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Sahimo Hydrogen Vehicle Gets Over 1,300 mpg
Mike writes "Students from Turkey's Sakarya University have unveiled a remarkable attempt at creating Europe's most fuel-efficient vehicle. Dubbed the Sahimo, their pint-sized hydrogen car is cable of eking out an incredible 568 km on 1 liter of fuel (about 1,336 miles per gallon). An aerodynamic carbon-fiber construction keeps the vehicle's weight down to less than 110 kg (243 lbs), and the designers hope to push the Sahimo's performance even further to a full 1,000 km per 1 liter of fuel before participating in the Global Green Challenge in October."
We don't have that problem in Europe, especially in the richer countries. In Holland it is very popular with cars in sizes from smart cars and a bit larger. Then again fuel here cost about $6.5/gallon. And even while driving much smaller cars than north Americans do we still have less people killed in traffic here in Europe. You are doing something wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
In my opinion cars driven by electric motors are where we should be placing our bets.
Electric motors can go very quickly (at least the speed limit), have great acceleration, don't require a grid of hydrogen fuel stations to be built, don't require the massive amounts of energy used for electrolysis (the process of making useable hydrogen), have 0 risk of exploding (although admittedly hydrogen vehicles are pretty safe, but its more of a mental thing), and are ridiculously efficient. You know that about 3% of the energy used in internal combustion engines actually ends up moving the driver? With an electric motor, it is more like 50-80%, depending on the type of vehicle.
You could argue that we're just shifting the dependance (and the green house gases) to power plants- but this would open a door to a 100% maintainable system, it just requires an eventual (much more eventual than current state) shift over to clean power for plants. Our existing grid could easily handle 20 million plugin cars.
The only thing we're waiting on is efficient battery technology for the range of the things.
Gases are compressible. Gallon is a measure of volume. Theoretically, highly compressed hydrogen would give you liquid hydrogen. Hydrogen compressed occupies 3 times more volume than gasoline for the same energy. http://www.planetforlife.com/h2/h2swiss.html
Did you mean a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
I'm surprised. Why does this 3rd place winner get this attention? If the numbers are anything to impress with, take a closer look at the winner, the Norwegian contribution, clocking in at 1246 km per 1 liter of fuel equivalents. Official Results: http://www.shell.com/home/content/eco-marathon-en/europe/2009/results/app_results_2009.html
Again, for all participants in Shell Eco Marathon, including the Norwegian contribution, and the Turkish one, they are allowed to use the amount of energy in 1 liter of petroleum. The unit is not 1 liter of hydrogen, but 1 liter of gas. They use hydrogen which is consumed in fuel cells, but the amount of energy in that xxx volume hydrogen equals the amount of energy in 1 liter of gas. The efficiency of the whole system is reflected directly by how far they get with the fuel they are allowed to take on board the vehicle. UrbanConcept Fuel Cell class: 1st place: 1246 km 2nd place: 804 km 3rd place: 568 km
Hydrogen doesn't explode unless well mixed with oxygen. Normally it just burns. (Burning hydrogen is almost invisible so there is a risk that someone might not notice that a leaking hydrogen cylinder is burning) The R101 didn't explode. Neither did the Hindenburg. In fact, despite the hydrogen in the Hindenburg completely burning in less than a minute most of the passengers and crew survived (the diesel continued to burn for a long time afterwards)
Secondly, it's much lighter than air. This means that leaks and flames go upwards, unlike a gasoline spill that spreads out over the ground while it burns.
If the fuel in the Hindenburg had been uncontained gasoline rather than hydrogen it's hard to see how any of the people on board the airship could have got clear in time (and I'd have expected lots of people on the ground to be killed as well)
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.