the process of creating the H2, isn't that a plus? As much as the sky is falling over what we're doing to the environment, shouldn't we overcome the issue of renewable energy before we focus on what it does to the environment?

Re:How efficient are they?

[Usquebaugh]

Really?

So a trace gas in the atmosphere is directly responsible for environmental damage?

You were right first time, that big yellow ball in the sky has a very marked impact on the environment.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar Cells themselves are very efficient, but the production process leaves a lot to be desired. You have to measure environmental impact along the production chain, not just the final usage - when you do that, solar cells and ethanol-based fuels (just as two of the mot common examples, not singling them out otherwise) don't look nearly as good as they do normally. Are they usually improvements on the current situation? Sure. But are they as clean as just looking at the environmental impact during usage suggests? Nope.

For a more specific example, look at the Tesla Roadster, a purely electric car. When trying to convert its energy efficiency into a rough equivalent of MPG you can look at just the energy use of the car, or the production energy put into the gasoline or in running power plants and the associated efficiency. While looking at the second full-cycle system still shows the Roadster as much more efficient than normal gasoline-based cars, its a much smaller margin than looking at just immediate usage. Wiki suggests (depending on the specific measurement metric used) a drop from 135 mpg-equivalent to 87 mpg-equivalent, versus a 28 mpg car which would drop to about 23.2 mpg. The Roadster is still much better but the difference stands out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster#Fuel_e fficiency

Re:How efficient are they?

[Sloppy]

The reductions in C02 must happen very soon. Very soon as in human time not planet time.
...
Honestly until the figure out how to get all existing cars to be clean and high efficiency within a 5 year period, all these engineering attempts are nothing more than High IQ circle jerks.

What happens in 5 years? Do you know something we don't? ;-)

Re:How efficient are they?

[WED Fan]

Ah, the Minnisotans are reading /. this morning.

Re:How efficient are they?

[foobsr]

This is just a marketing stunt.

Quote: "Burning hydrogen is inefficient

Secondly, if hydrogen is the energy carrier of choice, then why not use fuel cells instead of an internal combustion motor? A fuel cell car needs about 14 litres of hydrogen for a 100 kilometre trip, while the BMW Hydrogen 7 needs 50 litres for the same distance. Moreover, for use as a liquid in an internal combustion engine, hydrogen has to be cooled down to -253 C. This requires an additional level of unnecessary energy expenditure. When you add all this up, the consumption rate of the BMW Hydrogen 7 corresponds to more than 20 litres fossil fuel for a 100 kilometre trip, or about the same amount as a heavy truck with diesel engine."

CC.

Re:How efficient are they?

[cyfer2000]

Yeah, I know how the solar power cells are made, to me, a piece of PV cell is no more dirty than a piece of anodized aluminum. And in the long run, it is very clean technology compare to other energy converting technologies.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

On wind power:

So you know where I'm coming from: I'm by no means an expert, but I did spend four years working on turbine design in the wind power industry (I'm a Mech. E). I enjoyed it, I think wind power is a pretty impressive technology, but I'm pretty sure wind isn't the future of power generation, at least without some really breakthrough developments in the technology.

There are several problems with wind power. From an economic perspective, they're not cheap. Wind farms only boomed in the mid 90's when there were huge tax incentives associated with setting them up and operating them. They need certain average yearly windspeeds before they're profitable, and here in the US that's only about 12% of our geography. There are huge areas of the US (namely the southeast and southwest) where the farms can't generate enough electricity to pay for their construction.

Then once you do find a site for them, it's not an environmentally friendly process. The turbines can't be placed in each other's wind shadows (for obvious reasons), which means they have to be spread out, especially in sites where the wind changes direction often. Usually setting them up involves flattening acres of forest, cutting in roads and access ways, moving in heavy equipment and crews to dig holes, pour foundations, cranes to erect the towers and attach the blades, etc. When that's done they're more or less maintenance free until about halfway through their operational lives, where they need one costly overhaul that's usually worth a significant percentage of their total cost (20% to 50%, if I remember correctly). Then, once they've reached the end of their expected lives (usually 20 to 25 years) you have to bring all that equipment back in to tear them out and put in new turbines.

The main problem is that they can take thousands of acres to generate the same amount of power as a single small coal plant. The fact that they're so expensive to put up and maintain combined with the limited geography you have to put them really makes it a hard to exploit wind with current technology. You're right though, the bird-death thing was pretty stupid.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Lars T.]

That's great. What I want to know though is, how much energy does it take to produce the liquid hydrogen. That's the real key here. I want to know if there's any real net energy savings by using this. There's a lot more too it than simply how far your car goes per kg. Odd thing you don't want to know how much energy it costs to get the CO2 back out of the atmosphere that your oil-burning car produces.

Re:How efficient are they?

[ravenshrike]

Not very, but you can stick a solar plant in the middle of a sunny nowhere with a big water source and get as much as you want. So really it doesn't have to be all THAT energy efficient.

Re:How efficient are they?

[GeckoX]

Expected to drop as either:

a) demand for natural gas skyrockets or
b) demand for electricity skyrockets

It will NOT go down...or at least, if it does it will be purely artificial and VERY short lived.

If we had natural gas in that kind of abundance, or electricity in that kind of abundance, we'd completely skip Hydrogen without question.

Turns out Hydrogen is merely an expensive battery.

Re:How efficient are they?

[everphilski]

(And yes, it's patented, so no stealing my idea, you insensitive clods.)

Fine. I'll use a woman. And a scalpel.

Re:How efficient are they?

[cayenne8]

"The really sad news is that the BMW is also planned to be the replace for the shuttle fleet when it is retired in 2010."

Not unless NASA gets a much bigger budget. Sure, they can buy them, but, repairs and maintenence on BMW is quite pricey.

Re:How efficient are they?

[cayenne8]

"Well let's hope the bridge to space isn't built using joint plates."

I'd be more worried about the "O" rings on the liquid hydrogen powered BMW....we know they problems NASA has had with those on a couple of their past vehicles....

Re:How efficient are they?

[eth1]

In the context of producing hydrogen, I think you're looking at solar power the wrong way. Using solar cells would be inefficient. Using a large offshore electrolysis facility powered by focused sunlight from orbit (heat/steam) or something like that would be very clean.

Re:How efficient are they?

[cayenne8]

" It needs to be sold at $9000.00US or less to make it so that the top 40% of the US population can afford it, the bottom 60% of the population has a $5000.00 car or less as their max affordable price. That means used and worn out gas guzzlers that also spew extra hydrocarbons because the also burn oil as well."

What car sells for $5K-$9K?? That's less than many motorcycles I'm looking at cost?!?!?

I dunno where you get your figures from, but, I'd be interested in knowing where the 60% of population that buys a $5K retail (sticker) price are getting them at...what brands, what dealerships...

Cheapest car I could think of in the US would be like Hyundai, and I'd guess the cheapest of those starts abot $13K or so??

Re:How efficient are they?

[iamhassi]

"so that's $7.20 per 100km. Or £3.55 for 62 miles in english. Equivalent in petrol about 62 mpg. That's not bad at all."

$7.20 to travel 100km (62 miles) is bad in the US. If gas is $3/gallon that's the equivalent to 25.8 mpg. That'd be great for a large truck or SUV, but most V6 4-door sedans like the BMW 7-series easily average 25 mpg, and that'd be absolutely horrible compared to other technologies like hybrids getting 40+ mpg.

However, if gas was $5/gallon that'd be 43mpg so I could see some people buying hydrogen cars if the price of hydrogen remains the same or drops and gas skyrockets, but currently it's not cost efficient at all.

Re:How efficient are they?

[dfdashh]

I really don't think Chuck Norris is going to go for that.

Re:How efficient are they?

[mac84]

Electric motors are more efficient than what? The motor itself is great but how do you power it? Batteries are vastly inefficent (ever feel how hot your laptop gets when you charge it or use it, that's wasted energy), heavy for the power they store and the transmission media to get the power to the battery charger has losses associated with it. the manufacture of batteries is very environmentally unfriendly. Also batteries don't store energy well long term - they go flat. Hydrogen isn't a power source, it's rather a energy storage medium, like a battery. and the weight of an equivalent amount of energy in hydrogen is much lower than that in any battery. That's why NASA uses hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen rocket engines.

Battery technology has had a lot of money thrown at it by GM, DARPA, NASA and the computer industry for years. It's time to throw some money at hydrogen technology as an alternative. Oh and as a side benefit of hydrogen, it can be used in vehicles such as these BMW's which solve the chicken or egg problem of do you buy a hydrogen car when there's now hydrogen filling stations or do the oil companies start creating a hydrogen distribution infrastructure when there are no cars to use it?

Re:How efficient are they?

[Praedon]

Humor goes a long way. Sorry you felt I was serious...

Re:How efficient are they?

[skeeto]

Unfortunately, fuels cells require platinum to produce. Not only is this expensive, but there is not enough known platinum on Earth to put a fuel cell in every car (not by a long shot). Until we find out a way to make fuel cells without platinum (or other rare metals), the hydrogen economy is going nowhere.

Re:How efficient are they?

[technococcus]

Combined cycle gas turbine/steam engines running from a nuclear reactor and a fossil fuel ignition chamber. Cleaner, more efficient (like, almost 70% in some cases), cheap once implemented, low waste heat output (thermal pollution).

Re:How efficient are they?

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Turns out Hydrogen is merely an expensive battery.


Yes, but very competitive in terms of watts/kg. Also, you don't need that deteriorating battery that you need to completely replace every so often.

What's important is that a hydrogen economy would enable us to cut our dependency of carbon-based energy. Our carbon dependency is causing both global warming and political instability. The world would be a better place if we established a hydrogen economy for our transportation needs.

Re:How efficient are they?

[leenks]

Nah, don't be silly! BMWs have "Ö" rings!

Re:How efficient are they?

[cyfer2000]

A Popular mechanics article of last summer said it would be $3 per kilogram.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

What car sells for $5K-$9K??

Used cars do. typically high mileage ones. The ones that are worn out sell for far less. I am truely sorry to burst your bubble but most people buy USED cars not NEW. horrifying isn't it? Used cars are typically 3-7 years old. Current overpriced cars can take upwards of 10 years to become the sub $7000.00 pricetag. making the time till the poor trash can own and drive them and actually make a change about 7-10 years. That $65,000 BMW will take a really long time to make it to the $9000.00 mark that some poor schmuck that only makes $18.00 an hour can afford.

Can you wait that long? because if all the middle class and upper class get the new clean cars, it will not do squat as the poor outnumber them 30 to 1.

it's like pissing in a pool, it will not make any difference, and everyone is ignoring that China is about to blow us all to hell in regards to emissions. USA is a pissant pollutor compared to what china will be in 5 years.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey it's just echoing what all the environmental scientists are saying, they say within 5 years major climate changes are going to start happening because China will be ramped up quite a bit by then and their carbon emissions will put the USA and europe combined to shame. Think about this, if all NEW cars were to be replaced with good cars right now, 5 years from now only a quarter of the cars on the road would be the "good cars" it will take 15 years before ALL daily driven cars would be good cars. 15 years of high c02 emissions + added emissions from China and then Africa as they finally enter the industrial age from their current stone age. sorry chum, short of a miracle there is nothing that will make a damn bit of difference to the global warming "emergency" that the current chicken littles are screaming about. I personally think it's all still overblown and this is normal coupled with increased solar output (all planets in the solar system are warming)

Actually wasn't earth supposed to explode this year? The Synthetics were supposed to blow up the planet, and why dont we have a shuttle named Odyssey? (get that obscure Sci-fi reference shashdot!)

Re:How efficient are they?

[JustNiz]

>> So a trace gas in the atmosphere is directly responsible for environmental damage?

Yes. It increases global warming.
Oh wait, are you one of those die-hard Americans who refuse to believe that global warming is caused by human activity because it means you'd have to take responsibility to do something?

Re:How efficient are they?

[flappinbooger]

would that be Noooo Kyooo Lahr or Noooo Kleee Ahrrr?

Re:How efficient are they?

[MasaMuneCyrus]

I think it can be energy-efficient to use. unitednuclear.com's hydrogen-powered car kit will include a solar-powered hydrogen fuel generator. Modern gas-stations, with their ample roof-space, along with increasingly efficient solar cells, would be able to produce their own hydrogen fuel. Then, the average hydrogen car owner could make their own gas at home for when they go back and forth to work, and if they need a refill on the go, they could use a gas-station. It would reduce the demand on gas stations AND save the average citizen money.

As far as I know, producing the hydrogen to begin with is the most energy-hungry step in creating hydrogen fuel. If that is the case, I see no reason why this scenario couldn't work.

Re:How efficient are they?

[fluffy99]

From a global perspective, C02 levels are rising because we keep pumping carbon heavy oil, coal, and natural gas out of the ground and burning it. Making bogus CO2 claims about H2 fuel (which is typically generated by cracking natural gas and throwing away 25% of the energy) and using bogus terms like carbon foot print just confuse the issue. To truly fix the problem we need alternative fuel sources that aren't derived or dependent on oil, coal, and ng. Ethanol is still a folly from a cost/btu perspective, but at least all the carbon in ethanol is already on the surface an in the environment.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't heard of a BMW 7 series with a v6.

In addition, they get 25mpg - if on the freeway.

Re:How efficient are they?

[JonathanR]

Yes, but very competitive in terms of watts/kg That may be so for just the fuel, but when you compare on a fuel+containment basis, then you'll find that it isn't the least bit competitive.

Re:How efficient are they?

[JonathanR]

What's important is that a hydrogen economy would enable us to cut our dependency of carbon-based energy. A Hydrogen economy would do no such thing. Unless there was extensive development of additional nuclear, solar or wind generating capacity, then the Hydrogen economy is still (or perhaps even more so) tied to the carbon economy.

Re:How efficient are they?

[iamstretchypanda]

It would reduce the demand on gas stations...

Every gas station wants to reduce the demand. lol... listen to yourself.

AND save the average citizen money.

I'm sure they don't want your money either. Everything else seems spot on though.

Re:How efficient are they?

[todd1000]

Problem with ethanol is how much oil is used in creating it. Diesel for tractors and trucks. Oil products for heat for fermentation, fertilizer, etc. You have to add all the environmental costs in to make a proper judgement. If we used ethanol as the sole outside energy source and it produced energy, then it might be a good source of storage for solar energy and be "carbon neutral". If we have to use oil in the production chain, it isn't carbon neutral, so is it more efficient?

Of course, when you ferment things, the yeast gives off CO2 and ethanol... Add that in as well. Now, that CO2 probably doesn't count, since it was already "on the ground".

I'd be interested in knowing what the net CO2 output vs. end energy is.

Also, add in the environmental cost of any subsidies as well. If I'm paying some of my tax dollars to any production, I've probably used some oil doing it...

Re:How efficient are they?

[todd1000]

You know, you have a good idea (that the sheeple and politicians won't use). Run our "clean" power stations (hydroelectric and nuclear) at 100% all the time and use any excess production to generate H2. That would be a start until we find something better.

Re:How efficient are they?

[bensch128]

Power, otoh, has the problem that it's quite hard to store in large quantities. You pretty much have to generate it when it's to be consumed.

I have been wondering about this. If you couple solar cells with hydrogen production, aren't you essentially saving the power to be used in the future? Its the same as storing water as potential energy during the day and then using that potential energy at night. It's not as efficient as immediately using the power from solar/wind/whatever but at least it'll work...

Ben

Re:How efficient are they?

[Opportunist]

It is like all the other means to store power: You shift electric power to another form of power. Potential (when you use excessive power to reverse the generators of storage water plants to pump water upstream), chemical (in case of hydrogen or other refined chemicals that you can burn again) or other means.

What we do still not have after over 100 years of using electricity is a way to store it large scale.

Re:How efficient are they?

[aqk]

So far, I haven't heard much about the drilling of new Hydrogen wells in the US.

But I believe the Saudis will soon have some Hydrogen wells online. They are busy drilling them now.
Iran is also busy doing this.
OK, all you Americans with your shiny new hydrogen-powered GM cars-
Get your chequebooks... er, CHECKbooks out!

Re:How efficient are they?

[shadowknot]

Modded insightful? seems more like flamebait to me. I love this attitude that the cause of global warming is somehow a settled issue and therefore not up for debate. I love /. but a +5 insightful mod for a snide quip is a little silly. Mod on the basis of merit rather than just because you agree with the individuals point of view.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Humm,
I guess you realise that in the states most of the hydrogen is made from OIL, which is why Bush wants you to use Hydrogen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production This shows that fossil fuels can be converted, but during the conversion you are releasing the same gases which doesn't really help the argument that hydrogen is a cleaner fuel.
The water based Hydrogen would be the best option but obviously the Oil companies would not benefit from this.

Re:How efficient are they?

[GeckoX]

Our hydrogen economy is completely dependent on carbon-based fuels at this point, all other methods of producing hydrogen are prohibitively expensive, and will remain that way for the foreseeable future.

Re:How efficient are they?

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]There are huge areas of the US (namely the southeast and southwest) where the farms can't generate enough electricity to pay for their construction.[/quote]

You'd better tell both TXU and Boone Pickens, then, since they are planning some huge windfarms for Texas that will (even without tax subsidy) apparently do quite nicely.

Re:How efficient are they?

[winwar]

"Basically what I'm saying is that electric/hydrogen power has efficiency and environmental advantages now, but also has the potential for vast improvements in the future and that's even if you keep the exact same car!"

Huh? Hydrogen is most likely to come from coal or petroluem. Why not just burn it directly. Hydrogen might help the local environment but it will have a net negative overall. Until we get electricity to cheap to meter....

The best use of hydrogen is in refining-produce more fuel with less of the waste.

Hydrogen for cars is a solution waiting for a problem.

Re:How efficient are they?

[DaChesserCat]

In terms of energy content, 1 kg of H2 is about equal to 1 gallon of gasoline.

1 liter of Liquid H2 weighs about 71 grams. 14 liters of LH2 = 1 kg.

So, for each 3.785 liters (1 gallon) of gasoline you'd normally carry, you need 14 liters of LH2. That's 3.7x the volume for an equivalent amount of energy. Don't forget that gasoline can be stored in a tank stamped out of steel or aluminum, while LH2 required a double-walled container, with vacuum insulation in between the walls, made out of thicker materials which won't get brittle when exposed to extreme temperatures. The tank will be a lot heavier for any given volume.

3.6 kg H2 / 100 km = approx 3.6 gallons of gasoline / 100 km.

That's 3.6 gallons of gasoline / 62.15 miles, or 17.3 mpg.

That's pretty lame, even for a BMW.

As mentioned, a gallon of gasoline weighs about 6.25 pounds. Compare 14 liters of LH2 weighing 2.2 pounds. Gasoline weighs almost 3x as much, per unit of energy.

If you need light weight (an aircraft or spacecraft), you need something with more energy per pound. If you need minimal volume (a car or truck), you need more energy per liter/gallon/cubic foot.

Re:How efficient are they?

[ThatFunkyMunki]

That's partially what I meant. I know that hydrogen itself is a clean fuel, creating little environmental damage, but the processes that are used to create it are not environmentally sound, and do nothing to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels.

Re:How efficient are they?

[IhuntCIA]

So your 95% efficient electric engine times a 40% efficient coal plant is better than your 35% efficient ICE with much better emissions controls to boot. And that's using coal, which I'm certainly not a fan of. Check your math. Eelctric energy needs to be transported. The overall efficiency in transportation of electic energy is less than 50%. So your total efficiency is 95% ( electric motor ) times 40% ( coal power plant ) times 50% ( electric distribution system ). That is way lower than 35% of the ICE.
If the ICE uses Hydrogen from the fuel cells efficiency is even worse ( calculate in conversion and storage of the hydrogen ).
On the other hand noone calculates fuel transportation energy waste in ICE energy efficiency.

