hyperion said:
I think the object is cheap, practical transportation with the least damage to the enviverament. Plug In's have failed to even come close.
Here's one plug-in hybrid that does very well indeed.
http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=article&storyid=818
hyperion said:
Imagine trying a days drive from Chicago to St. Louis. Unless there were stations where you could stop and trade battery packs in two minutes.
You're thinking of a straight EV. A plug-in hybrid has an engine and a battery. 90+% of its journeys (
ie all the ones under say, 150 miles), are made under battery power, and all the much longer trips from normal refuelling. This means it consumes less than a tenth of the amount of fuel of a normal hybrid that can't be plugged in.
So for your imaginary trip from Chicago to St. Louis, you'd get about 150 miles on battery power alone, then the engine would kick in to start charging the battery. 500 miles after that, you just stop at a regular gas/biodiesel station to fill up in 5 minutes and be on your way again. That's how plug-in hybrids work - they have all the benefits of both EVs and hybrids in one package.
hyperion said:
And it looks like from Ken's articles that Honda has overcome any hurdles. Since GM has just been working on this for the past five years instead of hybrids, who knows haw far along they have come. It will be the future. Man once said, you can't fly!. 2020 will be here before you know it.
While there are some hurdles to be overcome in the design of the fuel cell cars themselves, like the lack of range, difficult storage and low temperature starting, I do believe they can and will be solved, as shown by Honda especially. I am not disputing that at all!
What I'm saying is that's not the issue with fuel cells. The main problem is the huge energy costs of making the hydrogen! Lets say you start with some electricity from renewable sources, like wind or solar. You first have to electrolyse some water (big losses there) compress it (very inefficient - the worst bit about hydrogen), transport it (15 times as many tankers will be required on the roads to transport H2 vs fossil fuels because of the tank size issues) and then the fuel cells themselves are only 50%
peak efficiency (some new diesel engines get better than that)!
So, for your 1 kWhr of electricity you can go 4-5 times further in an EV or plug-in hybrid compared to a fuel cell car, because all that energy has been wasted along the way making the hydrogen.
Now imagine it's 2020, and you're at the dealers looking at the new fuel cell car and comparing it with a plug-in hybrid. The plug-in hybrid is a mature technology by now, and with a very simple layout is really quite cheap. The fuel cell car on the other hand has an enormous carbon fibre wound fuel tank and masses of platinum in the engine (there isn't actually enough platinum in the world to make all the fuel cells needed, so the price of platinum and fuel cells will go up, not down with the more that get manufactured!)
Then the salesman tells you that it's going to cost you 4 times as much to fill up the hydrogen car, and that you can only do it at a dedicated H2 refuelling station. But the plug-in hybrid can be recharged at home, or at a gas station, and an 80% electric charge is available in only 1 minute using Toshiba's (now 15 years old)
long-life lithium battery technology.
So it's not that fuel cell cars can't be made, they can. It's just that should they come to market they won't be able to compete with plug-in hybrids, on efficiency, cost, range, practicality or environmental benefit.
