BMW is producing high end hyrdogen cars next year. Time for Ford and General Motors to get on the stick. What Detroit needs is infusion of Silicon Valley innovation. Give GM to Steve Jobs for a couple of years. Change the mentality, which is so stodgy. And if you’re serious about the War on Terror, take the petrodollars away from Iran and Saudi Arabia. Watch the War on Terror end in minutes. (Are we serious?)
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Stimulate research into alternative energy? Isn’t that what California Prop 87 is supposed to do? You know 87 — it’s the one you’re running ads against right next to this post.
Well, hydrogen cars aren’t going anywhere yet. No hydrogen. And getting hydrogen => coal, gas, or nuclear. So I suspect the car doesn’t really achieve anything except to serve as advertizing to the green crowd.
Twelve cylinders, no mention of the hydrogen storage method (liquid?, hydride?, compressed?). I would bet that the car is heavy and in the final accounting takes more energy and resources to manufacture and run.
The BMW car burns hydrogen in an internal combustion engine, rather than using a fuel cell as in the GM plan. Which makes sense if you want to do something now rather than later–also, has the benefit that you can run it on normal gasoline where hydrogen isn’t available.
This site has run paid political ads on all sides of many issues, greenie. It’s part of being in a free society. But thank you for sharing.
Hydrogen won’t become a viable alternative fuel until “the people” demand it…until then we will still be shackled to Saudi Arabia, et al. As a country we have the ability to wean ourselves away from foriegn oil.
We could do that by applying the lessons learned in the aviation industry…use lighter stronger materials (i.e. carbon fiber–which doesn’t necessarily need oil base–H. Ford funded initial research in using soy beans) and build vehicles that are 80% lighter and thus more efficient. You DON”T need to drive a 7000 pound SUV…that same SUV using av-style technology would weigh less than 1500 pounds and with a 4 cyl hybrid engine would get 50-80 MPG…
This insn’t new info…Discover Magazine back in March or April had an article about an engineer in Colorado (don’t remember his name) who was proposing, and has been proposing this sort of thing for 20 years…big sigh…
Richard A. Vail, Ph.D.
Pikesville, MD, USA
We have the ability to wean ourselves away from foriegn oil right now…Discover Magazine in March or April had an article about an engineer (don’t remember his name) who proposed…radical stuff…make our vehicles lighter (and stronger) by applying the lessons learned in the aviation industry (carbon fiber…and it need not be oil based, Henry Ford funded research 80 years ago that showed soy beans could be used for this and other applications)
By building lighter vehicle (a 7000 lbs SUV weight reduced to 1500 lbs) we could use 4 cyl hybrid engines that are capable of attaining 50-80 mpg…your family sedan less that 1000 lbs and the same economy…but until we demand this from the auto industry…it WILL NOT HAPPEN.
Richard A. Vail, Ph.D.
Pikesville, MD USA
Using hydrogen to power automobiles right now is somewhat of a joke. There is no hydrogen distribution system in existence from which to “fill up your tank,” and it now takes the burning of much more energy, most likely in the form of burning hydrocarbons, to make the hydrogen energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline than is contained in the resulting hydrogen fuel itself; net effect – more pollution, more finite resource use, duplication of supply chains and higher costs to the consumer and the economy than if you had just filled up your Beemer 750 with plain old gas. Although a tremendous increase in nuclear power plant construction and use might make hydrogen a somewhat more rational fuel for personal transportation, the pariah status of nuclear power to the same people most likely to blithely demand hydrogen cars makes this highly unlikely. The executives running the U.S. automakers are not as stupid as you think, but their many conservative mistakes have lowered their glam quotient to the point where you might mistake the abilities of a person like Steve Jobs to solve technical and economic problems many orders of magnitude higher than designing and making Ipods and PC’s. This is more or less a PR stunt by BMW with little or no real significance for the forseeable future.
My complaint about these hordes of inventors who have brilliant ideas about cool techs to transform the auto industry is why they don’t just go do it? There are several dozen startup car companies in China, all looking for an angle to beat the competition. My take to these inventors: get on an airplane, talk to them, and get it done. If the Chinese build 50 MPG SUVs, Detroit will follow, if they’re around that long…
GM’s allready at it. GM’s HY-WIRE.
http://www.youtube.com/v/ry6w3mRm-FM
after the bit about the Mazda.
The green people really care about is the one in their wallet.
Make alternative fuel cars tax deductible and have the state make up the short fall by taxing gasoline.
Not to be simplistic, but nuclear…nuclear… nuclear. We should be generating almost zero power from fossil fuels. Then we will be faced with a glut of oil supplies and complaining about air pollution blowing in from across the oceans.