Wait, What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Liquid Hydrogen?! At least they can overclock the engine and keep it cool.

*boggle*

[ubrgeek]

> hold-the-lox
What the heck does smoked whitefish have to do with this story? Or am I missing something?

Re:*boggle*

[FuzzyDaddy]

lox is smoked salmon. Whitefish is something different.

Re:*boggle*

[rah1420]

At the risk of your setting the hook, "LOX" is rocket-speak for liquid oxygen (the oxidizer side of rocket fuel that uses LH2 as the fuel.)

Re:*boggle*

[m0rph3us0]

LOX goes together with Liquid Hydrogen to make rocket fuel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_oxygen

Re:*boggle*

[eln]

lox as in liquid oxygen, I guess. The space shuttle is powered by liquid hydrogen, and they have a supply of liquid oxygen for combustion. This car only uses liquid hydrogen, with the required oxygen presumably coming from the atmosphere.

That's my guess, anyway. But then, they say if you have to explain a joke it wasn't really funny in the first place. Maybe it would have worked if the car was bagel shaped.

Re:*boggle*

[Anonymous Coward]

You are all wrong. LOX is the corruption of LOL!

Re:*boggle*

[MightyYar]

Hmmm, I bet this Beemer could really get going with another injector full of LOX...

Re:*boggle*

[Mattintosh]

That's where the "boom" tag comes from.

And honestly, NO2 would probably work almost as well, with the drawback that it might produce some sort of ammonia. (10 years since chemistry classes, so, no, I don't know the formulas and outcomes of such a reaction.)

Re:*boggle*

[Anonymous Coward]

Laugh
Out
Loud

Re:*boggle*

[MightyYar]

Laughing gas, N2O... not NO2. :)

I seem to remember that hydrogen burning in N2O produces very similar byproducts as ammonia burning in O2 - though in different concentrations... namely Water and oxides of Nitrogen. NOx is a no-no these days since I believe it is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2, but there are catalytic converters out now that can handle it.

Re:*boggle*

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmmmmm... boggle and lox.

Re:*boggle*

[dbIII]

NOx is a no-no these days since I believe it is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2

Enough of it gives you acid rain which is why there have been efforts to cut down on it with anything that burns a lot of fuel over the last century. One mistake that resulted in a power station pumping out a lot of NOx overnight in Gladstone, Australia apparently resulted in the power station having to pay to repaint nearly every car in town when the morning dew was acidic. I'm not entirely sure that is a true story but water plus NOx gives you nitric acid, hence acid rain.

emissions

[slapout]

"same fuel that powers the space shuttle and reduces CO2 emissions by 90 percent"

In that case, we should all be driving space shuttles to work.

Re:emissions

[LordVader717]

Obligatory link

Re:emissions

[ben_thompson21]

I think the important thing to remember in all this is that hydrogen is effectively a battery technology and is not a fuel source. The earth has few reserves of hydrogen - it has to be created by electrolysis of water which requires a lot of power. There are other small-scale methods such as fractional distillation of air but I hope you get my point. It's simply weight efficient and cheaper for motor transport to store the energy in hydrogen that can be burned than it is in batteries. Rechargeable lithium ion batteries are expensive and the charging time may be unacceptable.

So the reductions in CO2 rather depend on whether it's more efficient or less polluting to electrolyse water using energy from power stations some of which burn oil, store the hydrogen and burn it than it is to refine oil, store it and burn it.

The emissions at the car may be reduced by 90% but the total emissions will be similar.

Re:emissions

[LWATCDR]

Actually most hydrogen is made from natural gas. It is cheaper to split CH4 than H20. What I want to know is how does this reduce CO2 emissions by just 80%? Burning H2 should produce NO Co2 except what was already in the air and what little you might get from burning any free CO or hydrocarbons that are naturally in the atmosphere. Heck I don't know if LH2 is lighter and cheaper than batteries.
While cool I don't expect to see LH2 cars any time soon.

Re:emissions

[cyfer2000]

The CO2 generated during the CH4 split process can be collected and used as raw material for some industrial applications. But the CO2 generated from our car's engine can't be collected. This is the difference.

Re:emissions

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also a small amount of HCs produced from burning engine oil.

Re:emissions

[jmyers]

Hey, I used to drive a space shuttle to work! Well actually it was an AMC Gremlin but everybody called it a space shuttle.

Re:emissions

[E 99]

Actually most hydrogen is made from natural gas. It is cheaper to split CH4 than H20. What I want to know is how does this reduce CO2 emissions by just 80%? Burning H2 should produce NO Co2

Well, if you're getting your H2 from CH4, that C has to go somewhere.

Although, if we replaced all our oil needs with natural gas needs, I don't know how long that would last, or how long it would remain cheaper than getting H2 from water + another power source.

Re:emissions

[LWATCDR]

Yes it does. So is the the 80% reduction on CO2 emissions include the carbon emissions from the Natural gas?

Re:emissions

[eastlight_jim]

The reason that the drop in emissions is not 100% is because the engine can run on either petrol or hydrogen. Presumably the petrol-running time is responsible for the smaller CO2 emissions.

Re:emissions

[eastlight_jim]

What industrial processes use CO2 on any scale though? We carbonate a few drinks and make a bit of dry ice but nothing on any scale. I'd imagine that the CO2 output from a few coal fired power plants is enough to provide the world with Coca Cola yet no-one collects that CO2. It's cheaper to make more on site by whatever means they need (e.g. burning stuff or fermentation etc.)

Re:emissions

[LWATCDR]

Oil and gas recovery use it but yea there is no shortage of CO2 since it is a natural by product of liquifying oxygen, nitrogen, and other gases that do have large scale industrial uses.

Re:emissions

[cyfer2000]

Food industry actually using CO2 at very large scale. Super critical CO2 is a very powerful solvent, it has been used to remove caffeine from coffee or tea, to extract rose oil from the flower...

CO2 is used as protective gas in many welding cases.

In semiconductor area, dry ice is used to remove particles from silicon wafers. It is very interesting, small dry ice particles are shoot on to the surface of silicon wafer, the wafer and particles are cooled to a very low temperature, because the thermal expansion rate are different, the particles separate from the wafer. Then because the dry ice release large amount of gas, the particles get blown away.

CO2 has also been used to fill green houses to certain degree. When people try to grow algae for biofuel, they pump CO2 into the pond. You can never harvest algae on the open sea.

Methanol can be made from CO2 and water either. But I remember methanol is made together with the hydrogen from natural gas, or actually hydrogen is a by product of making methanol from natural gas. I need to check my chemistry book here.

The last and the most important, urea is made of CO2 and NH3. We are talking several, if not tens, million ton of CO2 per year here.

Re:emissions

[Provocateur]

*goes to ebay

Click: Searches

Add: space shuttle

Modify: keywords "or best offer"

Click: notify by email

I don't know about youse guys, but I'm set.

Re:emissions

[r_jensen11]

Sweet, so now I have an excuse for only going to work once every few weeks. "Sorry sir, I had to refill my gas tank!"

Re:emissions

[pipingguy]

There are other small-scale methods such as fractional distillation of air [to produce hydrogen]

Uh, no. Air is composed mostly of N2, O2 and other elements. Hydrogen most definitely is NOT distilled from air. Why do people (who sound like they know technical stuff) often think this?

Please mod this post up, as no one else has corrected this error yet. [I've done plant design work in cryogenics and various H2 production, storage and distribution facilities]

Finally, action movies are vindicated

[BlackCobra43]

We finally have cars that are actually likely to explode violently when shot! Stallones, Schawrzneggers and Norrises of the world rejoice!

Re:Finally, action movies are vindicated

[Praedon]

Oh goody! Finally some action and adventure on the road just like Hollywood!!! I love Soviet America!

Re:Finally, action movies are vindicated

[General Lee's Peking]

I never thought there was a problem with using hydrogen as fuel, and I don't believe I ever heard or read that there was a problem there. My understanding is that there are other problems, one being able to safely carry the hydrogen in your vehicle. Another problem is being able to safely distribute the fuel. And so on. This article doesn't exactly sound like a breakthrough to me. Even if it sounds like it might allow the driver to transition from gas to H2, once they figure out how to solve the real problems, that feature will probably be lost.

Re:Finally, action movies are vindicated

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, hydrogen is much safer. In case you didn't realize, gasoline is also highly combustible. However, which would you rather have combusting in your car? Gasoline, which will take over and destroy the entire car? Or hydrogen, which is less dense than air and will rise, creating a single vertical pillar of flame, leaving the rest of the car unharmed?

I remember watching a video of the two types of cars burning. The gasoline one didn't make it at all, while the hydrogen one just shot flame for a few seconds and then was through with it.

Re:Finally, action movies are vindicated

[Ctrl-Z]

I don't think that there is a serious problem with safely carrying hydrogen in your vehicle. It's already safer than gasoline. Creation and distribution are the big problems.

Re:Finally, action movies are vindicated

[Anonymous Coward]

Norrises? Unless hydrogen-fuelled cars explode when you roundhouse kick them, Chuck Norris still has a while to wait.

Re:Finally, action movies are vindicated

[roman_mir]

Chuck Norris can make your head assplode without any hydrogen. He only needs to point at it and BAM!

Re:Finally, action movies are vindicated

[Anonymous Coward]

EXACTLY. Hydrogen will dissipate much faster than gasoline.

Re:Finally, action movies are vindicated

[cyfer2000]

Creation without distribution is the solution.

As you guys are talking about distribution, did you ever realize that alcohol can't be distributed via the current pipeline system too?

Re:Finally, action movies are vindicated

[Anonymous Coward]

As this goes to illustrate, If the Hindenberg was somehow filled with gasoline and had exploded, it would have leveled the entire zepplin field.

H2 tanks just dont go off in a massive Hollywood style kaboom, they ussually vent all at once, and you get a split second tower of flame.

See

http://www.evworld.com/databases/storybuilder.cfm? storyid=482

Re:Finally, action movies are vindicated

[hey!]

In other words, where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom!

Re:Finally, action movies are vindicated

[MtViewGuy]

I think this poster is more right than you think if you're talking liquid hydrogen. LH2 is extremely dangerous to handle, and a few gallons of LH2 igniting could literally rip a car to tiny pieces. That's why when the Challenger exploded in 1986 it went off with the force of an atomic artillery shell--the equivalent a couple of hundred tons of TNT. Small wonder why the preferred method to store hydrogen as fuel are in metal hydride fuel cells.

Re:Finally, action movies are vindicated

[Ctrl-Z]

At what point did alcohol enter the discussion?

Reduces CO2 emmissions 90% ???

[Anonymous Coward]

Quote: "and reduces CO2 emissions by 90 percent,"

OK, where did the other 10% come from?

Re:Reduces CO2 emmissions 90% ???

[Praedon]

The other 10% is intended for the driver to flick his/her cigarette, food wrappers, drink containers, etc.

Re:Reduces CO2 emmissions 90% ???

[starglider29a]

Burning rubber.

Think of what this means:

• No carbs. No intake. They can run underwater!
• No turbo. Just pour in more LOX
• Reverse thrusters for easy braking... AND you can fry the guy who pulled out in front of you with your rocket wash.
• Cold drinks
• No more A/C

Downsides? Strip mining Antarctic ice. :(

Re:Reduces CO2 emmissions 90% ???

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, you got a couple of stupid answers.

Starglider - where does the O2 come from underwater?

Where does the O2 come from with no intake?

Put a spark to Hydrogen all day long, it won't ignite without oxygen.

Where does the 10% come from? Reactions with the other gasses in air that aren't oxygen.

In other words, reacting with the 70% of air that isn't oxygen.

Re:Reduces CO2 emmissions 90% ???

[JesseL]

In a piston engine, small amounts of lubricating oil will always sneak into the combustion chamber. Usually by leaking past the piston rings or valve seals.

Re:Reduces CO2 emmissions 90% ???

[starglider29a]

Liquid Oxygen tank! It's not rocket science... oh, wait...

Re:Reduces CO2 emmissions 90% ???

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, Mr. AC...

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-composition- d_212.html

How much Nitrogen do you burn to get CO2? Or do you burn the CO2 to get MORE CO2? or do you use the Hydrogen to create fusion which allows fused Argon to decay into Carbon?

I think the "underwater" comment was an attempt at humor, albeit lame. In space, no one can hear you laugh.

Re:Reduces CO2 emmissions 90% ???

[stirz]

Hello,

if this engine works in a similar way to those lpg- or natural gas-powered cars here in Europe, the answer is easy. Those vehicles ususally keep a small gas tank (read: for *gas*oline :-) ) to power up the engine until it reaches a minimum torque and then switch to gas/lgp-combustion. Furthermore, the gasoline tank is used as reserve-tank. In case you're running out of gas, the engine switches to gasoline.

Greetings,

Stirz

Oh boy...

[Praedon]

I can't wait to get my hands on the next model!! The next model comes with retractable wings and allows you to fly up and break through the atmosphere, along with the titanium plated body and frame and oxygen supply. Maybe I should wait for the model after that, cause it comes equipped with an anti-matter warp core.

Re:Oh boy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Less funny than a mencia. Lame.

Expensive

[wiggles]

Even if they do come out, unless they sticker under $40k, nobody's going to buy them. Nice idea, but way too impractical.

Re:Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if they do come out, unless they sticker under $40k, nobody's going to buy them. Nice idea, but way too impractical.

WTF are you talking about. The base car alone (without the H mods) costs over $70K, and BMW doesn't seem to have any problems selling them. Unless what you meant to say was that the mods shouldn't add more than $40K to the cost of the vehicle?

Re:Expensive

[iamdrscience]

Even if they do come out, unless they sticker under $40k, nobody's going to buy them.

You do realize this is made by BMW, right? Most of their cars are already over 40k and even their cheaper ones can approach $40k once you add-in a few options.

In any case, I don't think that's really the point. I'm sure this car is just a concept car, proving that it's possible. Developing cars like this gives them good press and if hydrogen cars begin to make sense economically then they've got a headstart on working with the technology.

Re:Expensive

[dwlovell]

Although I understand the point you are trying to make, these are Liquid Hydrogen versions of their 7-series sedan. The normal gas-guzzling 7-series has MSRP of 75k-122k, so I think the people already buying the 7-series (plenty) will be happy to buy the cleaner version.

http://autos.msn.com/research/vip/overview.aspx?ye ar=2007&make=BMW&model=7-Series

This is actually a smart way to do this. It will be expensive to manufacture new technology like this, so start with the sector of the market that is used to paying a lot of money, and as the technology is proven and commoditized, they can work it down into the lesser expensive lines.

-David

Re:Expensive

[immel]

A stock (gasoline-only) BMW 7-series easily starts at over $75,000 USD. The top-end ones with V12 gasoline engines start at $120k, and people still buy them. Granted, it's a niche market, but these things still sell. I understand your point, though; The ones modded to run on rocket fuel will cost a lot more, possibly out of the price range of everyone except collectors.

Re:Expensive

[BlackCobra43]

We're talking BMWs here. The standard model is over 40k.

Hydrogen Electric?

[aapold]

because the responsible oil companies will still control their fuel.

at least that was an argument made in the Who Killed the Electric car movie, more or less. They also implied the thing was like 40 years away from being available. Since I gather it will be disected on here anyway, just wondered how thin it would be sliced, as it were.

Re:Hydrogen Electric?

[loshwomp]

Here is the fundamental flaw with Hydrogen, as clearly as I can explain it.

Hydrogen, as we all know, is not an energy resource -- we have to make it somehow. (There isn't a vast pool of it somewhere just waiting to be tapped.) In this sense hydrogen is a battery. But we already have much better batteries.

To make hydrogen, you can split water, using electricity, in a process called electrolysis. The round-trip efficiency for this process (energy -> hydrogen -> energy) is quite poor -- around 25%. This means you get one unit of energy out for every 4 you put in. If you put the same electrical energy into a lithium-type battery pack, you could drive ~4 times farther using the same energy.

The other practical way to make hydrogen is to reform it from other hydrocarbons -- typically natural gas. The problem in this case is that, if you have natural gas, you're far better burning it directly in a reciprocating engine. Converting the gas to hydrogen is inefficient, regardless of whether you burn the hydrogen (as in this BMW) or convert it to electricity (as in a fuel cell).

In addition to being inefficient, hydrogen fuel cells (which convert hydrogen into electrical energy) have a long list of problems that are presently not talked about much, because they're obscured by more fundamental problems. One amazing dealbreaker is the fact that hydrogen fuel cells only have a useful life of a few years.

Solution to Global Warming!

[Antarius]

The solutions is right here:

The new BMW Hydrogen 7 sedan uses the same fuel that powers the space shuttle and reduces CO2 emissions by 90 percent

If this remarkable fuel powers the space shuttle and reduces CO2 emissions by 90 percent, then simply send up more space shuttles! Duh!

If we send up a shuttle per year, we can pollute as much as we like! The plants will take care of the other 10%!

We're in the minority

[iknownuttin]

Hydrogen may be clean to use and get, but is it energy efficient to use it?

FTFA:The V12 cylinder engine delivers 260 hp; the top speed of the Hydrogen 7 is 143 mph and acceleration 0-60 mph is 9.2 sec.

I had a similar question: "What are the operating costs?"
But unfortunately for those of us who are more interested in efficiency are in the minority; so car makers market to the folks who consider automobiles to be a status sort of thing instead of a piece of machinery.
I can care less how fast it can go or its acceleration.

Re:We're in the minority

[Ironsides]

I can care less how fast it can go or its acceleration.

Yes you do. You want it to be able to get above 60mph and do that in a reasonably small amount of time (say, less than 20 seconds?). Otherwise, you'll never be able to take it on the interstate or most roads due to the slow speed or bitched at at lights when the light turns green.

Re:We're in the minority

[BlackSnake112]

Try getting on a highway/freeway where everyone else is going 65+ MPH (don't have the KPH conversions right now) and you will care about how much acceleration the car you are in has. Unless you like causing accidents. You are (well should be) responsible for getting your car up to the speed limit as quickly and safely as possible.

There are speed up lanes most people I see go slow in the speed up lane, then stop at the end of it. Then they try to merge. This is not in rush hour!

I do see you point though. I have no need to have a car that does 120+ MPH. If the max speed of a car is 80 MPH, it is fast enough to get on the highway without me losing a few years on my life, and get good mileage (over 40 MPG would be great), and I can load my stuff when I travel I am fine with it.

Re:We're in the minority

[Sobrique]

Operating cost is one thing. I'd be interested in finding out whether it's actually more or less pollution, once you factor in the need to 'manufacture' the hydrogen from existing power stations.

Re:We're in the minority

[kannibul]

Slow drivers don't cause accidents - idiots who aren't aware of their surroundings and/or are agressive with their driving do. When did it become OK to drive like your a member of NASCAR on public streets? It's real fun when you're on a motorcycle going 65MPH, and there's some jackhead close enough behind you in a SUV and you can hear that he has a lifter ticking in his engine...

Re:We're in the minority

[Anonymous Coward]

If you CAN care less, than that means you do care to some degree, maybe even quite a bit.

I think you meant you COULDN'T care less, which would mean that this is something you care about the LEAST.

Re:We're in the minority

[Javarufus]

Well, if it runs on the same fuel as the Space Shuttle, maybe we could expect to go from 0 - 22,350 km/h in about 9 minutes after putting the gas (oops, "fuel") pedal to the floor.

This brings about an interesting issue - think about the wear and tear on your brakes at that speed. Also, can standard, modern-era vulcanized composite air-bladder tires perform at such high rotational speeds? How do the gyroscopic or precessive forces come into play on a turn? Are car axles strong enough to endure forces of this magnitude? How would someone see a street light 22 miles ahead and know that they had to put on the brakes or give the car more juice to beat a yellow light?

