Car manufacturers who have been advocating going the hydrogen and fuel cell way have just been slammed by the chairman of the Clean Fuels Foundation, James Woolsey.
“Hydrogen and fuel cells are not the way to go. The decision by the Bush administration and the State of California to follow the hydrogen highway is the single worst decision in the past few years. Someone may find a way to make hydrogen cheaply available but that is still some time away. Our estimates put building a hydrogen infrastructure at one trillion dollars. In the meantime you have to bring down the cost of a fuel cell vehicle by a factor of about 40 or 50 to make it affordable. Joining the hydrogen highway for families is a poor idea. For large fleets with a single filling facility it might work,” said Woolsey.
He then offers a solution: “The key is to do to oil what refrigeration did to salt at the end of the 19th century. Refrigeration, with the aid of electricity, did away with salt as a means of preserving food. No one fights with their neighbour over salt mines anymore.”
So according to Woolsey, the key is electricity – with both plug in electric vehicles, and plug in hybrids. 78% of cars travel less than 65km a day, which is within the average range of an electric car right now. By using off-peak overnight charging, all the cars that needed to be charged would not affect the US’s power grid significantly.
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Battery cell merely transfer the pollution of fuel to factory that make factory. Somemore some contain lead or mercury.
Best solution is CYCLING, No polution, No Cost Up, Low Accident Rate, Less Parking and Jam issues. Electric Asist Bicycle will be the solution for Salary man and worker.
Fuel CELL is F**king High Dam* Expensive, No way to meet the Standard vehicle Price in such a SHORT time. Bush is GILA!
can’t agree with the statement.. since we need to ask, how was the electricity that we use to charge our car generated? if still using fossil fuel then no point also..
Battery battery battery….. they hv been talking about this since world war 2, when they want to make one simple and PROPER battery car with 100km range mounted with a cheap mass production li-ion battery tat people can affort to replace every 3 years? And how impractical battery car is even for USA is that the range – 78% cars not travelling more then 65km, but 99.9999% cars will balik kampung and not everybody can affort two cars.
BigFish, just compare our KTM stations with our coal power station. And ask yourself which one you would like to stay next to. Also:
– its easier to control one big chimney then a couple of millions eksos pipe.
– it is still more efficient
– coal is cheaper
But electricity has zero shelf life, it is not something that you can refill and go. Unless some “refrigerator or salt” battery come out.
I think hydrogen is not the way to go either.
Best to invest is better and more environmentally safe battery packs.
Most people dont drive more in a day than a battery charge of a good Li-Ion battery pack in lets say a Tesla which is about 400kms (250miles).
I only drive about 20km per day (good to live in a small town), that would mean that I can last 2 weeks per charge on a Tesla roadster. Unfortunately that also means I wont save much money either since I drive so little.
About the way electricity is generated, we have hydro power, and even in the US which still burn quite a bit of coal, coal plants are much more efficient than your engine. They can be as efficient up to 80%, while our engines are
anywhere from 15% to 25% for petrol and diesel engines (if I read that correctly sometime ago).
He has a point that many people don’t understand – where to get the hydrogen?
Hydrogen doesn’t occur naturally in it’s pure state in nature. Most likely you’ll have to use electricity to generate hydrogen but that’s not as efficient as using electricity to charge the battery.
People forget that hydrogen isn’t clean as you still create pollution in the process of making pure hyrogen.
Plus li-ion batteries are getting better and cheaper all the time…
I agree with Big Fish that the hazard will still exist no matter what type of energy source we use. But still, fuel cell is the future energy for the world..although, as woolsey said..we had a long way to go..the main issue thats been bugging the energy industry is about renewable energy..with the current trend, we are consuming the earth resources a lot more than we expected..even the saudi who has the largest oil reserves in the world (259.9 billion barrels) could only last 80 years plus(estimated)..thats an average lifecycle of us these days. even coal reserves will deplete sooner or later..dont even mention the hazards that coal powered plant will bring to the people and environment around it (up to a few decimal km radius)..i tell you, living next to a coal power plant will be the worst decision
Dude read John Perkin’s book.
Whether H2 or Fuel Cell. Its just to appease people who has been clamouring for a cleaner transport method. They make it sound like its technology just beyond the horizon so most people would just sit and wait and be contented with the knowledge that somebody else is doing something for them. Atypical of homo sapien behaviour. The fact is nobody is doing anything. Period.