Also, I thought from reading about the Skunk Works that liquid hydrogen storage was notoriously dangerous and, at best, very costly when successful.
I like America working towards energy (and strategic) independence, but I would be more hopeful if we were actually putting big money into practical methods as well.
Hydrogen myths busted.
http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid536.php
Greenie, prop 87 proposes a well tax on oil pumped from the ground in California.
Providing an economic disincentive for domestic oil production is not the way to go if your aim is to decrease the importation of oil.
If anything they shoul apply a consumption tax and use the funds to *subsidise* domestic production. Quite the opposite of prop 87.
Prop 87 was put on the ballot by the corn-ethanol industry, which is about as effective of an energy alternative as rubber bands and hamsters.
Lem,
I think a better paper by Lovins is here. Even so, I find it a bit on the glossy brochure side and lacking that hard engineering edge and figures that would spice it up and make it useful. There is no careful breakdown of costs: parts, labor, materials, storage methods, economics, etc. Note that he also assumes a working fuel cell, otherwise the efficiency doesn’t add up. The BMW, being a heat engine, is likely no more efficient than an ordinary gasoline powered car and probably less so than diesel. Also note this bit:
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reports26 that about 48% of global hydrogen production is reformed from natural gas, 30% from oil, and 18% from coal (chiefly in China and South Africa for producing nitrogen fertilizer; half the worldÔøΩs hydrogen goes into ammonia-based fertilizer).
I think you would have to make a darn good case against just using the oil and gas directly before hydrogen looks good. Not that I wouldn’t love to drive a hydrogen car, but for comparison, within a year of availability Edison’s light bulbs were installed in the S. S. Columbia. Electric lighting was something with clear utility and had advantages over gas or oil. Edison also developed the whole supporting technology to go with it: generators, wires, insulation, distribution boxes, plugs, and sockets. He offered the whole package and that did much to speed acceptance, his exhibit at the Paris Expo of 1881 impressed many for precisely that reason. The final bit of the puzzle was the invention of the electric meter in 1882 so folks could be properly billed. Amazing,eh? Now, that’s how something useful is promoted.
Uh,wasn’t that other German mode of transportation,the Hindenberg,filled with hydrogen?
Seriously though,it seems like the Popular Mechanics article on the different alternate fuels mentioned that the problem with hydrogen was the weight of the fuel tank.It’s been a while since I read it,but I seem to remember that their thoughts were that because of the necessary pressures(something like 10,000psi)involved,in order to give any kind of range to the vehicle the weight of the tank would make it an unviable option at this point in time.
Also I just have to ask even though it is slightly OT.Why is it that so many people,liberal and conservative,seem to think that taxes are some how meant to be a punishment?
Government’s purpose should not be to penalize the people that you disagree with,but to provide for the common welfare of all of its citizens. Therefore,taxes should be like the current gas taxes were meant to be,and pay for the infrastructure that the vehicles paying the tax use. Other than some taxes used to help the poor,why should anyone expect the government to penalize someone else to benefit themselves?
Hydrogen isn’t a primary fuel, but merely a way to store and deliver energy, like ethanol or a battery electric car. If the electricity used to isolate the hydrogen is produced by burning high sulfer coal at a power plant without scrubbers driving a hydrogen car is less green than fueling an old beater with gasoline.
The infrastructure costs for a hydrogen delivery system will be quite high. The stuff ain’t easy to store. It will leak thru valves and seals which will hold air at the same pressure.
On the other hand, the flames in the pictures of the Hindenburg failure came from the burning of the airship’s aluminum frame.
If Iran lost all its money derived from oil sales because of a catalytic event such as taking out their oil refinerys with bombing raids; that would indeed dry up much of the terrorist money given to Hezzbolah and other crazies. It would also dry up the money needed for them to buy nuclear reactors, yellow cake, plutonimum and other horrors from Russia and the Chinese missiles necessary to put a bomb into one of our cities.
Only 5% of the worlds oil production comes from Iran but 60% of the money for terrorists, Islamic Facists, Jahadists comes from Iranian oil revenues. The free world pays these crazies in other words to kill them. The other percentages come from the same type sources, the Saudi’s are funding the Wahhabis head choppers from oil revenues, what a wake up call that would be to our ‘friends’ the Saudi’s.
Taking out the refineries wouldn’t really hurt the Iranian people as most of the money derived from oil goes to head choppers and armaments. We could just tell them to grow up and stop killing peope and we would let them once more provide our gasoline and oil. Hit them where it really hurts, in the pocket book, how they would howl. One Ploesti type airraid would do it and that’s something that we are very good at.
Honda has one with home generated H2.
Uses NG so there’s still all of the effeciency problems with converting one fossil fuel to H2 and the cost / problems with transporting NG.