People, you have to look at the entire picture to get the idea that this is just a bad idea.

Re:We're in the minority

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, slow drivers do cause accidents. That's why many (most?) highways in the US have minimum speed limits (usually about 40MPH).

Re:We're in the minority

[cliveholloway]

"I can care less how fast it can go or its acceleration."

Yes you do.

Is this an American thing or something. He says he can care less - implying that he must care some - and you agree with him but phrase it as if you don't. Surely the GP couldn't care less, because saying he could care less is a completely meaningless statement.

Re:We're in the minority

[Usquebaugh]

Drivers that vary greatly from the average speed of traffic do cause accidents. It's not a matter of who is causing the speed differential, it's the differential itself that is the problem.

Re:We're in the minority

[teh kurisu]

I don't know what the operating costs are now, but given enough investment in renewable energy generation, they should come down as more facilities become available to manufacture hydrogen cleanly. Compare that with oil prices - unless vast new reserves are discovered, these are only going to go up. At some point those two lines on the graph will cross, and car manufacturers have to make sure that they have products available to take advantage of the new-found demand.

By all accounts, BMW will be ready.

Re:We're in the minority

[iocat]

This is so fucked. I drive a four cylinder gasoline powered car. I guarentee it uses less energy and emits less carbon than a "clean" hyrdogen BMW. Why? Because the energy cost of making hyrdrogen is higher than the energy cost of refining gasoline, and outputs more carbon than the gasoline refining process and the gasoline burning process. The exception would be if the hyrdogen was refined via a clean enegry proces, such as nuclear, solar or wind power.

People who look at what comes out of the tail pipe of a car and call that the level of pollution are just total retards. You need to look at where what in you car comes from.

Re:We're in the minority

[lymond01]

I think the expression, "He can care less..." leaves the "...but I'm not sure about what" implied. Still a strange phrase, but I think that's the intended meaning. You're right to use "He couldn't care less" when trying to be clear. Or maybe just "He doesn't care" which equates to the same thing.

Re:We're in the minority

[feepness]

There are speed up lanes most people I see go slow in the speed up lane, then stop at the end of it. Then they try to merge. This is not in rush hour! Hey, you leave my wife out of this!

Re:We're in the minority

[Grishnakh]

I'd say off the top of my head that it's most probably less pollution.

One large power plant is FAR more efficient and less polluting than tens of thousands of small internal-combustion engines with random maintenance. Ever heard of economy of scale?

Re:We're in the minority

[Paulrothrock]

While I would like a car that can do 0-60 in less than 20 seconds, I don't need a 200 horsepower V6 in a compact car. I'd rather have a car that got 40 or 50 mpg and had a 15 second 0-60 time than a car that gets 25 mpg and can do 0-60 in less than 10 seconds.

I don't know about you, but I don't drag race very often. And I find people who are racing from every stoplight are stressed out jerks.

Re:We're in the minority

[mobby_6kl]

That's some rather shitty performance right there, although Prius drivers migh actually be amazed!. Probably costs as much as five regular 7 series BMWs, too. My verdict: DO NOT WANT.

Re:We're in the minority

[jddj]

The V12 cylinder engine delivers 260 hp; the top speed of the Hydrogen 7 is 143 mph and acceleration 0-60 mph is 9.2 sec.

That looks like pretty underwhelming performance for a V12. For comparison, my GTI's V6 motor generates 174 HP on gasoline, and later generations of that vehicle tweak that output to maybe about 200 hp. The quote doesn't mention the displacement of the V12 motor, but all other things being equal, that looks to me like you'd have to have about twice the motor to deliver about 30% more horsepower as what I have with a gasoline engine.

Dunno if this is a physics issue, simple energy density or that the motor's not optimized for hydrogen fuel, but it could mean that you'd need a V8 in a mid-size car to reach family-sedan performance that you can get with a 4 or a turbo-4 today. And that means you'll use more fuel, have fewer miles on a tank.

Performance figures are not just for the racetrack...

Re:We're in the minority

[Anonymous Coward]

0-60 in 15+ seconds will get you killed trying to merge onto a highway in the U.S. Hope you don't need to use one of those to get to work. Also, nobody's making you do full throttle everywhere you go. 6-8 seconds of 15mpg when you need it to merge onto a highway without getting flattened by a truck and then an hour or so at 35mpg isn't so bad.

Besides, newer cars have sub 9 second 0-60's and get well over 30mpg. That's a pretty damn good balance IMO.

Of course, those of us in the know drive our motorcycles basically for free (50-60+mpg, less than $100 a YEAR in insurance) and can waste any car ever made. ;)

Re:We're in the minority

[AndersOSU]

Slow drivers cause accidents when they don't understand how a merge or yield functions (which I believe was the GP's point)

Few things piss me off as much while driving as heading down the highway at 65, and seeing someone "merge" into my lane from the on ramp doing 45.

Re:We're in the minority

[cayenne8]

"But unfortunately for those of us who are more interested in efficiency are in the minority; so car makers market to the folks who consider automobiles to be a status sort of thing instead of a piece of machinery.

I can care less how fast it can go or its acceleration."

It isn't necessarily a 'status' thing, some people like owning cars that are FUN.

That's been the case with me. I've only owned 2 seater sports cars all my life, except for the last 911 turbo which was technically a 4 seater. I don't buy these cars because of any status symbol. I like them because I like to get ready to go to work every morning, fire it up, and have fun driving to work or wherever. It isn't just a mode of transportation to me. But it is just for me, I've never cared a rats ass for what anyone might have thought about my cars.

Having a powerful high performance car...the speed and handling is a rush to some of us out there.

I'd never be interested in a 'green' car unless it could move and look good. If they ever got the Tesla down in price to the ballpark of a normal Corvette....I'd seriously be interested in that.

But, hey, to each his own...if it is nothing more than transportation to you, that's cool, but, don't think that everyone that is interested in performance or looks in a car, is just looking for a status symbol. Some of us like to go out on the track on the weekends....

Re:We're in the minority

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, those of us in the know drive our motorcycles basically for free (50-60+mpg, less than $100 a YEAR in insurance) and can waste any car ever made.

Yup, that is until your driving down the highway and one of those 0-60 in 15+ cars merges in front of you, causing you to wipe out. Though I suppose your family could get by on all that money you saved on gasoline and insurance...

Re:We're in the minority

[thrillseeker]

Drivers that vary greatly from the average speed of traffic do cause accidents.

On the Autobahn people safely operate from speeds pf 60kph to 260 kph. The speed differential makes no difference, because two simple rules are rigidly followed: "faster traffic has priority", and "pass on the left".

Re:We're in the minority

[Ironsides]

In a 200 horsepower engine, that is 200 at peak RPM. You're not getting that, normally. Also, peak horsepower is related to max speed and max fuel efficiency. Imagine fuel efficiency as an upside down parabola. The 200 horsepower is measured somewhere past peak fuel efficiency, where peak fuel efficiency may be 100 horsepower. The extra horses are there for a variety of reasons, one of which being that it is easier to design an engine that can get a higher horsepower than it's peak efficiency than to design one made to operate at peak horsepower and efficiency.

I bet that even if you did own a car that did have 200 horsepower, you'd never use most of it except in some unusual circumstances.

Re:We're in the minority

[Ironsides]

This is based on some guess work, but I think I have an idea on it. Mind you, we Americans have a (bad) habit of shortening words. (i.e., path, pathway) (I met a British guy once who didn't know what I meant, which is why I use that example)

Original phrase:
I couldn't care less.
Evolved to:
I could care less.
Accidentally used as:
I can care less.

Re:We're in the minority

[Anonymous Coward]

Slow drivers don't cause accidents

Slow drivers are the #1 cause of accidents according to a defensive driving course I took. However, fast drivers are the #1 cause of fatalities. Tailgating has nothing to do with speed. Plenty of fast drivers never tail gate and some slow drivers tailgate even when they could easily pass.

Re:We're in the minority

[Carbon016]

The point of hydrogen is to use it as a storage mechanism, not as a fuel. As a fuel, hydrogen would have the same effect you describe. However, the use of hydrogen and its fuel cells as an energy-storing substance massively outperforms current battery technology, making solar/wind/nuclear as the overall energy producer a better option for "electric" cars, as you alluded to. The thing about gas/oil is that it both stores energy and travels from wherever it's drilled/refined and releases it to the consumer. However, think of nuclear and such as the oil pumps, hydrogen creation as the refinery, and hydrogen as the gasoline and the process is more clear.

Re:We're in the minority

[wytcld]

car makers market to the folks who consider automobiles to be a status sort of thing instead of a piece of machinery

Machinery has many dimensions of appreciation beyond operating costs and 0-60 specs. There's the feel of it, which very much is about the quality of the machine, but is more visceral than rational. After all, when in motion we're evolved to be substantially visceral animals. It is an extension of our own feeling of health and fitness to have a car that feels well-tuned and fit for the road.

Health and fitness are closely linked to status, of course. Evolutionary theory has loads of speculation about, say, a fine head of hair on a woman demonstrating her health, or her figure showing her fitness. But for what a car looks like - well, BMWs are fairly nondescript. It's what people drive who don't want to be seen in a Benz or a Caddy, but still want that visceral buzz.

So, aside from the cool concept of it, and aside from operating costs or 0-60, how does it feel to be on your own rolling in the hydrogen zone in a BMW, Mr. Jones?

Re:We're in the minority

[hawk]

His use of "can" (the indicative) instead of "could" (the subjunctive) is unusual.

However, he indeed could care less--he cared enough to post it.

Try putting emphasis on the word could: "I *could* care less." -- It's a theoretical possibility to care less, although not very likely.

Whether could or couldn't should be used, however, is irrelevant--either way, it's an idiom with well understood meaning.

hawk

Re:We're in the minority

[Wolfger]

It is an American thing... The phrase is supposed to be "couldn't care less", but an abundance of Americans who couldn't care less about grammar and who are too lazy to pronounce "n't" have shortened it to "could care less", which most people (in America, at least) now believe to be the actual saying, even if it clearly is the opposite of what they mean. And now, sadly, it's been shortened further to "can care less". I blame W. (see? we're so lazy, our *president* only gets one lousy letter... even from his supporters!)

Re:We're in the minority

[AKAImBatman]

if it runs on the same fuel as the Space Shuttle, maybe we could expect to go from 0 - 22,350 km/h in about 9 minutes

<pedantic>Technically, the Space Shuttle obtains its MaxQ (maximum velocity inside the atmosphere) thanks to the high thrust-to-weight ratio of the two Solid Fuel Boosters (SRB). The Space Shuttle would go absolutely nowhere if it had to rely solely on the thrust from its LHOx engines.</pedantic>

Re:We're in the minority

[hawk]

>There are speed up lanes most people I see go slow in the speed up lane, then stop at the end of it. Then they try to merge. This is not in rush hour!

Ahh, so you live in Arizona :)

hawk, familiar with 'zonie drivers

Re:We're in the minority

[Original Replica]

You want it to be able to get above 60mph and do that in a reasonably small amount of time (say, less than 20 seconds?).

Maybe less than 20 seconds, but it doesn't need to be less than 15 seconds. Most modern cars could probably do just fine with 1/2 the horsepower they currently have. 1971 Volkswagen Super Beetle could go 0-60 in 19 seconds, it had 60hp and had a curb weight of 2400 lbs. We have no need to accelerate faster, just our addiction to bigger, better, faster. What ever happened to "moderation in all things"?

Re:We're in the minority

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay, idiot trolls with mod points. Go on, down-mod this one too. At least that way you'll have one less point to waste modding up a stupid post.

Re:We're in the minority

[shmlco]

Odd that there are millions of old 4 and 6-cylinder cars out there that seem to manage the trick just fine. My aunt's old Volkswagen Beetle even seems to make it. A Prius does 0-60 in, what? 10 seconds? And I don't seen hundreds of them lying mangled at on-ramps.

Bottom line is that you need a basic level of performance. After that you're just showing off. Not every car on the road needs to be a 'vette or Viper.

(And I'm kind of tired of the "I need a Porsche to navigate on-ramps safely" thread that manages to pop up every time efficiency is discussed.)

Re:We're in the minority

[shmlco]

And US auto manufacturers will delay getting to that point as long as possible. R&D costs money.

Re:We're in the minority

[ncc74656]

On the Autobahn people safely operate from speeds pf 60kph to 260 kph. The speed differential makes no difference, because two simple rules are rigidly followed: "faster traffic has priority", and "pass on the left".

Good luck getting those concepts through the thick skulls of the average California driver. They think that all lanes are available to all drivers at all times.

Re:We're in the minority

[teh kurisu]

First, BMW are German. Second, they're obviously already spending money on R&D. That's what the article's about.

Re:We're in the minority

[shmlco]

"Having a powerful high performance car...the speed and handling is a rush to some of us out there."

The problem is that this isn't just about you. You can drive three or maybe even four Prius's for the fuel an average sports car burns. Upcoming versions may up that to seven or eight or more. Multiply that by millions of "high-performance" cars and you end up with a significant impact on oil imports and energy usage and sufficiency.

Or are you saying that your "fun" outweighs thousands of kids fighting and dying over some oil well in the Middle East? Actions have consequences.

Besides, if you want to go to the "track" and drive fast, get a modern racing go-cart. I guarantee that sitting low and in the open will give you all of the "fast" you need.

Re:We're in the minority

[shmlco]

Please reread for comprehension: "And US auto manufacturers will delay getting to that point as long as possible." US. United States.

Re:We're in the minority

[teh kurisu]

Well then, don't buy American cars.

Re:We're in the minority

[Ana10g]

As a matter of fact, the GGP is right, as far as I'm concerned. I actually can care less, as acceleration and top speed are of paramount importance to me. As a matter of fact, I couldn't care less about efficiency, but if I happen to find a vehicle capable of mind bending acceleration, insane top speeds, and great gas mileage, I'll buy it over a vehicle with the first two qualities, but not the third. Great example, a late model sportbike: 120ish horsepower, 160ish MPH top speed, and 40+MPG. And it's fun to ride.

What the GP fails to mention is that he's tragically unamusing, and during long commutes, is satisfied doing the speed limit, getting in the way of people that want to have fun. Sheesh.

Re:We're in the minority

[SEAL]

Maybe less than 20 seconds, but it doesn't need to be less than 15 seconds. Most modern cars could probably do just fine with 1/2 the horsepower they currently have. 1971 Volkswagen Super Beetle could go 0-60 in 19 seconds, it had 60hp and had a curb weight of 2400 lbs. We have no need to accelerate faster, just our addiction to bigger, better, faster. What ever happened to "moderation in all things"?

But today you can buy a Mini Cooper S that weighs around 2600 lbs (with far more safety features), has 175hp, 0-60 in under 7 secs and gets far better gas mileage than the 1971 VW. Granted the Mini costs a lot more, but _that's_ modernization.

As a side note, acceleration capability used irresponsibly is a waste of fuel, yes, but having on-demand acceleration available is actually a safety enhancement.

Re:We're in the minority

[Ana10g]

An interesting point is that a lot of people that hold your viewpoint (and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, as you did not say this) would advocate strict laws preventing the creation and use of vehicles fitting your example description (200 horsepower V6 in a compact car). Some people actually like a vehicle with stats like that, and indeed a lot better. So long as the car meets minimum efficiency / pollution control standards, so it is indeed *not* hurting anyone else, I'm free to buy it. Keep the government out of my life, thank you very much.

Re:We're in the minority

[Ana10g]

When did it become OK to drive like your a member of NASCAR on public streets?

What, just making left turns all day?

Re:We're in the minority

[Ana10g]

After that you're just showing off.

No, that blanket statement is entirely incorrect. I happen to drive two very high performance vehicles, one a motorcycle, the other a car. Both of which vastly outperform your typical car. I don't care what others think of me, nor am I showing off. No wheelies, stoppies, or the like on my bike, no burnouts, crazy driving, etc, in my car. What I enjoy is the ability to play with physics, drive fast, corner hard, and enjoy life at a higher level of performance. It really has nothing to do with showing off. As a matter of fact, I get really cheesed off when people try to race me at stoplights, simply because my car has a (stock) spoiler on it. I have nothing to prove to anyone. It's something that I enjoy, and screw you for trying to pigeonhole me into a category.

Re:We're in the minority

[cayenne8]

"The problem is that this isn't just about you. You can drive three or maybe even four Prius's for the fuel an average sports car burns. Upcoming versions may up that to seven or eight or more. Multiply that by millions of "high-performance" cars and you end up with a significant impact on oil imports and energy usage and sufficiency."

Honestly...and sadly to you I guess...I really don't care. By the time the world explodes, or things are too bad pollution-wise, I'll be long dead, and far away from caring. So, I'm not terribly motivated to curtail pleasure from my short life on earth for 'the cause'.

That being said...with reference to my other post...if they'd make electric or other 'green' cars that didn't look like a butt ugly prius, and had performance, I'd be happy to buy one. I'd mentioned that if they made the Tesla closer to the cost of a new Vette, I'd be in line to buy one.

But, really.....the people that really care that much about the environment, are probably not the majority out there. I'd suspect more than a couple, would like to unlink our destiny from the Middle East...and that, I'm for too. But, at this point, I'm not compelled to drive a less fun car until they can make a fuel effecient, or alternative fuel car with the look and performance I want.

Selfish? Sure...but, hey, life is short, and I'm not gonna miss out on the fun I can have with that last years remaining.

Re:We're in the minority

[Sobrique]

But on one hand you have fuel going in to a car, and getting used directly. On the other, you have fuel going to a power station, being converted to electricity, then being used to electrolyse water for hydrogen, which is then being used in the car. I wouldn't be at all suprised to find more net fuel was used per 'mile' of hydrogen power, than just using petrol.

Re:We're in the minority

[Usquebaugh]

Bullshit

Having driven/ridden on the autobahn at speeds up to 165mph I can tell you the speed differential is not safe. Closing on a car with 80mph speed differential is crazy stupid, passing at that differential is asking for an early grave. Trying to judge if they've seen you are they going to stay in lane, reducing speed just in case. The only safe thing to do is roll off the throttle miles away and pass doing no more than 20mph more and then wind back on the throttle.

Now when the road is empty it's some of the best riding in Europe, hour after hour of very fast riding on immaculate road surfaces. Passing police bikes/cars and not having to worry. Stopping off in small villages for great food and beer. The only times have had anything remotely similar is riding through Nevada and Utah, but still you had to watch out for the revenue generators.

Re:We're in the minority

[Grishnakh]

Then start being surprised. Other people here have already posted about the huge difference in efficiency. Do you have some kind of agenda or something?

Re:We're in the minority

[karnal]

Most V6s in the US seem to now get darn close if not over 200hp. Now, if I were buying another car, I'd be looking at HP and Torque if I was wanting to get that "seat-of-my-pants" feel....

Re:We're in the minority

[karnal]

I bought a Z28 as a graduation gift to myself several years back. It always amazed me the utter pieces of shit that would rev their engines at me, as if they could hold their own in straight line performance. I'm talking old, beat up v6 oldsmobiles and the like. I really didn't need any attention, and kept the vehicle as stock looking as possible.

I only ever got into one "street race" - between myself and a Dodge Ram V10. We were both laughing with each other at the end; had to be a funny sight for an outsider.

Re:We're in the minority

[drsquare]

How the hell are you only managing 65mph on a motorbike? Maybe you meant moped. SUVs are generally driven incredibly slowly by middle-aged women, if you've got one of them catching up with you, then you must really be going slowly. Motorbikes should be overtaking everything.

