So your solution is to go back to the 70’s and start there? Or maybe it is to just throw your hands up and ride along in your crappy 70’s American car as well? The reason it went the way of the do-do bird in the 70’s and 80’s is because oil was relatively cheap then and there was no will to fund the R&D to refine the concept because Congress had eliminated most and eventually all R&D tax breaks for private investors to use as justification of minimal gains.
Fuel cells are also created to be the inner bladder for pressure vessels as well but most don’t know about them. The intent is to keep anything inside contained while the container it resides in is allowed to change shape even in blunt force altercations. Added to that is the use of propane fueled lift trucks in lots of industrial and distribution settings so it is not like nobody has been pushing this technology forward since the 70’s.
So, do we also ban the delivery of LP or propane because someone might hit the truck while texting, farding or painting their fingernails?
All that is required is the need for anything and the brightest minds in our country will find a way to deliver. Keep the government out of it and instead releases the entrepreneurial power of R&D tax breaks and it will be solved very quickly if it has not been done already for a totally separate industry. Doesn’t that also sound like something that Pickens would invest in?
No, my solution is to use it as one of MANY feedstocks for hydrogen fuel cell cars. Going with hydrogen means you will never, ever be tied to one production industry or source type for your fuel - hydrogen can be made from source as diverse as applying electricity to water (as part of desalination), catalyzing it out of natural gas, chemically producing it from sewage waste, and the list goes on and on.
If we convert to pure natural gas, we’ll be right back where we are now at some point in the future. The liberal talking point about “Big Oil” will become “Big Gas” and prices ‘at the pump’ will skyrocket any time there’s a pipeline problem or a storage facility problem, etc., just like it does today. Worse, it will skyrocket any time generation demands go up.
Relying on a single-source fuel when a multi-source fuel is available is pretty dumb.
All home heating can convert to NG or LPG.
That frees up one he!! of a lot oil for trucks until they covert to something else.