HONDA
> And if you’re serious about the War on Terror, take the petrodollars away from Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Nope. Terror funding is a rounding-error compared to their petrodollars. They can easily afford it even if their petrodollars decreased by 95%, and that’s not going to happen. (Well, it could, but it would require blocking all shipments and the Euros would be annoyed.)
Prop 87 is another VC scam. VCs have decided that they want the taxpayers to take the risks but not get the rewards. Remember the stem-cell research debacle? The VCs won’t play because they don’t want taxpayers to share the profits from the tax-payer funded research. Presumably 87 doesn’t have that problem.
Or, eliminate taxes on all fuel that doesn’t start with petroleum as a source. No sales or any other taxes on ethanol, etc.
These guys are working on turning trash into fuel. That kind of thing should be encouraged.
“Also I just have to ask even though it is slightly OT.Why is it that so many people,liberal and conservative,seem to think that taxes are some how meant to be a punishment?”
Because for all practical purposes, they often are. If you reward people for buying homes, you punish them for renting (relatively speaking).
Very few people and societies are that hot to use a flat tax. Now regardless of one’s view on the flat tax, as soon as you get away from a flat tax, you inevitably get deductions (if only personal deductions). As soon as you have deductions, you are encouraging certain behavior. If the tax code is used to encourage certain behavior, then some people will read that as punishing the opposite behavior. Plus, even people that want to make some kind of nuanced distinction between carrots and sticks will admit that it is a very small leap from “incentive for big class of people X” to “disincentive for smaller class of people Y”.
It’s the same kind of sophistry that thinks “government should not legislate morality” is a profound statement. As a theoretical, libertarian attitude, that statement has something going for it. To be the basis of a something deeper, though, you’ll need to come to an agreement of the nature of morality that has so far evaded mankind. *Any* kind of law encourages or discourages certain kinds of behavior to varying degrees. It’s a pretty small list of laws that will not have some of those behaviors overlapping with a list of moral concerns of the populace.
I don’t know if or how well it works or how much it costs, but I believe Honda is launching a hydrogen vehicle in conjunction with a home energy system (HES).
My understanding is that the HES unit is the size of a small refrigerator and will not only fill the tank of the vehicle but also power your home all with hydrgen extracted from air.
BMW is also close to launching a hydrogen vehicle.
I hope it works great. This is just one of many things that need to be done to get to energy independence.
Just think of all the camel drivers that would become available if Iran could not finance its attempt to destroy us using petro-dollars.
I tell my lefty eco nut friends I want them to go hydrogen, electric, hy-bred, pony cart, whatever. I tell them that most business, including the oil business, including the oil countries all have huge debts to service. That they have got to keep the oil moving, that to store it for a few hours cost them a fortune, so the oil business is really like moving hot potatoes and no one wants to be holding the stuff for a moment longer, hence the race to sell. And if enough lefties go oil less, the price of gas, will fall through the floor. Maybe a buck a gallon, tax included. I’ll drive my V-8, and everyone else their aluminum, carbon fiber eco death trap glorified golf cart. Of course unlike them I won’t be contributing to the rape of the earth with lead from batteries, despoiling the ozone with escaped hydrogen gas, and toxic epoxy fumes from carbon fiber, unlike oil that is natural and biodegradable.
We can always just say no.
Abstinence works.
I haven’t had a car for almost 4 years now.
Behavior contributes to the position we find ourselves.
Give you an example – our company hires a very comfortable bus to get us to our regional staff meeting every 3 months. People prefer to drive to and fro White Plains across the Tappan Z and back to Pearl River, and they don’t car poll either. Last time there were 15 people in the bus.
BTW – among the many things we do, we are environmental consultants.
This contains some unpleasant facts for hydrogen fans.
No matter what they run on, the people who own them will drive like complete a**h***s. There was some confusion when SUVs became popular, and seemed to be giving BMW owners some pretty tough competition in terms of a**h***ism, but then BMW came out with their own SUV and harmony was restored.
Methane (aka “natural gas”) gets you close to pure hydrogen and has less severe complications. It is a primary fuel – as is hydrogen, if you live on Jupiter or Saturn. You will still get some CO or CO2 from it. A reforestation project – a good idea in any event – would help capture some of the CO2.
None of this is a solution to our jihadi problem. If oil became obsolete tomorrow they’d still keep coming at us. It doesn’t take much money to build a bomb and board an airliner. The problem is Islam, period, and until we find a way to eliminate or isolate Islam, we’ll continue to suffer from its attacks on humanity. This has been known for centuries, as the Pope just mentioned. It’s only recently that we’ve deliberately forgotten this inconvenient fact.