Re:We're in the minority

[drsquare]

Then don't buy American cars. When they end up all going bust because everyone's buying foreign cars, then they might have to change their minds. How much money is Ford losing these days?

Re:We're in the minority

[dbIII]

Otherwise, you'll never be able to take it on the interstate or most roads due to the slow speed or bitched at at lights

They are BMW drivers. They like getting bitched at - which is why they drive the way they do.

Re:We're in the minority

[JonathanR]

You said "Bullshit" and then agreed with the parent post.

Re:We're in the minority

[[m1]]

What ever happened to "moderation in all things"?

moderation in all things, including moderation :-)

Re:We're in the minority

[JonathanR]

Interesting that in gasoline form, the same BMW engine develops 445 hp (DIN). The H2 version develops only a bit more than half of that.

This is merely another manifestation of hydrogen's poor energy density. The fuel/air ratio required for combustion means that the engine displacement limits affect the fuel side of the ratio, compared with the air side in a gasoline engine.

Re:We're in the minority

[iocat]

I just wish the "we need hybrids! we need hydrogen" crowd wasn't also the "no nukes!" crowd. Gimme nuclear power and a hrydrogen fuel cell over my gas engine anyday, but not the former witot the latter.

Re:We're in the minority

[todd1000]

Last post was right, they measure peak HP. Similar to most consumer grade stereo equipment manufacturers measuring peak wattage (although I think the amplifier manufacturers are much worse, some measure RMS wattage, but insanely high distortion; gettin off-topic -). You have to look at torque and HP at various RPM to get a real picture. A lot of heavy trucks are rated 300HP, but they can put out 300HP all the time, your 200HP car's motor will break if it puts out it's rated HP for more than a short period of time. Put a 300HP car against a 300HP heavy truck, supposedly the same power output, but the truck will have way more power over time.

Re:We're in the minority

[shmlco]

"What I enjoy is the ability to play with physics, drive fast, corner hard, and enjoy life at a higher level of performance. It really has nothing to do with showing off."

Right.

Just remember that physics has a way of playing back. I also sincerely hope that, when it does, you're the only one involved...

Re:We're in the minority

[todd1000]

No shit, the "green" people don't seem to get that the "greenest" solution we currently have that is practical is nuclear power. We should be building LOTS of safe reactors. Obviously, there's a bit of an issue with the spent fuel, but it is a relatively small quantity that we should be able to deal with. We have to come up with some "hot spot" that we're going to destroy by storing our waste there. I'm sure we could find a place up north in Canada or Russia to do this. (I'm Canadian, I know the arguments ;-) I think we'd be better off killing a few thousand km^2 than Earth though.

Re:We're in the minority

[Sobrique]

No not at all. However I remain bemused at the world going 'oooh wow, hydrogen and electric cars' whilst at the same time completely failing to recognise that more pollution is generated by the clean solutions.

You're correct. People posted the difference in efficiency. 20% vs 40%, or twice as much energy yield for a given quantity of fuel. But that's only on the primary reaction. Which'd mean that between the other steps involved in running this hydrogen car - electricity distribution, electrolysis, and actually running the engine itself, if that process chain is less than 50% efficient, this hydrogen power doesn't help. And given we've established about a 20% efficiency margin on the petrol engine, does it seem likely to you that the hydrogen engine is any more efficient?

Re:We're in the minority

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you REALLY care less?

Then why don't you?

Personally, myself could NOT care less about your bad Kelsey Grammer. Nor myself's fiance.
(But the American Red Cross might)

Re:We're in the minority

[shadowknot]

Bottom line is that you need a basic level of performance

Just wandering who you are to tell anyone else what they need? I don't own the car I own purely for the fact that I need it to get to and from work I own it because I like it. Whether you like it or not the fact remains that we live in a society where individuals have the right to own the car of their choice. Neither you nor anyone else has the right to tell any individual what they do or don't need or what the should or shouldn't buy.

Re:We're in the minority

[stuntpope]

No he didn't. Parent said the speed differential made no difference on the Autobahn. Responder said the speed differential *did* make a difference, and offered personal experience and an explanation of why it does. Namely, a huge speed differential can get you in trouble if a car ahead of you cannot judge your rate of approach (or doesn't even see you yet) and they move into your lane to pass a car ahead of them. The disparity of the two speeds means you're likely to ram right into them before they even realize your car is barreling down on them.

Re:We're in the minority

[somersault]

I just think people are dumb and illogical whenever they say that -.- It's even more infuriating than people saying 'then' instead of 'than' and vice versa, or mishearing other well known phrases like "all in all" being "all and all" or that kind of thing..

Re:We're in the minority

[Millenniumman]

But unfortunately for those of us who are more interested in efficiency are in the minority;so car makers market to the folks who consider automobiles to be a status sort of thing instead of a piece of machinery. And this is why the most popular car is a Ferrari, and Honda barely sells 100 a year?

I can care less how fast it can go or its acceleration. Then you probably aren't interested in a $100,000 BMW.

Re:We're in the minority

[Floritard]

You obviously don't live in Florida.

Re:We're in the minority

[Grishnakh]

You are a fucking moron.

It's already been posted here numerous times that the efficiency and pollution aspects of generating power at large power plants and running cars on electricity or electric-generated fuel is much better than every car burning its own fossil fuel.

Are you some fucking troll for the oil industry or something? You've descended into religious territory, because you're plainly ignoring and disputing facts that are not in dispute by anyone competent.

Re:We're in the minority

[Ana10g]

Just remember that physics has a way of playing back.

Yup, I've found that one out the hard way a few times (car vs. bike? yea, car wins)

I also sincerely hope that, when it does, you're the only one involved...

Of course, I don't want to endanger anyone unnecessarily. Running through canyons with good visibility at low traffic times (and low deer times, too), using race tracks (that especially), etc. If I'm doing something stupid, and eliminate myself from the gene pool, I don't want to take anyone with me.

Re:We're in the minority

[shmlco]

I'd probably have a lot of fun taking a baseball bat to your car too, but often there are laws enacted to limit the amount of "fun" we can have.

Guess that's why we have taxes and regulations to act as "incentives" for people to behave rationally and unselfishly. Let's see, if we have a government-mandated 35MPG average, how about an additional yearly excise tax of, say, $200 for every MPG your car gets that's under the average? Want a Hummer or V-8 sports car that gets 12MPG? Fine. That will be an extra $4,600 this year please. And next year. And the year after that. And...

Re:We're in the minority

[shmlco]

FYI: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/zap_alias. php

Re:We're in the minority

[iknownuttin]

Few things piss me off as much while driving as heading down the highway at 65, and seeing someone "merge" into my lane from the on ramp doing 45.

What the fuck are you doing 65 in the right hand lane?!?

I hate it when I'm behind some truck, old person, or whatever, and then I have to merge onto the highway and there's some MORON who wants to cruise in the fucking right hand lane - at 65+ MPH! I can't merge so I have to slow down even more to get into a space of cars. Of course, there another moron who's cruising in the right hand lane who's on my ass honking his horn because I'm in his way! Oh! And the next off-ramp isn't until a couple of miles - before you get pedantic.

You want to speed? Go to a track! There's plenty.

Re:We're in the minority

[AndersOSU]

God forbid I do the speed limit, and don't park my ass in the passing lane when I'm not passing someone (that would be my second pet peeve).

I'm not tailgating the guy in front of me, and I'll move over if I can. Regardless I'll leave you space to merge in front of me, but you damn well better get up to speed and not cause me to brake.

If there's a semi in front of you that's a different story, and if there is an old person in your way, my beef is with them, but if it's just you, find the freaking accelerator.

Re:We're in the minority

[cayenne8]

" Let's see, if we have a government-mandated 35MPG average, how about an additional yearly excise tax of, say, $200 for every MPG your car gets that's under the average? Want a Hummer or V-8 sports car that gets 12MPG? Fine. That will be an extra $4,600 this year please. And next year. And the year after that. And..."

Yeah...like that's gonna happen. You only get a gas guzzler tax one time, on a new car purchase if it doesn't meet the MPG regulations....but, not on used ones, and they certainly aren't gonna monitor every car out there for gas mileage or modifications you do to them...

At least, not in any state I've lived in...I've never even lived where you have to do any kind of exhaust 'sniff' test like I hear they do in CA.

Re:We're in the minority

[Anonymous Coward]

I've ridden in a Beetle and it's acceleration was "enough" I think. But, there's plenty of areas with short, steep onramps, with much heavier traffic on the interstate than was around when the ramp was designed. At least 1 or 2 local ramps, I had a car that would do a 12 second 0-60, and I more or less had to cross my fingers that there was a large gap in traffic by the end of the ramp.. traffic would be doing 75-80 and the car would get up to like 55 by the end of the ramp. Beetles actually have decent torque, but a lot of low-HP engines also make no torque and won't accelerate worth a crap up a ramp. Also, at higher altitudes engines lose power -- my dad said the first Beetle he saw, the town he lived in was out laughing their ass off (probably in the 1950s or so, so probably a ~45HP 1200CC model), it was like wheezing up the local mountain road at about 20MPH.. speed limit 55. That's not safe in this day and age. And that was in the Appalachian mountains, which are not that high compared to the Rockys or the like.

          I agree that cars shouldn't just all be tuned for power the way they are, but I'd aim for a 10-12 second 0-60 rather than 15-20 to improve efficiency. Those last 3-5 seconds 0-60 (i.e. down to as 5-7 second 0-60) are what makes the car company gear the car for power rather than economy, making cars not get the gas mileage they should -- the high HP is due to high efficiency. With modern fuel injection and all, "tuning" the engine to make less power will lower the gas mileage too.

          9.5 or so seconds 0-60 is certainly fine -- but it is troubling that with hydrogen it's taking a V12 (I think nearly 7 liters) to get that level of acceleration. This would imply to me that a regular 'ol 4 banger could be pushing 30 seconds to 60 on hydrogen.

Re:We're in the minority

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're having this problem so much, get a faster car, or learn to drive.

          If you're car had enough power you could get up to match the speed of traffic by the end of the onramp.

          If you can't YOU are supposed to yield. I would honk at you to if you cut in in front of me going super-slow. The left lane is a PASSING lane, it's a courtesy for people to move over (and I do when I can) but it's YOUR job as someone merging on to not cut off traffic on the highway.

          You want to not speed? Take some side roads 8-).

Re:We're in the minority

[shmlco]

Doesn't mean it couldn't be done. I've also heard plenty of people (politicians, economists, etc.) discussing gas taxes, rationing, coupons, and so on. And that's definitely happened before.

err that was supposed to be Hydrogen > Electric

[aapold]

it at my greater than, and didn't preview the title.

Internal Combustion!

[josquint]

I like the fact that it uses a standard(ish) internal combustion engine. Most of the work seems to be focused on fuel-cell/electric vehicles. While eleectric is probably the eventual future, I think dual-fuel systems like this would be a very good transition.

Not to mention i rather like my rough loud piston engine... sometimes. Granted, I will be weined off and eventually learn to like the quiet boring (but REALLY high torque) electric motor.

It was weird enought driving the company hybrid with CVT transmission, no shift points and odd engine RPM sequences makes driving less-than-intuitive. I find myself having to look at the speedometer far more with that than any other car.

Re:Internal Combustion!

[LordVader717]

I actually got to talk with someone doing research on hydrogen fuel systems for BMW, and he explained that because so many companies were dependant on making the thousands of parts for the combustion engines, there was a lot of lobbying to steer the research in that direction.

Of course, it's also currently the most viable option, as fuel cell systems are about ten times as expensive, but until we find a way to make the fuel cheap enough, and without emitting even more CO2, they're both moot.

Re:Internal Combustion!

[josquint]

I never thought of this from a manufacturing standpoint, and that is very interesting. Re-tooling and redesigning all the core components is expensive, this is basically "off the shelf".

I think you're very corrent in finding a cheap/less-CO2 producing fuel though... I've seen quite a shift to propane in Canada, I wish this would be more popular in the US. It seems a decent interim fuel as almost all cars can run on it, and they burn cleaner and last longer.

Re:Internal Combustion!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't the hydrogen work better in a "modern" rotary engine similar to a Mazda RX series?

Re:Internal Combustion!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, one of the problems with combustion is that it inherently limits efficiency. Even if I could get a perfect, 100% burn rate, most of the energy is going to be pushed out against the cylinder instead of the piston - which means that even if ALL of the hydrogen burns, I'm wasting a lot of it. That's one of the reasons fuel cells are popular for research - you can extract more of the energy, and material that isn't consumed during the reaction can just be cycled back into the tank, whereas with combustion that's much harder to do.

Re:Internal Combustion!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, rotary and the two stroke engines are heresy of modern automobile industry.
They need two stroke oil, that is no - no as it creates the pollution.
They are smaller, lighter, more efficient, cheaper to build and maintain, and therefore less profitable than say 12 cylinder turbocharged half tonn gasoline eater.

Yes, rotary and two stroke piston ICEs are more suitable for the highly explosive Hydrogen fuel, and they need minor modifications to run on the hydrogen.
It is almost the same shit that whips the electric car. They are good, they are superb, however, for the greedy commercial reasons the automobile industry will continue to sell variants of four stroke engines as long as they can.

i'm all for new tech

[acvh]

but why does NASA need a fleet of luxury BMW sedans?

Re:i'm all for new tech

[Anonymous Coward]

Providing the hydrogen fuel I guess.

Re:i'm all for new tech

[niceone]

ut why does NASA need a fleet of luxury BMW sedans?

Well, lets say you're an astronaut and your car's in the shop, but you really need to drive cross country to hunt down the new girlfriend of your ex-lover - one of these would be ideal.

Re:i'm all for new tech

[MightyYar]

They don't, but who else is making hydrogen cars?

Re:i'm all for new tech

[Anonymous Coward]

but why does NASA need a fleet of luxury BMW sedans? To strike the police officers with techie-awe when they pull over the diaper-wearing employees of course.

Re:i'm all for new tech

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell did this post ever rate a 5? Oh well.

NASA has access to a shitload of liquid hydrogen....so they did the testing deed for BMW. Simple enough?

Re:i'm all for new tech

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a side project for all the engineers at NASA to have something to do while Bush sends some more resources to the moon

Re:i'm all for new tech

[Chris Burke]

Well I guess that explains the built-in commode in the driver's seat.

How do they get the hydrogen?

[Sobrique]

Well, much like electric cars, I'm wondering: Does this actually help? I mean, petroleum burning is actually fairly energy efficient. OK, so you pollute a bit. But ... so do power stations. And last I checked, your average power station, producing hundreds of mega watts, is actually substantially less efficient than a (relatively) small petrol engine.

So, you're presumably using rather a lot of oil, coal or natural gas, in order to make these things run. Is that actually helping our environment at all? Or are they looking at some other reason to do it, like making them able to go really really far?

Yeah, I know there's nuclear, solar, geothermal, and wind power available. Fact remains that these are all way more expensive than burning fossil fuels, otherwise we'd have switches _ages_ ago.

Re:How do they get the hydrogen?

[skiingyac]

I think NASA has some other vehicles which burn liquid hydrogen, the little bit used for some BMWs is probably not even noticed.

Seriously though, I think the theory is that once cars can burn something environmentally friendly like hydrogen (burning it is clean), and the infrastructure to make/transport it is in place, then its almost trivial to later switch between making the hydrogen using coal or whatever vs some better (but currently more expensive) method. Plus, hopefully centralizing the pollution makes it easier to manage. I'm not saying I buy all this, but that seems to be the line of thinking.

Re:How do they get the hydrogen?

[notmuchtosay]

I would think that a power plant no matter the size is always going to be more efficient than a small gas engine. The power plants operate at a specific load instead of a variable load and at a higher temperature. The temperature is important as the higher the delta T the greater efficiency is possible via the Carnot cycle.

I would say gas engines are horribly inefficient, they make lots and lots of unused heat. Granted they may be very close to the maximum possible efficiency of the Carnot cycle but that doesn't mean they are efficient. This is why i thought there was an effort to get away from internal combustion to a fuel cell power source. A fuel cell is not bound by the Carnot cycle so it has a better theoretical maximum efficiency.

Re:How do they get the hydrogen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... No. Flagrantly wrong. The engines inside cars are *significantly* less efficient than a power plant running on oil. Now, if you also take the inefficiency of splitting water to get the hydrogen in the first place, the relative advantage of centralized power production diminishes a bit, but trying to claim that the dinky heater (read: engine which wastes 80% of the gasoline's energy as heat) under your car's hood is anywhere near as efficient as oil power plant is a sign of intentional ignorance.

Re:How do they get the hydrogen?

[Tinyn]

Even for dirty power sources, like Coal, its easier to apply clean technologies, like sulfer scrubbers and carbon sequestration and capture to one big coal power plant, then to apply those same technologies to a million cars and trucks. And a large power station makes more efficient use of the energy than your car. The gas->energy conversion in your car happens completely, but an awful lot of it is waste heat, and not actually used for propulsion. An insulated power plant turns much more of the heat into electricity.

Fuel Costs

[uncreativeslashnick]

What's the cost per mile for the fuel? It seems to me that the practical consideration that makes or breaks any technology for oil replacement is the cost per mile of the fuel. What ever that cost is, it's got to come pretty close to gasoline if anyone expects a majority of people to make the switch.

I suspect with all the research into ethanol, and the availability of dual fuel ethanal/gas cars, ethanol will get there first. I have certainly read/heard of crunchy rich enviromental types who already use ethanol just to get the look-at-me-i'm-not-polluting holier-than-thou feeling. Is suspect as ethanol gets cheaper, that population will grow, funding more research and better delivery infrastructure. It seems as if it should work similarly to consumer goods where the early adopters pay the premium for new technology and eventually the price drops and then the rest of the population jumps on the bandwagon.

Yay for hydrogen and nasa though.

Re:Fuel Costs

[djupedal]

"Yay for hydrogen and nasa though."

eh?

BMW made the cars and the hydrogen systems. B M W You know, that car company from another country?

All NASA has to do with this story is some 'testing' - you know...get in, turn the key, drive around in circles, smile for the cameras, grab some stickers and promo sheets...could have been the Girl Scouts.

Re:Fuel Costs

[uncreativeslashnick]

Well yay for BMW and the girl scouts too, then.

Re:Fuel Costs

[technococcus]

Ethanol is a stopgap measure at best. Its HHV and LHV values are much too low for it to be seriously considered as a gasoline replacement and the production of enough etahnol to dent the gasoline market is almost completely unachievable and is most certainly not sustainable; the continual crops of corn/sugarcane will drain the soil of all of the nutrients necessary to allow good crops of corn/sugarcane to grow in that area. Not even Brazil and America together, if we converted all of our farmland to producing nothing by corn or sugarcane, could produce enough ethanol to wean us off of gasoline.

High-efficiency Diesel cycle engines are a much more realistic improvement to look for until tru electrics are fully developed. The infrastructure for fuel delivery is already there (hell of a lot more fueling stations with diesel than ethanol) and the increases in efficiency, especially during city driving (stop-and-go) due to the fuel-throttled nature of the Diesel cycle, are definitely worth the switch. Honda intends to release a Diesel version of its Accord next year. Keep an eye out.

The "Real" Emissions

[Gman14msu]

Don't get me wrong, hydrogen fueled vehicles are a great thing for the future but we really need to look at the overall environmental impacts of the hydrogen fueled vehicle. Right now the life cycle emissions of a hydrogen car depend heavily on how the hydrogen is created. While the vehicle itself may have no emissions, the process of creating that hydrogen can be nastier for the environment than a gas powered car. If you are creating hydrogen from coal power plants or compresses natural gas (which is the norm for quite a few operations), then you are having a higher impact on the environment overall than a gas vehicle. But if you`re using renewable resources like hydro power to create the hydrogen, then we are starting to look at true zero emissions vehicles.

