A Simple, Fool-Proof Plan That'll Save Our Economy (hydrogen and hybrid vehicles)

New York Post ^ | 10/19/04 | John Crudele

[WildTurkey]

If we need to stop relying on foreign sources of energy, why do we give tax breaks for gas-guzzlers but not for hybrid vehicles?

Gas-guzzlers get hit with a gas-guzzling tax. It is paid when you buy the car. I don't know about hybrids but electrics get a tax credit.

[Law is not justice but process]

"Second a consumer would have to drive the typical hybrid some 20-30 years to make up the outrageous price of these cars"

Hybrid cars have turned out to be a bit of a humbug. Even if gas were $5 a gallon and the fuel savings of the hybrid car were significant enough to make the car purchase price difference palatable, cars powered by straight electricity, hydrogen, natural gas, propane, or some yet to be developed propulsion system would be cheaper than even the hybrid. We need to go back to the drawing board on hybrids. Maybe they would work better with diesel motors (remember those diesel VW rabbits from the early 80's? No performance at all, but they sure were efficient).

[WildTurkey]

Now THAT's a hybrid I would consider. Indeed the torque profile of an electric motor would be great for foul-weather driving.

Please explain.

[upier]

I don't think the Goverment should tax us (or tax break us) into acting one way or another. It is just giving the government more control over our lives.

Also, what most people fail to releize is that the electricity to charge these electric cars has to come from somewhere. In most cases that would be a coal power plant. How much pollution are you saving then? Batteries are just not efficient enough for auto use. What we really need is more Nuclear plants.

[cdrw]

My understanding of the economics, based on foggy memories of an article in IEEE Spectrum, is that hybrids do not generate less pollution than gas efficient straight combustion (such as small 4 cylinder cars of today). It also doesn't seem that they achieve that much better mileage.

The reason they came to this conclusion is that one must consider the amount of pollution generated by all the electric plants that have to burn oil, coal ... to produce the power to charge the batteries. The hybrids are more efficient in specific markets but when considered for the country as a whole they aren't there yet. This is because of the great amount of electricity still produced by burning oil and coal in the country.

The IEEE article was about two years ago so the info could be dated by now. Just my 2 cents worth ...

[buwaya]

Its a fallacy to think that the US will be in any important way less vulnerable to the petroleum market if it alone displaces petroleum imports.

The US is grafted into the global economy, and the real danger isn't one of oil shortages or high prices in the US, but of secondary effects of these problems on the rest of the world.

The world as a whole will not be able to afford the investments to switch. Petroleum will not go away.

The cost of converting to a hydrogen-cycle will require massive and uneconomic (if prompted by artificial policies like tax credits, etc.) US investments. These will have a negative effect on US growth and also therefore on global prosperity.

So what is to be done ?

I say let the markets handle the problem. If there is too little oil around, prices will rise, prompting investment in the most cost-effective alternatives that the market will find. Then prices will stabilize, probably for a very long time.

[NewJerseyJoe]

I'm with you on the hydrogen hype.... I know that it is an extremely inefficient way to provide energy (not to mention the cost of replacing a nationwide fuel-supply infrastructure). But I'm onboard with hybrid vehicles -- although some of the posters here have given me some new information that I didn't know previously (and will investigate, to further educate myself about the technology).

I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for thermal depolymerization! If they get all the logistical kinks worked out of that process, the Arabs can go back to being goat farmers.

[jayef]

Toyota Prius

Anybody that thinks I'm gonna drop 20 gr to drive this rig has a screw loose.

[snooker]

I am going to go out to the hydrogen filling station and get a tank full and try it out.

Oooops -- I just checked the nearest hydrogen fueling station is in CA, that's about 3,000 miles from where I live. Oh well maybe they will build one nearby, say within 500 miles, next.

It's the infrastructure. Until the money is put into distribution and filling stations, not gonna be very popular. Then you have to look into the cost to produce the stuff. What are you going to use to extract the hydrogen with, coal? I bet that will be efficient and clean as well.

It's not as simple as it sounds. A hydrogen economy won't be built in our lifetimes.

As a simple aside, today we could get a lot more of our electrical energy from nuclear power. Clean, almost no global warming gasses, cheap. When are we going to start converting over to this form of energy, like France has done.

[Ranxerox]

PS:Farmers would be required to use a similar device on all their cows.

There's a monkey joke in there somewhere, I just know it. Now how did it go...?

[green iguana]

what most people fail to releize is that the electricity to charge these electric cars has to come from somewhere

Hybrid car's batteries are charged by the normal operation of the gasoline engine. They do not have to be plugged in.

[OregonRancher]

Hydrogen is bunk....never happen.... Nuclear plants?
Try one of week for the next twenty years....it takes 14 years from application to build to being on line with power...... Seen any built lately?

Remember: H2 is an energy carrier..... not a source of energy.....

[kidd]

The article makes no mention of hydrogen cars.

Hybrid cars are available now. They don't quite make sense economically, but as technology and choices improve and gas gets more expensive - its getting closer.

Hydrogen cars will never gain wide acceptance. Never. The internal combustion engine, although comparatively inefficient, is nevertheless far more robust, responsive and inexpensive.

[Law is not justice but process]

Do you remember the bathyscape that set deep sea records back in the 60's and 70's? It was essentially an underwater dirigible with the float filled with gasoline instead of hydrogen. The gasoline being lighter than water but still incompressible allowed the craft with only slightly negative buoyancy to go slowly to the bottom. When they wanted to come back up they just dropped enough ballast to become slightly positively buoyant. That is just an aside, though. I'm sure you got my point that gasoline is not that much safer than hydrogen.

[green iguana]

The reason they came to this conclusion is that one must consider the amount of pollution generated by all the electric plants that have to burn oil, coal ... to produce the power to charge the batteries.

You're thinking of fully electric cars, not hybrids. Hybrid batteries are charged by the gasoline engine when the car is running.

[oilwatcher]

Actually, a tank of hydrogen is much more dangerous than a tank of gasoline. The flammability and explosive ranges of hydrogen are 10 to 20 times those of gasoline, respectively. Hydrogen also delivers very little energy per unit of volume, which means that very high pressures (10,000 psi range) are required to achieve reasonable vehicle driving range. Widespread deployment of vehicles fueled by compressed hydrogen would also require hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in a new fuel manufacturing and retail supply network.

A more practicable alternative would be a hydrogen fuel cell with the hydrogen being produced on board from a traditional hydrocarbon source. Honda and others are researching that technology today.

[maestro]

A Simple, Fool-Proof Plan That'll Save Our Economy (the building of hundreds of new domestic REFINERIES)

/sarcasm

[oilwatcher]

Energy ping.

[GingisK]

...when they're already driving around with a tank of combustible petroleum in the trunk...

There are significant differences between these two fuels. First, hydrogen is a very small molecule which diffuses through fuel tanks into the area surrounding the vehicle. Secondly, hydrogen ignites at a much lower temperature than does gasoline. Third, hydrogen combusts a great deal faster, and thus more explosively than does gasoline. Fourth, a hydrogen flame is invisible in daylight ... you'll walk into a very hot flame before you know it is present.

There is a very large sign at the liquid hydrogen storage facility at the Redstone Arsenal: "Danger, no smoking. Violators will be decimated."

Hydrogen is not a safe fuel. Besides, what is your source of hydrogen? Fossil fuel? Water? It takes more energy to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen that you get from the combustion of that fuel.