I rode with a guy who had one and loved it
Posted on 04/08/2008 3:33:28 PM PDT by Dane
GM, Daimler, Honda Betting on Hydrogen Fuel Cells
Posted: Apr. 08, 2008 10:04 a.m.
Car and Driver reports, “Fuel-cell vehicles -- where hydrogen is converted to electricity onboard and there are no emissions -- are real today and even more feasible tomorrow under a carefully scripted development plan at General Motors that culminates in as many as one million affordable FCVs by 2020.” GM has nearly completed development on a fuel cell propulsion system “that has been reduced to half the size for half the materials, less weight, and less cost” that previous models. “The next-gen fuel-cell stack will hit the road in a still-to-be-decided vehicle (we’re guessing a small car to show off the diminutive dimensions) in four years,” GM VP Larry Burns told C&D. “Burns will only say that the vehicle sports an exciting design.”
Reuters reports, “General Motors Corp plans to have 1,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in California between 2012 to 2014 to comply with the state's goal to put thousands of cleaner cars on its roads.” The automaker already has about 60 hydrogen-powered Chevrolet Equinox SUVs on the road in southern California, and Burns recently told reporters, “The next logical play for us is to take that up to a car scale of about 1,000.”
Those fuel cell powered Equinoxes are part of “Project Driveway,” and effort “designed to get some real-world data on the performance of the hydrogen-powered vehicles – as well as to garner some publicity, since many of the motorists who’ll have the Equinox FCVs – for three months at a time – will be policy makers and celebrities,” according to The Car Connection. GM recently modified one of the vehicles to fit the needs of 6’9” former basketball star Magic Johnson.
Autoblog Green reports that GM’s Burns sees “mainstream acceptance and financial viability of hydrogen cars following in 2017 or 2018.”
All of GM’s green car efforts may ultimately point toward hydrogen. In an interview with Design News, Charlie Freese, the engineer leading GM’s diesel efforts, argues that all green vehicle technologies will “start to dovetail together where one feeds into the other and provides the infrastructure that eventually builds into that next phase. So, this electrification of the vehicle is a basis that you need before you can make a hydrogen vehicle work.”
GM may not be alone in pursuing a fuel cell future. Autoblog Green reports, “Daimler chairman Dieter ‘Dr. Z’ Zetsche believes that the technology for fuel cell vehicles is here today and that vehicles using the hydrogen-for-energy system will be available in five to eight years time.”
Honda is getting into the act, too. Car and Driver adds, “Honda is ramping up for production of its FCX Clarity, the industry’s first dedicated fuel-cell vehicle for customer use. The automaker will begin assembly in May in Tochigi, Japan, and will build a small pool of vehicles available for lease in the U.S. this summer. A still-secret number of consumers will be able to lease a Clarity fuel-cell vehicle for $600 a month for three years, which will include maintenance and insurance. The lessee must pay for the hydrogen, which costs about $5 per kilogram in compressed-gas form.”
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I agree, but until I see construction permits granted for 20 new Nuclear Powerplants, there is no point in even discussing Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
In this chicken-and-egg scenario, the Nuclear Powerplant comes first.
Hydrogen as a fuel is a non-starter. To carry hydrogen it must either be super compressed (takes lots of energy to compress it) or be stored as a liquid (very cold-hence energy costly) or generated on board which means hauling around the generation equipment.
Right now there is no storage system that can hold hydrogen for any length of time as hydrogen will seep through solid metal. And any flame from hydrogen is invisible unless the hydrogen is treated with some sort of additive.
Public acceptance cannot be ignored either. Even a good idea requires a market and hydrogen has too many proven competitors.
So far there is no reason to think hydrogen will reduce our oil imports by a single drop.
That does seem to be a problem with compressed air and hydrogen : ) I am actually considering making a compressed air vehicle. Do you know of any good reversible air compressors : )
Heh! Good news and bad news.
Good news is that the Japanese company called Neo-Fukuoka is going to be making and selling this bike.
Bad news is that Leonardo DeCrapio is making a live action movie called....Akira.
Uhh, no thanks...
What is that?
It’s a motorcycle built to look like one from an old Japanese animated movie called, “Akira.”
Ok. But what is it? Who makes it and what’s it called? And what countries are they sold in?
If that price includes fuel, it’s not too far off.
Well, so far there’s a company in Japan called, “Neo-Fukuoka,” that’s planning to build them. It’s called wither the Akira Powerbike, Kaneda Powerbike, and other names by fans of the movie. It’ll probably only be available in Japan for now. I emailed them over a year ago and they said the bikes will come with Kawasaki engines between 260cc and 600cc.
Their site’s in Japanese, and Google can translate a bit of it if entered correctly.
http://www.neo-fukuoka.com
Good. Now we need a couple more reactors per state.
I just emailed them again and asked for a current status on the project. I’ll let you know what they send me.
Quite aside from the technical problems, which I believe are able to be solved, the thorny fact remains:
Hydrogen Fuel cells are NOT “emission free”. H2 must be generated from some type of massive power plants in order to make this dream reality. Those power plants must run on coal or petroleum, as of today, and until and unless we are able to convince the envirowackos that nuclear power plants must be built as if we were in a race for our life.
“I know some on FR poo-poo such things as a hydrogen fuel cell car on pure politcal as giving into the envirowhackos”
I suspect they get their information from Limbaugh, the only person in the world who can relate information with a straight face in sentences beginning, “My friend at Exxon told me...”
==> “But which has more available BTU’s in it?” <==
Gasoline, by a factor of 3.7 over an equal volume of liquid H2.
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