This is not to mention the life cycle of the vehicle itself. The manufacturing of hydrogen vehicles can be 3 times more detrimental to the environment than the manufacturing of a gas powered vehicle.

Clearly we are on the right path to less impact on the environment from vehicles, but it really depends on how nations/corporations choose to get their hydrogen fuel. Putting all the emissions in one location rather than from millions of cars is a good start.

Re:The "Real" Emissions

[onearmfreak]

I'm not an expert in this by any stretch, so if this is really stupid, then so be it (when has abject stupidity ever stopped an American from voicing his ideas?). Couldn't a hydrogen-producing plant begin the cycle of creation using a carbon-emitting process (e.g. coal, gas), and then switch to using hydrogen to create the hydrogen? A given volume of hydrogen would be created, but a percentage of that would be routed off to power the powerplant, while the balance goes off to the fuel pumps. Hell, since you need an engine that burns gas and hydrogen, have BMW make the frigging powerplant?

Still not impressed

[smchris]

I guess that's the point, isn't it? They'd have a handy refueling station on-site. Is NASA going to go into the business of building the infrastructure for the country?

Still the same freak niche as poultry farms running vehicles on chicken crap methane or neo-hippies burning McDonald's grease. Maybe even less efficient since hydrogen isn't so much a fuel as energy storage?

Re:Still not impressed

[FozE_Bear]

The nice thing about this car as a "Hybrid" is that your not dependant on the H2 infrastructure. You can fill up with petrol fuels, and then stop at the H2 station when you see one. If every car in the US was instantly and magically converted to a Gas/H2 hybrid, then the H2 delivery systems would capitalistically develop. That is the benifit I see. It promote H2 without the delivery system dependance.

Re:Still not impressed

[MightyYar]

Of course, if every car in the US was lugging around storage systems for both hydrogen and gasoline, that'd probably eat into whatever CO2 reduction you'd gain from the few using hydrogen. There's probably a reason that BMW chose the big, heavy, expensive 7 Series for this program.

Mod Parent Down!!!

[Chineseyes]

It is a well known fact Chuck Norris does not use guns only roundhouses of death.

Well

[Xenogyst]

It's not really useful since we have no way of producing a lot of hydrogen without oil. Until we find a better source/method, or if the hydrogen extraction process is somehow better than burning petrol in cars, there isn't a lot of use for the technology.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a great believer in the Hydrogen revolution, but most of the arguments here are tired, uninformed or ignorant. There is an efficient and ecologically friendly way to produce hydrogen, and Iceland is already using it. If we do make th switch from hydrocarbon to hydrogen, geologically active nations will - at least for a time - experience an economic windfall similar to that of the OPEC nations.

If we can establish a hydrogen infrastructure, it should only be a matter of 30-50 years to convert most hydrocarbon burning powerplants to hydrogen. There is some amazing research into water splitting bacteria that working on increasing yields and reducing the risk of ecological contamination that should, if pursued, bear fruit in the next 15-20 years, meaning that theoretically power stations could be self sustaining, requiring no external fuel source as long as their bacteria tanks don't crash.

I think this view is a bit 'pie in the sky' - but it is completely technologically valid, and the technology and resources to produce hydrogen in a clean, eco friendly and imminently transportable form most definitely DOES exist right now. Geothermal is clean, and functionally limitless. If we run out of it, producing hydrogen or electricity will be the least of our problems.

Why is NASA not buying American Cars!!!!

[tjstork]

Geez, German taxpayers aren't supporting NASA. US Taxpayers are. So, why couldn't NASA do this with an American car?

Come on.

What a joke.

Re:Why is NASA not buying American Cars!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen these vehicles parked in reserved spaces at the headquarters building. Parked next to them at various times are quite a few other makes and models of hydrogen/low-emissions vehicles they are testing. IIRC at least one model is a ford... Which shouldn't really matter, this is a tiny pilot program where they are conducting science. Fleet vehicles are American makes, rest assured on that.

Re:Why is NASA not buying American Cars!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably for the same reason that nobody else smart is driving an American car: they suck. Don't get me wrong though, BMWs suck too, for all the talk German engineering gets, most German cars (BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagens, Porsche) are remarkably unreliable.

Re:Why is NASA not buying American Cars!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because no American car company can pass the quality muster these days, unless they rebadge a car from another country under their own name?

Re:Why is NASA not buying American Cars!!!!

[Tuoqui]

Because all the American cars are made in China (all the parts anyways), they just assemble them over here.

Re:Why is NASA not buying American Cars!!!!

[Namlak]

Because the American automaker execs are too busy spending time and money lobbying against efficiency and emissions legislation to actually have the time and money to do R&D for efficiency and emissions improvements?

Re:Why is NASA not buying American Cars!!!!

[systemeng]

BMW is a leader in alternative fuels research, especially hydrogen. None of the American car companies pay much more than lipservice to this kind of R&D according to a friend of mine at a national laboratory.

Inside the box

[Dzimas]

Do you get the feeling that manufacturers are stumbling around in the dark a bit when it comes to replacing the 'classic' automobile? "Gosh, Juergen... let's run our century old internal combustion engine on a new fuel! We should make it unnecessarily large and capable of blinding (and unnecessary) performance! Ausgezeichnet!!" and off they go to spend millions on an idea that isn't sensible in the grand scheme of things. It would be far better to rethink the automobile altogether. It's possible to design something very small and lightweight - like the www.twike.com - except with the benefit of hundreds of millions of euros design and research. A true "personal" vehicle would be far easier to propel with electricity or extremely small internal combustion engines. It would also require significantly less fossil fuel to manufacture (because we can't make plastic out of hydrogen...)

I can hear the naysayers now: "But it'd get squashed by a Hummer." or, "I need a high performance car." But the reality is that *if* scientists are right and we've reached Peak Oil, fuel is going to get incredibly expensive and shortages will become a regular occurrence. Once that happens, companies will start to aggressively compete to create a solution and the car will evolve into something that fits the new reality of a fossil fuel depleted world.

I don't think adapting existing designs t hydrogen is the answer for one moment - the infrastructure would cost billions, the technology would cost billions, and it doesn't solve the root problems: 1. Our transportation devices are wasteful and 2. We're turning a blind eye to the benefits of mass transportation, and 3. Planned obsolescence has trained generations of vehicle purchasers to devalue six or seven year old cars as "old" and replace them unnecessarily.

Re:Inside the box

[nukepuppy]

if billions here and there is all it costs to change over from our current situation..

its pretty damn cheap... considering billions is wasted every day for far less useful reasons

Re:Inside the box

[daterabytez]

I disagree with the parent totally. Hydrogen is completely worth it.

Hydrogen can be transported much more safely than fossil fuels. An article in Scientific American a few months back discussed a "Superpipeline" which would carry both electricity and hydrogen, which would double as a coolant. See: This report from IEEE for details.

Hydrogen can be created more easily than any other fuel and more cleanly too. For those of you naysayers who obviously missed that day in Chem 101, Water + energy = Hydrogen. Hydrogen + air = energy + cleaner air than you put in. Hydrogen-burning engines are MINUS EMISSIONS VEHICLES. To quote The American Hydrogen Association :

To improve air quality some states have set zero emission standards for cars. A vehicle converted to operate on hydrogen easily meets this standard and can actually improve upon it by cleaning the air through which it travels by reducing atmospheric concentrations of carbon monoxide, diesel soot, tire particles and unburned hydrocarbons and converting these pollutants into carbon dioxide and water. This air cleaning capability provides a Minus Emissions Vehicle (MEV).

This quote refers to hydrogen combustion. In fact, this same association had a book published in 1982 (I forget the title) which claimed a then-modern car could be converted to run on hydrogen/gasoline or pure hydrogen fuel for $500 per car, get 80 miles to the gallon, and when running on pure hydrogen, emit cleaner air than it took in. They had several proof-of-concept vehicles. Needless to say, those claims are pretty wild, but if there was even a kernel of truth to them, why didn't we hear about it? Oil lobbyists anyone?

Hydrogen could be created by solar panels on your roof, stored in a tank by your house, and pumped into your car as needed. You could sell your excess to others. Infrastructure is nice, but not strictly necessary. If you could spend $10,000 on equipment and never buy gasoline again, and help the environment, and potentially have some spare hydrogen to sell, wouldn't you?

-Carl

Re:Inside the box

[Dzimas]

You're projecting the present onto the future. The future should not be filled with the cars that we have now, simply running on a different kind of fuel. You can't build roads out of hydrogen. You can't make plastic out of hydrogen. There's a lot more to solving the fossil fuel crisis that simply shifting to a different fuel for internal combustion and continuing to live our suburban lifestyle. The vision of a Utopian hydrogen economy is appealing because it doesn't seem to involve any sacrifice or major behavioral shifts.

Re:Inside the box

[rubberbandball]

in regards to people "needlessly" throwing away a 6 or 7 year old car, let's look at some reasoning. behind why they do it.

-Occupancy has changed.
The owner(s) might have children, or need a larger vehicle to transport goods. The reverse of this is also possible. People might be downgrading larger vehicles for smaller.

-Unable to afford repairs
The 10 year warranties are fairly new. When your master cylinder blows in your 97 civic, not too many people out there want to drop $3k on an engine.

Or in my case (and frequently in more and more cases) :

Get rid of your 18 MPG Highway 1996 Dodge Ram (5.7L V8) for a wonderful 2007 Hyundai Elantra which i average 40 MPG highway (window sticker is 28/36 city/hway, but that's a lowballed average as long as you don't drive 200mph everywhere).

Yeah, not having 320 horsepower and an 8 foot bed kind of sucks. But so does not dropping $100 a week on gas. i'm now averaging about $30 every 8 days at the pump, and that's to fill my tank (i don't even hit E before i fill, usually down to about 1/8th of a tank when i hit up Sunoco.)

I didn't go green, i went smart. I don't need all that, and neither do most people. SUVs and luxury cars are just another way to say "I have money, not brains".

Re:Inside the box

[Grishnakh]

2. We're turning a blind eye to the benefits of mass transportation,

What benefits? Sitting on a crowded bus next to smelly drug addicts and waiting 3 hours to get to your destination across town?

Mass transportation works well in certain cities which are densely populated, and geographically laid out in a way that fits with rail tranport. It doesn't work well in less-dense places like suburbs. So unless you're proposing actually bulldozing most American cities and rebuilding from scratch, mass transport won't work.

3. Planned obsolescence has trained generations of vehicle purchasers to devalue six or seven year old cars as "old" and replace them unnecessarily.

Speak for yourself; my car is 13 years old and still runs great. No one is taking 6-year-old cars to the crusher; they sell them on the used market, and continue life there. Cars are lasting longer than ever, in my view. Maybe not in the same hands, since some people don't mind staying in debt forever just so they can have a newer, fancier vehicle, but they're staying in service and replacing extremely old cars. I see tons of 15-20 year old cars driving around every day.

Re:Inside the box

[NeedMyFix]

Wow you really are a typical /. reader aren't you. For a large percentage of people that I know a true "personal" vehicle is kind of worthless. Where do I put my wife, my three children, my Father-in-law, and my dog? I do commute to work but like most people around me most of my driving is not done alone. I have a BIG car and most of the time it is on the road it is full.

Re:Inside the box

[SuseLover]

Except small, lightweight cars will be extremely unsafe as long as big ICE vehicles are around. The transition to smaller/lighter/efficient vehicles will have to wait until all the legacy vehicles are no longer in service, which may mean we'll have to wait until there is no oil or it is prohibitively expensive. Even then the rich/affluent population will continue to run expensive petro powered cars because they can afford to unless laws are enacted prohibiting them (and we know how likely it is that will happen).

Re:Inside the box

[mac84]

jurgen schremp is from another german automaker (Daimler Benz). This car solves two problems, first how do we efficiently store energy on the order of gasoline, Batteries don't cut it and ethanol is not going to replace oil ever, there's not enough farms to grow enough corn or sugar cane. Hydrogen looks like the only alternative. But who is going to invest in a hydrogen distribution infrastructure until there are cars to use it? And who is going to buy a hydrogen car until there are hydrogen filling stations? This car can use conventional oil or hydrogen, thus a bridge technology to hydrogen fuel cell electrics.

Re:Inside the box

[drsquare]

www.twike.com

That thing would fall over in the first bend. If it so much as hit a curb or a pebble it would tip over. It would be easy to bounce.It takes hours to charge, you'd be sat at the charging station all day. The battery would run out on any long journey. Laughably slow, it wouldn't even be able to reach the limit on country roads, and would take an hour to accelerate. Does that thing even go up hills?

It'd be ideal for transporting three-legged chickens and national-anthem playing doorbells to the market though.

Re:Inside the box

[JonathanR]

Mass transportation works well in certain cities which are densely populated, and geographically laid out in a way that fits with rail tranport. It doesn't work well in less-dense places like suburbs. So unless you're proposing actually bulldozing most American cities and rebuilding from scratch, mass transport won't work. You don't need ot bulldoze the city, you just need to replace the road pavement of some major transport arteries with a rail system. Mark my words; that is what will happen one day.

Re:Inside the box

[liquiddark]

Drive in snow much?

Re:Inside the box

[Grishnakh]

Take a look at a map of Phoenix, Arizona. We have major roads in a NS/EW grid system, spaced 1 mile apart. Do you honestly believe that can be replaced with a rail system? Wake up.

Most cities are NOT like Manhattan, long and narrow.

Business as usual for NASA...

[Lurker2288]

I wonder if they plan to drive these drunk, too.

Fueling Stations & Price of Fuel

[ZOMFF]

Taking a quick look at the list of available fueling stations, there seems to be a rather limited number of stations currently. The state I live in (CT) has only two available stations, both of which are primarily used for fueling public transportation. California on the other hand, does have a larger number, but again, in relationship to population density / size of the state, it is still a rather small number of stations.

Even if Ford or other domestic car company were to produce a reasonably priced economy hydrogen cell car, AND fueling stations become more common, what is the average price per gallon? All the emission reduction in the world isn't going to mean shit if it costs me $5 / gallon to fill up.

Re:Fueling Stations & Price of Fuel

[jdunn14]

You care about the price per mile, not gallon. If it costs me $5/gallon to fill up, but the 300 mile tank holds 5 gallons I'm still a happy camper.

Re:Fueling Stations & Price of Fuel

[Anonymous Coward]

All the emission reduction in the world isn't going to mean shit if it costs me $5 / gallon to fill up.

Hah. in Europe gasoline already costs morethan $5 per gallon. if I could buy 3.7854118 litres (a gallon) of gasoline with just 5 dollars (3.6255529 Euros) I would consider that cheap.

Re:Fueling Stations & Price of Fuel

[Ant P.]

$5 a gallon?

Where I live it's already that much and still rising. H2 at equivalent prices would be a massive success.

Not a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Hydrogen production if not based on fossil fuels would use electricity and water. These two things alone are in short supply and I hardly think there will be enough available to fuel the transportation sector without shortages somewhere else.

It's way simpler and much more efficient to just put the electricity into the car to begin with. There was an article on Slashdot a while back that showed some MIT scientists who invented carbon nanotube capacitors that could solve the whole battery problem. As to the electricity issue, as soon as the government stops with the dirty bomb bullshit, we can get back to recycling nuclear fuel which alone has been projected to allow for the next few (maybe several) hundred years of energy use.

Re:Not a solution

[FozE_Bear]

How is water in short supply? It does cover 2/3 of the earths surface. Plus when you burn hydrogen, you get WATER.

"clean to get"? Huh?

[SuperBanana]

Hydrogen may be clean to use and get

Uh...who told you it's clean to get? The only "clean" method is electrolysis, and that requires massive amounts of electricity, which over 1/3rd in the US comes from coal. Pretty much ALL of it comes from coal in China.

The only other source is natural gas. Guess what? Gotta strip the carbon off the hydrogen somehow, and the catalysts are not exactly eco-friendly or reuseable. It's a great way to sell more natural gas, though- which is why Bush is so thrilled with it.

Hydrogen has another problem: it's a pain to store. Because H2 is molecularly very small, it leaks very easily past/through seals (remember how fast the helium escaped from party balloons?)

Body shops would love it

[Radon360]

Just be careful not to get into a fender bender, them heat shield tiles are awfully damned expensive to replace. And don't forget to park at the far end of the lot at the mall. Those door dings are murder on them, too.

Solution to the H2 problem

[E 99]

Using earth-based H2 power doesn't make a lot of sense, since there's no real energy-efficient way to make it. However, what if we (seriously) built enormous space tankers capable of making the trip to Jupiter and scraping H2 out of the surface of its atmosphere and compressing it into liquid to bring back ginormous amounts to earth? It's a long round-trip, but if there was a fleet making continuous deliveries, at some point this would scale to to the point where it was an incredibly cheap form of energy. The only real downside, is we're making the Earth no longer a closed system -- what will be the long-term effect of the added H2? Will the world's algae keep up with the loss of oxygen as we burn all of that?

Re:Solution to the H2 problem

[Ant P.]

H2 + O2 = 2 H2O

So we all either drown or asphyxiate! Yay!

Re:Solution to the H2 problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear Power + Electrolysis = Hydrogen Economy

Linky

Re:Solution to the H2 problem

[HTH NE1]

H2 + O2 = 2 H2O Not quite. You need two parts Hydrogen to one part Oxygen (2H2 + O2 -> 2H2O).

I wonder if they'll repeat this experiment in 6 months, preferably in a colder climate. An 8-week test in summer months in Florida won't give useful information about its winter performance in North Dakota.

Re:Solution to the H2 problem

[Phanatic1a]

However, what if we (seriously) built enormous space tankers capable of making the trip to Jupiter and scraping H2 out of the surface of its atmosphere and compressing it into liquid to bring back ginormous amounts to earth?

This would be grotesquely less efficient than simply electrolyzing water to produce H2, which is itself so energy-intensive that it isn't how hydrogen gets produced commercially. Price per pound to geosynch orbits are something like $18,000 per pound with the cheapest available launch platforms. I can't even imagine what cost per pound to-Jupiter-and-back would be. And that doesn't even mention the technological hurdles in harvesting H2 from Jupiter; you're in orbit, traveling at thousands of miles per hour, so how do you get H2 from the atmosphere without the friction decelerating you into a death spiral? That would take propellant, which means you need to carry more with you, which means a higher launch cost. Then the harvesting tools would need to be able to stand the frictional heating. Then there's the fact that there's no launch platform large enough to even begin to do what you're proposing.

Seriously, as long as you're wishing, why not ask for a pony? There are so many problems with the proposal that you might as well say "However, what if we (seriously) just built enormous solar collection satellites capable of steadily beaming gigawatts of power down to microwave receivers on earth and used that power to crack ginormous amounts of hydrogen from the oceans?" That would actually be *easier*. Much easier.

Re:Solution to the H2 problem

[MightyYar]

Not that I think going to Jupiter for hydrogen would be cost-effective, but for what it's worth, Earth is constantly losing hydrogen as it escapes into space...

Re:Solution to the H2 problem

[E 99]

First of all, you'd build the tankers in space, you wouldn't try to launch them from earth. For getting the hydrogen, I would imagine they'd use something like modern dredges -- scraping the surface of the atmosphere without the actual vehicle getting close enough to have friction problems. Yeah, it's obviously grossly less efficient than anything we'd do here on earth. But once you have the virtually unlimited hydrogen energy source, efficiency becomes much less relevant. Yes, there are many technical hurdles, and anything like this would probably be at least hundreds of years out.

Re:Solution to the H2 problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Just Wow. I don't even want to begin to describe how much hand-waving and ignorance is contained within the parent post. So I won't. Which is why I'm posting as AC.

