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Meet The Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car

by Chad Davis | 2:14 pm October 13th, 2009 | 11 Comments »

Is the car of the future or a waste of good R&D money. Take a look at decide!

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11 Responses to “Meet The Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car”


  1. Life on earth for millions of years selected hydrogen as the energy form, by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, using the energy of the sun. This energy was stored in organic matter and by burning fossil fuel humans are using all this stored energy and dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This while wasting all this stored energy and polluting our atmosphere, humans refuse to acknowledge that there is a solution, by accepting what biological life has used for millions of years. When all the cards are on the table and all special interest groups ignored, the solution will be a hydrogen based energy economy.


  2. Sorry but a large waste of money. While H2 sounds good it’s filled with ineff and wasteful production and use.

    Fuel cells or foolcells as those who really know call them are way too expensive with limited life and no where as eff as some say because they leave so much out they don’t want you to know.

    Far better is making cost effective EV subcars weighing under 1500lbs that can do most trips and a small biofueled generator for the rest of the time giving unlimited range. This is overall 3-6x’s as eff as a foolcell car.

    The reasons they keep building them is to make a straw man alternative to EV’s that they know prefectly well won’t work but delays EV’s getting launched. Plus the gov paid them millions in grants to do it.

    We don’t need anything new. Just using present tech we can get 100mpg vehicles by cutting weight and reducing aero, tire, etc drag.


  3. Talking about efficiency. Electricity, although very convenient, is not very efficient when you include all the losses from the energy content of the fuel used to generate electricity to the actual work done by equipment. You probably never saw these figures, as the overall efficiency probably would be less than 20%. This even without the air pollution health effects caused by the burning of fossil fuels.


  4. Freeing up hydrogen is always a net loss process, there is no free hydrogen in nature. Currently most hydrogen will be produced from fossil fuels, no gain there. There is no hydrogen distribution network in place and it would cost billions to create one. Electric vehicles on the other hand can be charged from clean hydro electric, wind, and solar, right now, and the infrastructure exists in every home and business. Grid transmission efficiency is around 93% efficient, and fossil fuel power plants run between 30% to 60% efficient, while non fossil fuel plants are essentially 100% efficient since the inputs, sun, wind, water, have no cost.
    Fuel cell expert Ulf Bossel explains why hydrogen is no answer:
    http://www.physorg.com/news85074285.html


  5. Hydrogen can be burned directly in a combustion engine. The only problem is to store hydrogen in enough quantity to drive a decent distance, without recharging. That is why Norway (a land with plenty of oil and gas) is building a hydrogen highway and whatever happened to the one in California. We know how to split water in hydrogen and oxygen and indeed need electricity, but there are plenty of places on earth where you can use the huge exchange of energy between the earth and the sun, to generate electricity and split water.
    No distribution system! How about using that one now used for natural gas? Natural gas is now plugged as a clean fuel, but it still causes carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and methane itself when it leeks, all causing an unhealthy environment, while contributing to global climate change. This besides the horror future when we start fracking the entire planet. Yes, there may be some problems with hydrogen, but they all can and will be solved, when we finally use common sense and our acquired knowledge.


  6. America needs to have a goal of becoming a hydrogen society, using natural gas as a bridge. Hydrogen can be burned, but burning produces oxides of nitrogen (aka air pollution), so better to drive a fuel cell electric which just emits water out of the tailpipe. I drove the Chevy Equinox fuel cell model a few years ago: amazing acceleration and very quiet.
    I envision a future where buildings are roofed with solar cells. Homes would be energy independent and use excess electricity to make hydrogen to power vehicles and to recombine to make electricity for night use. Major solar cell energy farms would make hydrogen to be piped around the country in the natural gas pipe network built out during the natural gas bridge period. There would be no need to build more vulnerable major power lines, as electricity will be made onsite, or in small local grids. During the bridge period, most land vehicles would run on natural gas. Eventually, all vehicles will run on completely renewable hydrogen, and emit no greenhouse gases.


  7. Just try telling to investors of Big Oil . You know the names of the Big Oils, right? I mean bondholders also.. They are actually parking trillons of dollars there. with nobody to dump on top of nobody’s heads. Those shareholders and bondholders have to sell them and invest in your fancy hydrogen scheme.. This is the real dilemma! So they are understandly immovable or in other words… stuck there!!! You cannot just make them lose money on Big Oil investments like stocks and bonds ,etc.. simply because you want to use a better fuel like hydrogen.. Sure, Big Oils can diversify into hydrogen production but it seems to me that they still dont see how they can keep earnings on the up and up with hydrogen as of yet.. The only way I can see that can be done more successfully is by stopping visiting the one arm bandit gas pump at your fav station.. Just keep dropping the demand on gasoline until the shareholders and bondholders become nervous enough to dump their shares themselves.. This is the only way out.. I guess. Start carpooling, ride bicycle or stop taking long vacation trips, etc.. for the time being until the Big Oils shrivel to a footnote of the business history. We succeeded with typewriters , for example.. or those cathode tube telveisions, etc.. We are now pushing incandescent bulbs out the doors so to speak.. You cannot just preach and preach about hydrogen until your face turns blue.. People have to unite all together to keep cutting demand on oil and gasoline for years until Big OIls is shrunk, honey!


  8. It matters more to see the demand of oil falling than the price of oil. Oil price can skyrocket for all we care as long as we manage to keep cutting and cutting demand on oil and gasoline. Big OIls will eventually be brought to knees or forced to diversify into new hydrogen productoin themselves.. If they refuse for reasons like second guessing the gasolline market thinking that we will relapse into addicitoin like before.. if this (demand) keep falling regardlessly what happens to oil prices,, Big OIls will get the message .. It is not our concern about how or what they will do about it.. It is not our problem.. Our problem is about how to cut demand on gasoline collectively.. Can you convince your relatives, friends, or (gasp!) your boss, foreman or supervisor to kick their oil addiciton.. Once there, Big Oil will cease to exist or be shrunk to nothikng.


  9. Politicians are not going to wave magic wands and make Big Oils roll over.. Big Oil is very critical to our economy but it is not impossible to reduce our consumption of oil to a far more manageable level so to cool off high prices with hydrogen or EVs or whatever we have got ourselves.. We cannot ask Big Oil to shoot themselves in the heads. Big Oil is working for shareholders and bondholders and I dont blame them.. we have ourselves to blame for colntinuing to pump gasoline in our tanks every week or so. Sure, some poltiicains are trying hard to slow Big Oil’s exploitation of the land with regulations , etc .. They cannot do it alone .. We have to join them and enviormentalists to bring Big Oiil and its investors down .. It si not our problem about how it will affect the value of their capital there.. You can also try to convince the shareholders and bondholders to sell oil stocks and bonds and invest in different fuel schemes. This is another good way to do it.. This can create panic in the markets if enough of them decide to agree wtih you by dumping oil stocks and bonds… Again, this is not our problem.. Our problem is develop alternate means of fueling our fleets of cars and trucks.. It is not oil shareholders or bondholders’; problem, unless they agree with you, at last!


  10. Money talk!!! Stocks and bonds talk !! Your idea mean nothing to them..


  11. Capital is the lifeblood of everything we see and use in the real world.. no capital no go!

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