Fact is:-
Electric Vehicles is something a lot of countries can make NOW. And that is why THEY don’t want it to happen. Its not good for the American economy. It is only a feel-good factor to have a car that can travel for more than 100km a day. Like owning an SUV that you might, just might go beyond the tarmac. Its a bloody DC circuit for goodness sake.
It means a very difficult possibility to monopolize and put more value adders into existing automaker products.
if hydrogen isnt the way, what is the way
wah better used nuclear power leh 100 year can still use but when accident bye bye to all. auctioncenter i like ur idea but is there any bike for big guys like me i takut every time naik tayar meletup lol or maybe p1 have to design flintstone car lah we move with kaki wakakakakaka hey waht about palm oil diesel isnt it better let change all our engine to hybrid ones
@JULIANLEE
Perhaps before you post, it is good to read what other posters have suggested.
THe alternatives are Pure Li-Ion powered vehicles. Google “Tesla”.
Ironically, Tesla uses Lotus Elise chassis as a base of thier Tesla roadster. Where’s Proton then?
Why bother with hydrogen?
You need electricity to extract hydrogen from water. Then there will be conversion energy losses. You still need to put them into storage, transport them to the suppliers and dispense to the users. All these are additional cost to the production and delivery of hydrogen. Then you need oxygen….. Then finally, you need to put the oxygen and hydrogen together to generate electricity. Why bother?
Why not just use the same electricity, from household outlets, to charge up the batteries in electric cars directly. End of story.
FYI, electricity that is generated that is not used (ie. during off peak hours) is just wasted.
So basically when you plug in your car at night, it is just using up electricity that would have gone to waste anyway….Think about that.
There are plenty of clean energy sources. Hydro, wind (not really practical), solar. It just depends on governments of the world to invest in those areas.
Its bloody simple to build an electric car. God knows why no one does. Get a Kancil, slap on a 30kW motor, direct drive (dont need a gearbox – a 1000rpm motor with standard tyres will give you a top speed of 90km/h) and a battery pack and charging circuit. Its much much simpler than a regular internal combustion car. Anyone with an electronics engineering degree would be able to “figure it out”. Hell in my university days, we built Solar powered racers…..
The biggest issue that we got is the need to run the power sapping AirCon pump….and then have the Government legalise it…. (why do I have a nagging feeling I would need to be a bumiputera to get that done……?)
If I got 30k or so to spare, I would build one.
I vote conspiracy!
Google “Who Killed The Electric Car”
4G63T DSM, don’t know why nobody makes electric cars? The oil companies will die! And who pays for the campaign money of BN? Petronas. Who paid for Bush campaign? Oil companies. Read this article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car
I think the energy used to produce hydrogen is very economically challenge. It might consume lot of other natural resource too.
Don’t think it will work. Cause you need oil to power the electric generators, or you may need coal. More worse pollution
electric care are more efficient. As the power from plant are generated in best efficiently, and usually achieve 90%+, with so little energy lost. Some electric come from dam or even wind mild, which is green energy.
when we using the electric car, the torque is high on low rpm. Petrol engine require high rpm, about 2000rpm to get the torque. And the petrol engine efficienty is about 60%, which mean energy lost and.
car engine is not efficient in producing power compared to power plant. And thats the fact that we need to face. Having millions of car engine running aroung with 40% wasting the fuel, thats a really bad thing.
electricity can be stored in litium battery more easily. And estimated that battery price falling about 10% each year, and increased in capacity as well. So, you will be paying less for more battery power in future.
Has nobody seen the air-car yet? Its made by Moteur and it runs entirely on air. Zero carbon emissions.
Cars normally induct air before compressing it into the engine. This car uses compressed air from the get-go which means the only “fuel” that goes into the car is from an air compressor.
http://www.theaircar.com/
all these alternatives, they should concentrate on finding a way how to make petroleum
actually there is many alternative besides hydrogen and electric but it will not be available till maybe the end of petroleum productions…but no matter what you use there is always polution..because the basic of energy principle start from a law…energy cannot be created or destroyed..all we can do is change its form….
haiz..i wish that we dont have to drive washing machines in the future
“Tesla uses Lotus Elise chassis as a base of thier Tesla roadster. Where’s Proton then?”
proton owns lotus. thats where they are. but doesnt mean that what lotus does is something thats cost efficient for proton to use.
btw, dont forget nuclear power plants. they are extremely efficient, do not “pollute” unless it blows up, the only problem is the storage of the waste products for the long term.
Does this mean I can buy ‘fan pan’ charger for my car?