Note to parent: You really need to improve your understanding of friction. And gravity. And momentum.

Re:Solution to the H2 problem

[bmajik]

BMW has been building hyrdrogen powered 7 series cars for over 20 years. This is just the latest generation. They're HCE (hydrogen combustion engine) cars.. not fuel cells, like most Hyrdrogen research. The engines are also duel fuel - gas OR hydrogen.

Given that the biggest challenge with hydrogen is keeping it cold, maybe they cars will do _great_ in our ND winters :) But even if they didn't, you can run them as a gasoline only engine. My experience is that german iron works much better here than american stuff even... my 20 year old Audi was parked outside all winter and doesn't have any kind of block heater.. it would start up in -30F temps. Most older american and japanese cars here have electrical plugs hanging out of the grille. People grew up using block heaters and with my older german cars its just unnecessary.

Re:Solution to the H2 problem

[PPH]

The Ferengi already have Jupiter Hydrogen futures contracts all locked up.

Re:Solution to the H2 problem

[GodfatherofSoul]

Sounds neat, but I can't imagine the effort to climb out to Jupiter's orbit, escape Jupiter's orbit, and fly back to Earth orbit would be more efficient.

Huh?

[Ancient_Hacker]

90% CO2 reduction? Where is the other 10% coming from?

And exactly how do they store the liquid hydrogen? Did they use up all the luxury trunk space with a vacuum-lined flask? That would explain why they chose a luxury car-- the other ones didn't have the room.

BTW how many miles can one go on a tankful of that stuff? It's mighty light,e ven in liquid form, so there's not a whole lot of energy in a standard car tankful.

NASA can get a Ford any damn time they want.

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be quite confused on who has what role in this.

NASA is researching German luxury cars because BMW is the only car company in the world investing this much R&D into hydrogen combustion engines.

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[brunes69]

Run your electrolysis off nuclear plants. Boom a zero CO2 emission cycle.

"OH BUT THE NUCLEAR WASTE" you say. Who cares? Store it for 15-25 years, by then we will have cheap ion propulsion engines (running off nuclear power), to cleanly jettison the waste into mercury or the sun.

Nuclear is the source solution to most of our energy problems. If the general public was not so misinformed and paranoid about it, and did not have so much of a "not in my backyard" syndrome, we'd be much better off right now.

Feeling

[jlebrech]

I have a feeling NASA plan on mining hydrogen based planets in the not so distant future.

Re:Feeling

[HTH NE1]

I have a feeling NASA plan on mining hydrogen based planets in the not so distant future. Just as long as they steer clear of the intelligent deuterium ore.

Most hydrogen today made from hydrocarbons

[AaronW]

The problem with hydrogen today is that most of it is made from fossil fuels, primarily natural gas, so the process of making pure hydrogen releases CO2. Also, I would think moving to a fuel cell would be much more efficient than an internal combustion engine, though at this time more expensive.

Sadly right now I have not seen any affordable technologies that can eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels for cars (though electric cars are coming down). We can't grow enough ethanol to fill our tanks (over 20% of all corn in the US goes to making ethanol, and the national average of ethanol use in fuel is about 3%).

Hydrogen is really an energy carrier rather than a fuel. It still is not that practical as a fuel since it requires refrigerating it to a very low temperature or compressing it to a very high pressure (both of which require a fair amount of energy to do). And hydrogen loves to leak. It will seep through the smallest holes and has a habit of making metal brittle.

-Aaron

Re:Most hydrogen today made from hydrocarbons

[collateralDmg]

I find that hydrogen is a very impractical solution in the near or long term for many of the reasons that have been listed, so don't be too quick to blow off strait electic or ethanol. If it is indeed true that "over 20% of all corn in the US goes to making ethanol, and the national average of ethanol use in fuel is about 3%" it is still irrelivant. Once cellulosic ethanol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_ethanol) becomes comercially reasonable it could very well take the US very close to energy independence. The amount of energy per acre of fuel crop (corn wouldn't be grown only for energy, but certain types of grasses might) grown will skyrocket, and it is very feasable that the US could indeed grow enough to sustain it's energy demands. The inferstructure is already there for the most part, and the technology is not that far away. Also, while the net CO2 emmisions from current corn based ethanol may not be any better than normal gas, the net CO2 emissions from the entire process of growing, refining, and distrubuting cellulosic ethanol would be much much better than gas.

Re:Most hydrogen today made from hydrocarbons

[cartman]

The problem with hydrogen today is that most of it is made from fossil fuels, primarily natural gas, so the process of making pure hydrogen releases CO2.

I don't see the benefits of burning hydrogen in an ICE when that hydrogen comes from natural gas anyway. It would be far easier just to burn the natural gas in car engines. Cars powered by natural gas have been around since the 1970s, in urban taxi fleets etc.

What is the point in converting natural gas into a less transportable form (hydrogen)? Doing so simply moves the source of carbon emission from the car, to the natural gas reformer at a gas station.

Re:Most hydrogen today made from hydrocarbons

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it moves the point of collection, reuse, and sequestering of the carbon emission to a central point .... no, hold on, it doesn't because you can't do all that for a car.

Re:Most hydrogen today made from hydrocarbons

[GodfatherofSoul]

Hydrogen is really an energy carrier rather than a fuel.

Why is that argument always used as a knock on hydrogen? Gas is an energy carrier, we just didn't do the work. It's the least of our problems as we have solar, nuclear, geothermal, tidal, and wind that we can use to generate it. We need a next generation renewable source and hydrogen at least gives us options for a wide range of original energy sources. So, whatever we end up with will just be an energy carrier originally sourced from humans.

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[Control Group]

Gotta strip the carbon off the hydrogen somehow, and the catalysts are not exactly eco-friendly or reuseable.

I don't know jack about the chemistry of the process to strip H2 off CH4, but if the catalysts aren't reusable, doesn't that mean they're not catalysts? I thought the definition of catalyst was a substance that increases the yield or speed of a reaction without itself being consumed or changed by the process.

I wonder...

[xednieht]

Did the good people at NASA get hammered before they drove these beeeemers too?

90% less CO2 emission, eh?

[caseih]

Statements like that, while factual as far as the tailpipe are concerned, are really fallacious.

That statement should really be, "only 20% more CO2 emissions that a normal car", or "only x grams of nuclear waste produced per mile." There's no way, unless the H2 was produced via nuclear-produced electricity, that the car really produces less CO2 than burning gasoline. We only have 2 ways of making H2 right now. Electrolysis and essentially burning natural gas. Burning natural gas (due to the relatively low energy density of H2) must obviously produce quite a bit of CO2 for every usable unit of energy. Or if it's electrolysis, that's a certain amount of coal burned, which also produces CO2. Or the cleanest is nuclear powered electrolysis, which does have a nasty bi-product of nuclear waste.

Contrast this with the dream of someday having fuels produced by plants or bacteria. Still emits CO2 into the air, but since the fuel was made from CO2 out of the air, the environmental impact is almost nonexistent.

Re:90% less CO2 emission, eh?

[njfuzzy]

Economies of Scale (literal, versus numeric).

A single engine burning fossil fuels, multiplied by thousands of cars...
Or a single power plant burning fossil fuels, powering thousands of cars.

Guess which produces less emissions?

Re:90% less CO2 emission, eh?

[caseih]

What you say has yet to be proved. Given the current strain on the grids, etc. I know Alberta, Canada studied the issue and found that unless things concerning electricity production changed dramatically, electric cars everywhere would increase emissions by almost double the current values. So ultimately, economies of scale may make it viable, but until a better battery/storage system is found, I really don't think we'll get there. Hydrogen just has a poor density for energy, despite its explosive potential. Economies of scale should, however, make bio-fuels more economical in the long run, once we figure out a way to actually produce biofuel (corn doesn't cut it).

Re:90% less CO2 emission, eh?

[nukepuppy]

and we're supposed to care a bout the results of a study in Canada? Specially looking at the results.

You're intentionally ignorant

Not backing hydrogen yet

[camg188]

I still think the compressed air powered car looks the most promising. And I think we should focus on producing and delivering cheap electricity, then base our transportation on that.

worse than that

[roman_mir]

The earth has few reserves of hydrogen - it has to be created by electrolysis of water which requires a lot of power. - noone does mass-production of H2 by electrolysis. Hydrogen en mass is produced from ........... natural gas.

BMW has lots of experience

[3waygeek]

with hydrogen cars -- they demoed a H2-powered 7 series back in 2000.

Re:BMW has lots of experience

[motorcrash]

Wait... why are the Germans still designing hydrogen-based vehicles.

Guess it's the old programming insight: Good design comes from experience. Experience comes from bad design.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Checking the facts...

[Cadre]

And last I checked, your average power station, producing hundreds of mega watts, is actually substantially less efficient than a (relatively) small petrol engine.

You checked wrong. Your standard automotive engine is around 20% efficient[1]. Fossil fuel plants vary based upon their design but typically are in 35-40% efficient range[2]. In addition, power stations will have better pollution controls than an automobile.

References:

1. http://mb-soft.com/public2/engine.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_p lant (See Bibliography)

The solution we need to be working towards is more nuclear for the power generation and hydrogen generated from electrolysis for use in mobile applications.

Re:Checking the facts...

[Sobrique]

If we assume that the hydrogen burning is a similar level of efficiency when running an engine, then we're using a hell of a lot more energy to run this car on hydrogen than anything else. Petrol -> automotive power is a direct energy conversion, so ok, 20% efficient. Fuel -> electricity -> hydrogen -> automotive power on the other hand strikes me as being a really good way to use a lot of energy.

I think I had this discussion regarding electric cars, which is where I may have garbled my original post. Multiple energy conversions mean that running a car off a power station, be it via batteries or hydrogen, just means more fuel is used overall.

You're correct in saying that nuclear power is really the only (medium term) solution. Sadly there's far too many people who don't want nuclear power in their back yard.

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[computechnica]

Who needs Ion propulsion. If we redevelope the courage to explore the solar system, the technology to use Nuclear Thermal Rocket propulsion has been around since the 1960s. Read Opening the Next Frontier at

Re:Hydrogen Electric?

[cyfer2000]

I was looking at the Tesla car this morning, I noticed that it has 450lbs. of batteries, the I was think at that time "Imaging a truck that hauls 10 tons of cargo, do I need 5 tons of batteries? What's the effect of all these batteries on every bridge the truck crosses?" Then I checked the energy density of hydrogen and lithium battery, I found that you need 1500kg of lithium ion batteries to contain same amount of energy in 1kg of hydrogen, while 1kg of hydrogen has the same amount of energy of 1 gallon of gas. I do notice on the chart from wikipedia that there is a kind of battery name "Lithium Thionyl Chloride Battery" has very high energy density, but they are not rechargeable. Based on these data, I am not convinced that the battery is a pure better solution for transportation than hydrogen fuel cell hybrid configuration.

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[abigor]

Someone mod parent up. And before anyone mods it down, please go read up on fast breeder reactors.

Production...

[phorm]

Just like DVD burners still cost the same as 5 years ago? Oh wait, those are like $50 now. While automotive technology might not quite correspond to the same price-drop as computer technology, mass-production tends to greatly reduce unit costs of most products. End result, the initial models cost a lot, but if it catches on then they'll eventually reach mainstream price ranges and probably be around the same as most regular gasoline vehicles cost today.

Pros and Cons

[Anonymous Coward]

Pros:

    1. The AC is unbelievable.

Cons:

    2. No smoking

Excuse for not having powerful batteries

[DollyTheSheep]

I think, all these hydrogen and fuel cell engines are still only an excuse for not having enough powerful batteries. This is the holy grail in car manufacturing and only this would allow to build completely different power trains (e.g. motor in the tires) and free up space useful for passengers.

Seems the oil companies have shut down the link

[Anonymous Coward]

I get some sort of database error trying that link. Obviously the oil companies don't want
us to know this, and the link is shut down, I don't suppose anyone actually has seen it?

Could someone post it here to the forum, I'm really interested in this...

Astronaut Waste

[carps]

Is there any reason these cars can't be adapted to burn or extract methane from the astronaut waste already being generated in the passenger compartment on long driving trips?

Future dumb journalist headlines...

[tiqui]

News Flash: Green Wonder Car

A new wave of cute and shiny new cars are appearing on our streets that run on an amazing new fuel previously only available to the space agency. These little gems will save the planet. Hollywood actors are junking their Limos and moving to these wonder cars to set an example for all of us and to help save the planet.

News Flash: Fuel Price Relief on Horizon

Owners of the new Hydrogen cars are complaining they they pay way too much for their Hydrogen; they complain that Hydrogen is in all seawater (which covers 70% of the Earth) so it should be cheap. Drivers of these great pollution-free cars suspect that Big-Hydrogen companies are colluding to keep prices high to drive-up global warming and accelerate the move to the more expensive new fuel. Suppliers say not to worry though because 30 new nuclear plants will be coming on line to make exctracting hydrogen from seawater more cost-effective.

News Flash: Gas Guzzler Graveyard

A new wave of environmental responsibility appears to taking hold. Now that hydrogen fuel is cheaper and Detroit is more familiar with the technology, high-performance hydrogen sports cars and SUVs are rolling off the assembly lines at very affordable prices. The nation's junkyards are filling-up with old gas-powered SUVs. Those new H-SUVs have hydrogen tanks four-times bigger than the ones in the cars. America's campers and and off-roaders can look-forward to LONG happy summer vacations.

News Flash: US out of Middle East

All U.S. forces were withdrawn from the world's most-troubled region today as the most recent wave of new nuclear plants came online, freeing the nation from dependence on fossil fuels. We still need petroleum products for plastics and lubricants, but industry experts say there are enough domestic supplies to meet our needs. The president, in comments today, echoed the sentiments of the nation in saying "never more will brave young Americans need to fight in foreign lands for oil"

News Flash: Paying the Price of Ignorance

Environmentalists complain that the nation's auto junkyards are leaking highly-elevated levels of toxic petrochemicals into the nation's ground water. Ever since the new hydrogen cars came out, citizens have been junking their dirty old gas guzzlers. While this always used to happen to old worn-out cars, the transition to the new clean fuel caused a huge increase in the process and many vehicles went to the dump before they had reached the end of their normal service life. The Senate today announced passage of new hydrogen taxes to make up for all the lost gasoline tax revenue; those losses had caused a new upsurge in the budget deficit. The house version of the bill includes a new tax on all new H-cars to provide a superfund to cleanup all the old G-car dumps

News Flash: Hydrogen Bomb Goes Off

One of those new hydrogen cars was rear-ended today on the Golden Gate bridge and it exploded. The flames were so intense that people in vehicles 50 feet away were melted. The flames burned so invisibly that several good samaritans who rushed to try to pull victims from the fires were, themselves, ignited and burned. Experts warned that the structure of the bridge may now be unsound

News Flash: Nuclear Genie Gets Mad

Experts today announced that the recent leak at our nation's 53rd Nuclear power plant is a bigger problem than first noted; in the rush to build domestic sources of cheap hydrogen, many plants were built by the same contractors to the same plans. In special Senate hearings, it was determined that 30% of the plants need to be closed for inspections and repairs as a precaution

News Flash: Yellowstone is Burning

Two SUVs collided this morning in Yellowstone National Park. "The fireball could be seen for MILES!" one witness told reporters. There have been rumblings recently that the evil auto companies never told the public that those huge SUV hydrogen t

Re:Future dumb journalist headlines...

[pseudorand]

> The flames were so intense that people in vehicles 50 feet away were melted.

Short term safety was my first question too, but when the Hindenburg exploded, the only people who died were those who jumped off the blimp. Hydrogen may burn fast, but how much more dangerous is it than gasoline?

A bigger question is long term safety. There are bound to be leaks. Does anyone know what hydrogen does if released into the atmosphere in large quantities*? At least CO2 is a someone significant naturally occurring component of the atmosphere.

* The answer is, in fact, no, we don't know what lots of hydrogen would do in the atmosphere. This concern was actually raised by a meteorologist I work with in a global warming discussion a few months back.

Re:Future dumb journalist headlines...

[Anonymous Coward]

The inevitable emission from hydrogen-burning vehicles is water (vapor). This is what should be compared to the current CO2 emission problem. Unintentional hydrogen leakage would be absolutely miniscule... How much gasoline do you accidentally pour on the ground during a year, and how much do you burn in your car's engine? Less than a pint vs. hundreds of gallons? This would probably be even less with hydrogen. Any kind of "gas pump" using hydrogen would use a locking mechanism to hold it securely to the tank due to the pressure, in contrast to gasoline that's just poured into the tank from a hose. Hydrogen also doesn't live very long in the atmosphere, it basically floats to the top and is blown away by sunlight and solar wind (Nature produces a lot of hydrogen, but it doesn't persist which is why the atmosphere has very little of it).

Re:Future dumb journalist headlines...

[tiqui]

I was in a good mood yesterday and the entire thing was meant as humor, albeit with a point: Airhead journalists embracing the new as wonderful (encouraging public and political support) and THEN, LATER, seeing flaws and doing the investigative journalist thing to be the "voice of the people" speaking "truth to power" etc. (like with auto airbags, which the industry insisted might be dangerous when they came up with them but then decided against selling them...then after airbags were forced by politicians and got popular we saw stories about them killing people and the accusation that auto execs KNEW this would happen!)

I did not think anybody would take the specifics of what I wrote as literal stuff to be subjected to fact checking... (lauging) re-read and please do try to enjoy it (smile).

And I was also pointing out that there's no free lunch; people complain about what they have and want the new thing, but after they have the new thing it's not always so great (December 26th syndrome)

And I was further pointing out that we are all "addicted to oil" NOT because of some conspiracy but because it is currently to most efficient technology for what we use it for. There was a day when the world was addicted to coal (high concentration of energy, easily obtained and used, etc.) but oil came along and was better. All the ships of the world went to oil because you could pump it (which made handling it better) and you did not need crews in the engine room loading it into the engine a shovel-full at a time, and ships no longer exploded when the wrong mixture of coal dust mixed with air in nearly empty coal bunkers. The shipping industry was never "Addicted to coal" nor using it because of "Big Coal" companies... coal was simply better than sails until oil came along.

Electrolysis isn't the only way

[SIIHP]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch

I bring this up every time hydrogen as a fuel source is discussed, but for some reason it never gets any love.

The short of it is, this process produces synthetic fuels (that we can use in our cars now) and hydrogen (that we can use in cars in the near future) and allows for a bridge between the two fuel sources.

It also has the potential to be carbon neutral, although currently the main source of material for the process is coal.

From wiki "biomass gasification technology offers a carbon-neutral alternative. Biomass-powered synthetic fuel plants are one of the most technologically and economically convincing energy possibilities for a carbon-neutral economy, according to the paper Carbon cycle management with increased photo-synthesis and long-term sinks, from a recent climate change conference sponsored by the Royal Society Of New Zealand."

The Governor of Montana proposed building a refinery a couple years ago as well, but I don't think it wen anywhere.

http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2006/10/ 05/news/wyoming/a1e43e1a89d9fab0872571fc00012378.t xt
http://governor.mt.gov/hottopics/faqsynthetic.asp

Try again

[TheAxeMaster]

Gasoline engine efficiency is in the 20-30% range. Fossil fuel power plants are in the 30-50% range. Nuclear is in the 30-40% range.

Fact remains that these are all way more expensive than burning fossil fuels, otherwise we'd have switches _ages_ ago. And the only cost you're considering is the actual use cost by the end user, not the costs associated with cleaning up the mess you make or the impact on the economy when the temps go up, potable water gets scarce and food is harder to grow. What is the impact of a supertanker burning thousands of gallons of diesel to steam from the middle east to the US just to deliver more petrol for people to burn? How much of that can we shortcut by switching to a fuel we can make locally, anywhere there is water and sunlight?

Re:Try again

[Sobrique]

We live in a world where the actual cost to the end user is the only real motivator. Well, more strictly, the overall impact on the corporate bottom line. After all, all the 'rest' is easy to fob off as someone elses problem. It _will_ take us hitting the point of serious impact to our day to day lives before many people will bother to actually do any more than complain that 'someone else' should be sorting it.

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[scott_karana]

When it comes to governments advocating or impugning nuclear power, it's not so much an issue of "where does the waste go" as it is "who will use the waste, and for what". It's apparent if you take even a momentary glance at the state of affairs in Iran, and there are countless other precedents.

Re:Hydrogen Electric?

[loshwomp]

I was looking at the Tesla car this morning, I noticed that it has 450lbs. of batteries

Actually, it's closer to 900 pounds, or about 400kg.

then I was think at that time "Imaging a truck that hauls 10 tons of cargo, do I need 5 tons of batteries?

Imagine also an electrified rail system hauling that cargo most of the required distance, using grid power directly. Now you have a lot of liquid fuel left to power vehicles like your truck, for short-haul applications. Realize that this is how much of the world (excepting the US, of course) moves freight. This is precisely why the US is going to suffer more greatly than the rest of the world as fuel costs continue to rise.

Then I checked the energy density of hydrogen and lithium battery, I found that you need 1500kg of lithium ion batteries to contain same amount of energy in 1kg of hydrogen

Your figures are incorrect. A 40kWh lithium pack (roughly equivalent to 1 US gallon of gasoline or 1kg of hydrogen) weighs less than 300kg based on cars like AC Propulsion's eBox. In addition, that energy will power a motor at ~90% efficiency, instead of a ~15% efficient gasoline engine, or a 50% efficient fuel cell. The latter, of course, doesn't account for the inefficiency of producting the hydrogen in the first place. Don't forget to include the weight of a 10,000PSI hydrogen tank in your estimates.

Based on these data, I am not convinced that the battery is a pure better solution for transportation than hydrogen fuel cell hybrid configuration.

Except that, even if you ignore the poor efficiency, hydrogen fuel cells don't exist today in any practical form, and have serious problems that make even their staunch supporters estimate them to be decades away from practical use.

You have made an obvious thought mistake

[SIIHP]

"The problem with hydrogen today is that most of it is made from fossil fuels, primarily natural gas, so the process of making pure hydrogen releases CO2."

No, it doesn't. It creates surplus CO2, which can be used for industrial applications or sequestered, as it is centralized and easily stored.

I suggest you research the subject more thoroughly, as you seem to have a number of misconceptions and outright incorrect ideas about hydrogen as a fuel.

Re:You have made an obvious thought mistake

[Reaverkin]

Exactly. There are too many nay-sayers out there who are quick to go off on a rant about 'the problem with hydrogen today' but completely miss the bigger picture.

First of all, what is a fuel if not a 'energy carrier'. In this respect natural gas, wood kindling, ethanol, hydrogen, lithium ion batteries can all be compared. The question now becomes, which vessel has the least NET impact on the environment, most easily renewable, most compact, cheapest to produce, cheapest to consume.

Everyone can agree that to bring hydrogen to the pump requires a lot of energy and the consumption of fossil fuels in its (cheapest form of) production. As a result we can argue that the net CO2 emmision is higher with hydrogen then with ethanol or say, a higher efficiency combustion engine.

But the story doesn't end there. What manufacturers and advocates are trying to do here is build a foundation on which to build; one of the major advantages of which is it sequesters the pollution generating links in the energy distribution chain. Now the problem can be managed by focusing on the hydrogen production sites rather then trying to, say, get every Jack and Jill to bring their car in for a tuneup every 20k in order to reduce emissions. A government had tools at its disposal to encourage the use of renewable energy to produce hydrogen over natural gas, such as tax incentives and regulation. On the other hand a government has a very difficult time getting drivers to wear their seat belts, let alone guarantee every vehicle has a functioning catalytic converter.

And lets not forget (again thinking big picture here) that once the hydrogen infrastructure is in place, the market is made much more accessible to smaller entities to innovate and compete, to take advantage of the economies of scale, and in general explore the possibilities of the technology that we don't yet anticipate.

the hydrogen stations in germany...

[Anonymous Coward]

...make their hydrogen (from the tap water there) on site using solar and/or wind power, which is produced locally.

And the major reason they want hydrogen is to reduce the air pollution inside of major urban areas.

So you are incorrect in your assumption, but correct in your guess, those cars are cleaner, although a lot more pricey. You can go google this stuff up, and I know the hydrogen BMW stations have been featured on slashdot before. Yes, you get a very marginal efficiency drop, but the gains from using renewables for the elctrolysis combined with the health gains of seriously cleaner (potentially) air inside the urban heat and pollution islands is supposed to make the overall concept viable and attractive, albeit expensive to manufacture. That's why right now we are in a transition phase where everyone (all the major car makers) are going to plug in hybrids, and they will be running biofuels/blends for the ICE part of the drive system. That's within the next few years. Hydrogen-only in big numbers will come later. It's the best compromise out there, but the hydrogen research is still needed down the pike eventually.

The solution to the energy and pollution crisis is "all of the above", no one single technology is going to do it all. We are going to need more solar, more wind, more hydro, more geothermal, more biofuels, more (and much safer and cleaner) fission, and so on. All of it. No exceptions. We have several billion people on the planet living like shit now but they all want to go middle class soon, as in real soon, they know that level of living exists and they want it, so, either we accommodate those folks with a boatload more energy options, or you WILL be fighting a helluva lot of wars, perhaps inside your own comfy neighborhood, and that would be after serious economic crashes, multiple. The energy crisis is real, the pollution and global warming crises are real as well, and no options will be cheap or easy and everyone is going to have to tighten their belts and not be as much of an energy hog.. Two choices,ignore reality and procrastinate like we have been doing, or address the issues right now with mass-deployed solutions, using the best available tech we have, with ongoing research to make it better. You get one pick and one chance for success here on a planetary scale, choose wisely.

Is no one worried about the hindencar?

[AppreticeGuru]

What happens when one of these hits another one at 70mph?

Re:Is no one worried about the hindencar?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...oh, the humanity!"
That's what.

Re:Is no one worried about the hindencar?

[PPH]

Everyone in the immediate area is instentaneously engulfed in an enormous lawsuit.

Re:Is no one worried about the hindencar?

[Carbon016]

You're gonna see some serious shit.

Engine Wear?

[SandwhichMaster]

I realize the article said these BMW's could seamlessly change fuel types, but I wonder if one is harder on the engine than the other. I've read that vehicles running on E-85 get different wear than on normal gas. Or that bio diesel can actually be better for diesel engines.

Does LOX effect these engines different than standard gas?

Re:Conversions

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to know how it performs on a TFF basis (Tuppence per Furlong per Fortnight)

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[vakuona]

Jettison it off to the sun, or the moon. If Iran wants to follow it there to bring it back, then they should be encouraged.

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[Phanatic1a]

Store it for 15-25 years, by then we will have cheap ion propulsion engines (running off nuclear power), to cleanly jettison the waste into mercury or the sun.

Jesus, why in the hell would you do that? Throw perfectly good fissile and fertile fuels into the sun? Design a reactor that *burns* that fuel, and extract more power out of it.

Oh, that's right, we already did that.

The only reason we call nuclear waste "waste" instead of "fuel" is because PWRs and LWRs are based around a fuel cycle chiefly designed around the military's need for nuclear weapons. Drop that requirement, and you can have a sane fuel cycle that doesn't result in 99% of the U-235 in a fuel rod being discarded as "waste" instead of being reprocessed into new fuel elements.

Launching stuff into the sun is stupid for another reason. It's far less expensive to just give a payload solar escape velocity than it is to place it into a sun-intersecting orbit.

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[saintory]

Nuclear waste becomes more manageable when you can recycle spent rods. If you look at the existing nuclear power plants in the USA, they use the rods until they're spent and then send them off to be stored for 10s of thousands of years. If you recycled them, you could create a secondary nuclear power layer using fast (breeder) reactors. The waste that comes from these are either recyclable (put back into the fast reactor) or have a much, much shorter half-life.

Unfortunately, the necessary first step to this infrastructure is recycling spent rods. This can't be done because of an executive order during the Carter era to encourage nuclear non-proliferation. In other words, recycling spent rods gives you not only fast reactor material but also weapons-grade material. One solution to this dilemma, however, is to use the existing nuclear weapon stockpile to build the initial fast-reactor infrastructure, thus circumventing the executive order, and then proving that it's economically and environmentally feasible. Then you overturn the order, build the spent-rod recycling facilities, and offer your services to recycle to foreign nations as an export industry, thus giving an positive economic shift in the GDP and unofficially regulating weapons-grade material (i.e., you see it's used peacefully).

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[turrican]

"to cleanly jettison the waste into mercury or the sun."

I've always thought that to be a good idea (I prefer the sun though, why pollute Mercury?) as long as we never lose a launch vehicle while it's still inside the atmosphere...

And no, I'm not really *that* paranoid, but it is a very real possibility.

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[sdpuppy]

definition of catalyst was a substance that increases the yield or speed of a reaction without itself being consumed or changed by the process.

True, that would be the definition of an ideal catalyst.

The catalyst either provides a means to lower the energy required to make the reaction go by provided a surface with physical or chemical properties or it might actually be involved in the process - the material is in the reaction loop but at some step, the material comes back (like lending money - assuming everyone is honest and no one drops the money or gets robbed, you get the money back)

But $#!^ happens and stuff gets lost or reacts with something else that renders the material useless (catalyst is "poisoned"), even if in the reaction the material is always returned.

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[BobMcD]

GOOD LORD! You want to fling Nuclear Waste into the SUN??? Have you tested this? What if it generates a Teenage Mutant Ninja Sun?!?!?!?

I like Pizza, but COME ON!

And to the other guy that wants to fling it at our intergalactic neighbors, well, you get to be the one who explains it to them when they come a-knocking!

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[AndersOSU]

True, but catalysts can be poisoned by trace impurities, and natural gas has lots of trace impurities.

This is why we don't use leaded gasoline anymore.

Re:Hydrogen Electric?

[BobMcD]

They're both Hydrogen AND Electric. I'm interested to see if new methods of electricty generation also become available. Must like using soybean oil as BioDeisel, etc.

Out with the H2, in with ThingX, but same car.

Why breeder reactors are dangerous

[alexhmit01]

The biggest trick would be to start building new nuclear plants that have built in breeder reactors "next door" or equivalent. The problem in the Carter era was that the nuclear plants were built (not many more by then, none since, or early 80s, but its been a while), so the talk was building new breeder reactors...

In the 1970s, that meant, A) alienating his base that thinks nuclear=bad, no new plants. B) locating the new plants, relatively far from old ones because of NIMBY, and C) transporting the spent fuel rods to the new plant on trucks.

The net effect was that you had weapons grade nuclear fuel traveling around on trucks. If someone hijacked a truck, they could get material for making a crude bomb.

One of Bush's efforts was to get us back in building nuclear plants. Similarly to the wireline/wireless situation, the US's early technology advantage in capital intensive areas meant that later adopters were able to leap frog our technology, because the incumbent players have these massive infrastructures that are "free" for them to use (sunk costs).

However, a new two-stage nuclear plant would be the way to go. The trick is, we are so at capacity you can't take the old plants down for 3-5 years while you build a new one, and it's going to be next to impossible to get people to let you place new ones anywhere near civilization. There are a LOT of changes in the energy industry right now, breeder reactors will probably play a role, but the renewable areas are really neat. My house's roof is getting due for replacement, and looking into the solar roof tile options... neat stuff... not a huge premium over concrete tiles (because concrete prices have exploded and solar is coming down)... eventually, all new roofs will be solar, which would give us renewable energy sources without the downsides... the "land" is free, because I need a roof anyway, no land to buy and zone... just the panels and the system.

High energy prices will do more to get us off fossil fuels than all the do-gooder ideas in the world... especially when the do-gooders suggest we change our lifestyle and get accompanied to an inferior lifestyle... we don't want sacrifice, we want solutions.

Re:Why breeder reactors are dangerous

[fotbr]

Personally, I wouldn't mind living across the street from a nuclear power plant. I lived across the street from a research/training reactor for 4 years, worked in the building next to it, and had many classes in the buildings surrounding it.

Nuclear energy isn't anything to be afraid of. But of course there's too many uneducated people out there, and too many years of "nuclear is bad" to overcome quickly.

Re:Why breeder reactors are dangerous

[saintory]

I agree on the fear for no reason. As long as safety is the number one concern of the plant (even before power generation) then I see no problem with nuclear power proliferation. Wasn't there a study that showed that living close to a nuclear power plant versus not had negligible differences in cancer rates? All I could find was a PDF on it but I thought there was something also listed on /.

Re:Why breeder reactors are dangerous

[dbIII]

Nuclear energy isn't anything to be afraid of.

Not terrified of, but it still needs to be treated with respect instead of the "clean" lie that idiots spread. Cleaner that whatever is irrelevant when there are idiots and salesfolk talking in absolutes. Water in the tailings dams at mines is nasty toxic stuff, but no problem if treated with respect. Uranium hexaflouride gas is unbeleivably nasty stuff, but no problem if treated with respect. As for plutonium - look up a MSDS - this clean garbage is just an advertising trick which tends to change any sort of rational debate into pedantry about a word.

The largest problem I see with nuclear power is that very little research has gone into improving it but there are a lot of people advocating rushing in with old white elephant designs that are really expensive ways to boil water. It takes a long time to build even an existing design so a bit of effort and some small pilot plants (like China is doing with pebble bed) is worth a try instead of building some 1950s Westinghouse thing updated with green paint after a really big party donation.

Re:Why breeder reactors are dangerous

[fotbr]

You'll note I never said anything about it being clean.

Its simply not the big mean boogy-monster that the uneducated make it out to be.

Re:Why breeder reactors are dangerous

[dbIII]

You'll note I never said anything about it being clean

It was not meant to be any sort of personal criticism, it was about how absolutes do not really apply and under your comment seemed to be a place to put it and be on topic. Things do not have to be absolutely safe or "clean" as advertisers or protestors say for them to be useful. We get the "big mean boogy-monster" view and the "don't worry your sweet head about it sugar" views and very little that actually resembles the reality in between. Personally I see most nuclear plants have a second or third priority of generating electricity so they really are not very good at it - but this will change in the future if some effort is put in.

Re:Why breeder reactors are dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

there are a lot of people advocating rushing in with old white elephant designs that are really expensive ways to boil water

Are they? I havn't seen that. Here in the UK there has been talk of building new reactors and they're all modern designs. The CANDU type designs seem to be popular, and Norway is currently building an EPR. Then there are the PBR test reactors coming out of China, which are amazingly cool and very, very safe.

Re:Why breeder reactors are dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

"The largest problem I see with nuclear power is that very little research has gone into improving it but there are a lot of people advocating rushing in with old white elephant designs that are really expensive ways to boil water."

The real issue is, to my mind, that not enough research has been done into fast breeders to the extent that there is no design ready to go into commercial production today.

Fast breeders may be critical (pun not intended) as there is considerable uncertainty about how long uranium reserves will last. The current known reserves may be mostly exhausted in as little as 30 years with the current proposed increase in nuclear capacity worldwide, in which case a reactor ordered today which might be not operational until 2017 might be redundant by 2037 and need to be decomissioned in some form. Given the potential for run ups in construction costs and uranium prices in that time frame it is not impossible that a reactor would be a money loser, which is probably why private companies aren't exactly falling over themselves to build them unless governments are prepared to foot some of the bills.

It is not impossible that uranium reserves might expand - exploration was low a decade ago, and the uranium problem recede, but it would be good to know before building new plants since if the uranium question becomes a uranium crisis then the money would have been better spent on other infrastructure.

However, if a single site can share some common equipment (e.g. turbines) and have two reactor containments - one for uranium and one for breeder, thorium, or whatever, and breeder or thorium technology looks to be doable in a 20 year time frame then nuclear begins to look good for base load provision as uranium can be used initially with a switch to the other reactor type when that has been perfected.

It looks like the best time to build nuclear generation was either 20 years ago (so the initial costs have already been paid off in the era of cheap uranium and future generation will worth at least as much as the running costs, pretty much when the France put in its generation base) or in 10 years time (when the issues of uranium's future or other reactor technologies might be more assured). It looks like a bad bet at the moment, though. If it looked like a good one the private sector, in this era (until this week, anyway) of cheap credit, would have been piling in.

Getting back to the original topic a bit I can see five major strands in the future:

1. Conservation
2. Wind, wave, and solar (variable production).
3. Nuclear (for base load).
4. Storage media (flywheels, hydrogen, or whatever).
5. Demand matching - e.g. your fridge cools itself mostly when there is spare generation capacity,
      or your server farm runs the big compute job to determine the next taxi-cab number when it is windy,
      not instantly.

(5) Might make for interesting changes to working patterns, and there will be interesting problems
        of scheduling, control, and grid infrastructure.

Re:Why breeder reactors are dangerous

[dbIII]

New? In the early 1970's Australia was flirting with the idea of buying a CANDU reactor to produce plutonium for for military purposes but ultimately that was seen as not a good enough reason (thankfully).

Where we're going, we don't need roads.

[blind_abraxas]

Doc! You built a Rocket Ship [time machine] out a 7-series Bimmer [DeLorean] ???

Woah. This is Heavy.

Re:Where we're going, we don't need roads.

[ItsLenny]

I wish I could moderate this... You'd have 5... any reference to Back To the Future.. should automatically get a "5, funny"

Why BMWs? Why not cars from a U.S. company?

[CoreTech]

I don't get this: Why is U.S.-based N.A.S.A. spending U.S. taxpayer $$ on vehicles from a foreign manufacturer?

Show me the need to purchase a BMW, aside from the test drivers enjoying a luxury vehicle to drive in. If this is a joint venture project, then I'd like to know.

Re:Why BMWs? Why not cars from a U.S. company?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because BMW builds their cars in the US?
Because BMW sells most of its cars in the US?
Because no other brand builds H2 cars on an industrial scale?

If you want to buy only products of your own country and want that the government cares only about stuff from its own tax payers - you would imeditely start to become poor and loose in globalisation... Think of it.

Re:Why BMWs? Why not cars from a U.S. company?

[Scamwise]

Because BMW will do it better...

Re:Why BMWs? Why not cars from a U.S. company?

[ItsLenny]

OR... because pres bush allocated 1.2 billion for hydrogen car research.

BUT he's still a jack ass 'cause the way he wants to do it the hydrogen will be produced by fossil fuels which will produce MORE emissions and use more fossil fuel do to a loss in efficiency. References:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2003/05/m a_375_01.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle

Re:Why BMWs? Why not cars from a U.S. company?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW#Production_outsid e_Germany

BMW builds the Z4, X5, and X6 (although you didn't hear that from me ;) ) at Plant Spartanburg in South Carolina. They employ about 4500 people at the plant and create about 2 or 3 times as many jobs in supporting industries in the area. So don't give me crap about them being a foreign manufacturer, I work there.

By the way, this is as much a PR event for BMW as anything. Plus NASA gets some sweet rides!

Re:Hydroelectric?

[Firethorn]

Hydroelectric power is pretty clean (aside from the local effects of the dam).

The local effects of the dam does tend to be large.

Maybe we can construct hydroelectric plants that generate massive amounts of electricity, and use that electricity to create H2 and then ship the H2 around the country.

In the USA, indeed most of the world, we've installed dams pretty much wherever practical, and a few places that aren't so practical. Enviromentalists are complaining about the ecological damage caused by a number of dams, indeed some have been demolished because of their negative impact. We only have so much water, and it's need for so many things. It's part of why they're looking into tidal power.

Re: Solar Panels - sure they require petroleum to produce, but don't they last for a really long time?

I don't think that they actually require petroleum, but they do require a number of nasty chemicals and quite a bit of energy to produce. They're simply very uneconomical in most situations today.

Electric cars - just don't make economic sense yet

[Firethorn]

note: this is the EV1 argument from "who killed the electric car". Because a hydrogen cell powered vehicle would mandate an engine with many replaceable parts and a company owned refueling infrastructure it would allow control and money making for the large oil corporations who killed the electric car mandate and promote hydrogen vehicles. It is simply not in their best interests to allow the consumers to get vehicles with a low maintenance cost and which they can refuel from multiple sources which make the companies little or no money.

How could the oil companies kill the electric car? The only reason I can think of is collusion between the auto companies and the oil companies. It's not like people can't install charging stations in their home and avoid the oil companies more or less completely with an electric vehicle. You'll need some lubricants, but it'd be a little difficult for them to avoid selling owners of electric vehicles machine oils.

Personally, I think that a clue is that converting a car from gasoline to electric tends to cost more than a new vehicle is worth(a recent google search was $25k to convert), as well as normally costing trunk/storage space. Even a conversion kit, minus batteries, runs ~$10k. Even considering gasoline costs in excess of $4/gallon and assuming your electricity is free you won't break even during the life of the batteries. $25k pays for more than 6k gallons of gasoline. At a moderate 30mpg, that's 180k miles, or 12 years at 15k miles/year.

Let's assume that the batteries are $10k($25k - $10k motor/parts cost -$5k install labor). At 5% interest, that's $500 of gas or 3,750 miles a year you could buy off the interest on the batteries. Let's assume that the batteries last 10 years*. A quick trip to a loan calculator tells me that the monthly payment on a $10k 10 year loan at 5% would be $106.07, or nearly 800 miles/month, 9.5k miles/year equivalent cost to gasoline@$4/gallon. So the cost of the batteries alone nearly equals the cost of gasoline. I've read quotes placing electricity cost at around a third that of gasoline. Assume gasoline costs $3/gallon, battery cost alone is equivalent to 12.7k miles a year.

I've been looking into getting an electric commuter vehicle, but I just can't make the costs match up. My general plan has been to buy a truck for my cargo needs(current vehicle is too small), using that as needed(cargo trips&foul weather). Trading out my commute car for an electric just doesn't make sense.

*Currently would be a high estimate.

Mars Buggy!

[pablo_max]

Duh. You know how hard it would be to drill for oil on mars? They want a reliable source to power the Martian economy.

Re:Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

[Dzimas]

You're not going to have much of a choice but to change once oil costs $10 a gallon and your vapid "management" job vaporizes. It'll take you most of the afternoon to hitch a horse up to your Hummer and ride through your godforsaken urban wasteland to get to the nearest Wal-Mart.

NOT "same fuel that powers the space shuttle"

[ChrisA90278]

Have you ever watched a shuttle lunch? All that smoke and fire and exhaust plume you see is NOT coming out of the Shuttle Main Engine. The bulk of the power is coming from the solid boosters. Those boosters burn solid fuel which is basically rubber and aluminum powder. The shuttle does burn a lot of H2 but the main propellant is solid.

Remember the Hindenburg disaster? It was a hydrogen filled envelope that caught fire but the envelope was covered with guess what? Rubber and aluminum powder or "rocket fuel". All those flames and smoke you saw where the solid rocket fuel burning.

In the case of both the shuttle and the Hindenburg the hydrogen combustion was a minority of what was going on and in both cases mostly invisible o2/h2 combustion leaves no big visible fire ball and no smoke.

Re:NOT "same fuel that powers the space shuttle"

[AppreticeGuru]

but it still explodes, somewhat violently, correct?

Re:NOT "same fuel that powers the space shuttle"

[JonathanR]

Hydrogen combustion has a high flame speed, and also has a wide separation between flammability limits. This means that, for a given ignition source, a hydrogen leak (if confined) is more likely to ignite than a hydrocarbon leak. Hydrogen, however, disperses rapidly, due to its buoyancy in atmospheric air.

You haven't answered the important question.

[Aqua_boy17]

But how many fathoms per fortnight is this? :p

Can I ....

[PPH]

... order one with the SRB option?

Distribution

[Lou57]

The only thing that matters is distribution. Where are the hydrogen stations? Consider the real E85 ethanol distribution problems experienced today. For example, New Jersey has more than 100,000 vehicles that can run e85 fuel -- not one station in the entire state. Number of E85 stations by state. Hydrogen is not going to be any different. Don't look JUST for the technology, look pragmatically for the distribution.

Someone earlier mentioned the movie "Who Killed The Electric Car" and I whole-heartedly recommend that you view this if you ever get a chance. Consider the distribution of electricity in this country. Certainly, THAT is a doable technology TODAY!

You might want to watch Tesla Motors, although most of us cannot afford their current offering (about $100,000.00), 0-60 mph in 4 seconds with a 200 mile range proves the technology is here. They intend to offer a sedan around the $50k mark in 2008 and a commuter car around $25k in 2009.

Popular Mechanics also test drove the Electric Mini-Cooper which you can buy today for around $50k.

While a hydrogen powered vehicle might work for rocket scientists, it's essentially worthless to you and me. The longer we ignore VIABLE alternatives and focus on pipe dreams, the longer we will remain dependant on oil.

Re:Distribution

[ItsLenny]

Don't forget the Zap Car

Re:Distribution

[Lou57]

Awesome! Didn't see any expected pricing on the Zap-X, but it looks really cool!

Water Vapor is a greenhouse gas

[Anonymous Coward]

Since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, is dropping CO2 emissions 90% really going to amount to anything if H20 replaces it?

inefficient

[ItsLenny]

according to this diagram

Electric cars -- 86% efficient from power generation to use in a car
Hydrogen Cars -- 25% efficient from power generation to use in a car

Hydrogen produces greenhouse gasses!

[mwilliamson]

Hydrogen vehicles produce nasty emissions just like other fossil fuel vehicles, they just have their tailpipes magically teleported to Corpus Christi TX since the oil refineries here produce a substantial portion of the country's hydrogen.

I know they were testing, but come on!!

[Provocateur]

Why did the NASA test subjects choose to sit in the back all the time? Just because they took the term luxury sedan way too seriously?

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[ReTay]

"OH BUT THE NUCLEAR WASTE" you say. Who cares? Store it for 15-25 years, by then we will have cheap ion propulsion engines (running off nuclear power), to cleanly jettison the waste into mercury or the sun.

OR you could use a breeder reactor and just use two loads of reactor fuel. One running the reactor and the other charging up in a breeder reactor. Much less risk then now were we ship it all over the country.

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[StikyPad]

The NIMBYs may be annoying, but the concern regarding nuclear is legitimate, especially given the world's track record. "...radioactive material leaked into the sea and air and dozens of drums containing toxic waste broke apart." Oops!. And they (supposedly) had no idea they were sitting on a fault line.

I'm generally in favor of nuclear, but I'm certainly not convinced of our ability (or perhaps our determination) to competently and safely operate and maintain the plants.

geez, you'd think NASA would use alcohol fuel

[swschrad]

option (1) because the astronauts sure do.

option (2) hic

option (3) your joke here

Marvin to NASA

[spidkit]

"What was that earth shattering kaboom?"

I drove it.

[trout007]

I drove this BMW at KSC. They detuned the engine in gasoline mode so that it has the same hp as in hygrogen mode so you don't notice the shift. Kinda stupid if you ask me. Plus since it stores the hydrogen as a liquid if you leave the car for a week the hydrogen will boil off. MaxQ isn't the maximum velocity inside the athmosphere. It means Maximum Dynamic Pressure. You have two things going on. One is the shuttle is accelerating and climbing. Two as the shuttle climbs the air gets less dense. A simplified explanation of Dynamic Pressure is wind drag. As the air speed increases the drag increases but as you gain altitude and the air becomes less dense the drag goes down. MaxQ is the worst Dynamic Pressure seen by the orbiter and they actually throttle down to keep from exceeding it. Then once it's past they "are go for throttle up".

Re:Water Vapor is a greenhouse gas

[Capitalist1]

No. H2O is a couple orders of magnitude stronger as a greenhouse gas than CO2. If we switched over to a hydrogen economy, we actually *would* have to worry about human-caused global warming.

The car leaks at a standstill

[p.gogarty]

Apart form the problems of actually using hydrogen in an engine

Hydrogen is really an energy carrier rather than a fuel. It still is not that practical as a fuel since it requires refrigerating it to a very low temperature or compressing it to a very high pressure (both of which require a fair amount of energy to do). And hydrogen loves to leak. It will seep through the smallest holes and has a habit of making metal brittle.

There is also the problems involved with storing the fuel

One major challenge is how to keep the hydrogen cooled to minus 253 degrees Celsius (minus 423 degrees Fahrenheit) so it remains in liquid form without boiling off. Despite the double-walled, stainless-steel tank that stores the liquid in high-vacuum conditions with aluminum reflective foil, the liquid hydrogen in the 8-kilogram fuel tank begins to boil after 17 hours if the car remains parked. The tank empties completely after 10 to 12 days. - from the following article about the same car

How many passengers can it carry?

[Anonymous Coward]

5 in the ash tray
(apologies to families of Challenger disaster astronauts)

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[largesnike]

...and when the world's supply of uranium runs out in a hundred years or so? what then?

Why don't we try to power our economies on something renewable?

Radical, I know.

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[dbIII]

Store it for 15-25 years, by then we will have cheap ion propulsion engines (running off nuclear power), to cleanly jettison the waste into mercury or the sun

...snip...

If the general public was not so misinformed and paranoid about it

This entertaining little quote shows it's not just the general public that has a few problems with high school physics. It would be nice if nuclear advocates would actually find out about what they are advocating instead of being a bunch of Eloi hoping that unpaid Moorlocks will do the magic for them.

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[dbIII]

Someone mod parent up. And before anyone mods it down, please go read up on fast breeder reactors.

And start reading with Superphoenix because that's not only the current state of the art but also the big one that was supposed to show that they could be useful if they are not tiny expensive things. Your move - and please learn your subject matter a little better first.

hydrogen is the wrong solution

[perldude]

There is no Hydrogen infrastructure!
How much energy does it cost to generate the hydrogen?
How much carbon will be dumped into the atmosphere to create that hydrogen.
Hydrogen is highly flammable and explosive - Hindenburg anyone!
The R&D being spent on hydrogen fueled cars is a complete waste of $$ and time.
I drive a BMW and like it very much. I am so disappointed in BMW. They really missed an opporunity to demonstrate some leadership and failed.
We need investment in solar energy conversion and storage.
References: http://web.mit.edu/chemistry/dgn/www/research/e_co nversion.html

This is so OT that it hurts my brane crystalz...

[Iron Condor]

[...] if I happen to find a vehicle capable of mind bending acceleration, insane top speeds, and great gas mileage, I'll buy it over a vehicle with the first two qualities, but not the third. Great example, a late model sportbike: 120ish horsepower, 160ish MPH top speed, and 40+MPG. And it's fun to ride.

"Late model", eh? My XS-11 is a 1979 model -- it was released at 95hp, 138mph, 45mpg stock. After-market exhaust, air filter and a bit of futzing with the carburetion gets me to 112hp, 143mph, quarter mile from standstill in 11.6 sec at still 45mpg. In a 28 year old motorbike.

You want to know why Detroit tanked? Because they're still not where Yamaha was almost 30 years ago.

They already use H2 pickups at KSC

[GrumpyOldManager]

For some time NASA has been using H2 pickup trucks at KSC.

This is the future. Period

[hl2.exe]

The combustion engine is a very reliable piece of technology. There is no reason to get rid of it. Besides, wouldn't it be sweet to have a turbocharged hydrogen sportscar? On top of all of that, the price of hydrogen should be rather low do to its abundence.

Obligatory hydrogene car joke

[stirz]

"This is Greg Burdette, DNN, live from the $motorway. After a couple of hydrogene cars crashed here this morning, we're lucky to have nobody seriously injured. It seems that 25 People have drowned, though."


(yeah, I know, hydrogene combustion produces not thaat amounts of water :-)

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[Antarius]

What if it generates a Teenage Mutant Ninja Sun?!?!?!? I like Pizza, but COME ON!

Erm... Isn't that more likely to be a Samurai Pizza Cat?

Re:Electric cars - just don't make economic sense

[Oddscurity]

Would it match up if you assumed petrol would rise in cost by about 25% (as an example), year over year? Just saying you won't be able to rely on your cheap fuel prices forever.

Air Powered Vehicle

[qeorqe]

BMW is also involved in an air powered vehicle. This technology is based on pressure differentials, not combustion. It is a clean process that uses an abundant power source.

BMW does NOT use Hydrogen to power drive train...

[ivi]

By some coincidence, we had a representative
attend a local Fuel Cell talk. A former CSIRO
researcher seemed to suggest that BMW's H car
used H-powered fuel-cells to generate electri-
city for auxiliary systems, NOT to drive the
car.

BMW was reportedly quite happy with petro &
diesel engines powering its drive trains...

HindenBMW

[Big Nothing]

Hydrogen as fuel for cars - now THAT'S using the old noodle! Thank God for german engineers, they really know how to make hydrogen-fueled transportation!

Re:Electric cars - just don't make economic sense

[Firethorn]

It'll be a while yet; I tend to redo the calculations at least semi-annually. Remember, I only made one mention of the cost of electricity.

Remember, I'm already assuming a 33% increase in the sustained price of gasoline - it's $3/gallon here. There are pressures to keep gasoline prices stable; an increase in price results in more efforts to obtain supply. Eventually they will build a new refinery or three. That's actually having a larger effect on the price of gasoline than oil prices(though that's contributing as well).

Then again, in my case I have a five year old car that I plan on keeping for ten. Even at $6/gallon gasoline, not having that $400/month car payment pays for 67 gallons or 2k miles. Per month.

If they can get the cost of a 100 mile@75mph battery pack down under $5k, I'll probably be in line to buy an electric car. I say a hundred miles because that's what I consider the minimum range I'd consider for a regular use vehicle; I'd still have to rent a different vehicle to visit anywhere.

So I'm not buying a new vehicle anytime soon.

Re:Electric cars - just don't make economic sense

[splutty]

I think the issue is not so much 'killing it' as not actually putting any money into the research towards developing usable electric cars.

Someone has to pay all the initial research, and I'm sure that most megacorps would prefer to put that money into something that will continue to generate revenue.

Re:Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello? 1960's?
Call your office...

Why the 760i?

[Joohn]

Why on earth are they making a hydrogen-fueled car of this particular model? Who would buy it? The petrol version of this car has a 445hp engine and accelerates 0-60mph in ~5.5 seconds, this one comes with about half the performance and would likely cost even more. I doubt there are many environmentalists who buy these kind of cars. And even if they need to work with a big engine to start with, they could at least have chosen a smaller car than the 7-series.

Use Hydrogen to Move Pollution

[billtom]

There are a lot of comments about whether switching to hydrogen for transportation will save energy or not.

I advocate hydrogen for transportation not for energy savings, but just because it allows us to move the pollution we generate. With internal combustion engines (even hybrids) the pollution is spread out all over our residential and commercial areas. But with hydrogen transportation, we can move the pollution (from the hydrogen generation) almost where ever we want.

Now, hardcore environmentalists will probably be horrified by this suggestion. It's basically just sweeping the problem under the rug. But for someone who lives in a big city and has to deal with smog warnings daily, moving the transportation pollution out of our cities, even if hydrogen generation generates more pollution in total, sounds like a damn good idea.

Re:Electric cars - just don't make economic sense

[Firethorn]

I think the issue is not so much 'killing it' as not actually putting any money into the research towards developing usable electric cars.

Someone has to pay all the initial research, and I'm sure that most megacorps would prefer to put that money into something that will continue to generate revenue.

We have perfectly usable electric cars. Electric motors are used for many industrial applications; We're at the point that you could pick a suitable motor from at least a dozen manufacturers. If you're going to be building a couple thousand electric cars, they'll even custom build motors to your specifications quite economically. An electric motor also capable of acting as a generator, with 90+% efficiency that's quite able to last fifty years with minimal maintenance will only cost 20% or so more than a crate gasoline engine of similar horsepower. And the electric engine would actually be able to overpower the gasoline one quite handily in most tests due to it's superior torque curve and the fact that electric motors are rated at their maximum sustained power while gasoline engines are generally rated at their max period.
46HP sustained 105HP peak electric costs $1.5k individually, from an
electric car site. This is about the same as cheapy 4 cylinder crate engines. A 100hp motor runs ~$3.5k. But that'll be able to slaughter most V6's.

Where electric falls down is with the batteries. Again, something used left and right in MP3 players, cell phones, laptops, UPS units, etc...

Building an electric car is simple mechanics at this point. Making it economical will require a breakthrough in cost per kw/h of battery storage, and the same in longevity wouldn't hurt.

You'd need some nice hardware.

[Grendel Drago]

You'd need a very subtle knife for that kind of work.

Re:BMW does NOT use Hydrogen to power drive train.

[Anonymous Coward]

BMW is burning the H2 in an internal combustion engine. This is quite different to the usual approach of using a fuel cell an an electric motor.

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[abigor]

?? Superphoenix dates from the '60s and was the target of a terrorist attack. Other than that, it worked. I don't understand your argument - technology in many areas of life has improved markedly since then, in case you haven't noticed.

Mod above up

[dbIII]

The AC above put it very well. One bit that was accurate but may confuse people is about the scarcity of uranium - there is plenty of uranium but not really a lot of that is worth processing into fuel - which is why uranium is currently expensive.

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[dbIII]

Where is this new fast breeder plant then? Superphoenix was the largest built and ran somewhat beyond the 1960s. What does the irrelevant unsuccessful terrorist attack angle have to do with it? Is this the new Godwin's law or something? Please learn about what you advocate - real physical examples instead of something dreamt up by an advertising exec that doesn't even have high school physics behind them.

Re:"clean to get"? Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Run your electrolysis off nuclear plants. Boom a zero CO2 emission cycle. Hey why go for the second best? Why not nuclear powered Hummer? Oh, imagine the roadkill.

"OH BUT THE NUCLEAR WASTE" you say. Who cares? Store it for 15-25 years, by then we will have cheap ion propulsion engines (running off nuclear power), Why bother to store it 20 years. You can detonate the reactor and scatter the waste all over the biosphere. I is called the "biodegradation of radioactive waste". They have been doing that in Ukraine for years now.

to cleanly jettison the waste into mercury or the sun. Keep Your dirty laundry in Your backyard.

Hydrogen is the _right_ solution, here's why.

[Cadre]

All of your concerns were addressed quite some time ago. Hydrogen is an excellent storage method for energy. Hydrogen is quite safe, much more than gasoline for several reasons, hydrogen tanks have much higher safety requirements, hydrogen gas dissipates quickly (as opposed to gasoline which pools) in addition hydrogen isn't toxic as is gasoline. Hydrogen has pretty much proved itself as the next energy storage method. Progress in battery technology has slowed and there really is nothing on the horizon for energy storage for use in cars besides hydrogen.

The power for electrolysis can come from current environmentally friendly sources such as Nuclear power (or, as you cited, solar).

We can switch too...

[Cadre]

But with hydrogen transportation, we can move the pollution (from the hydrogen generation) almost where ever we want.

Not only that but it allows us to switch from one type of power generation (fossil fuels) to environmentally friendly techniques (such as nuclear or solar) much easier.