What is the hold-up on hydrogen powered vehicles?

[Jay 02 TA ws6]

All the fuss is about the flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs) and hybrid cars...

FFVs still pollute, and hybrid cars are such Nancy's it is embarassing.

Why is all the hooplah surrounding them? Especially the hybrids?

To the best of my knowledge, hydrogen is more explosive than gasoline, and its emissions would be pure water... We would be able to keep our internal combustion motors, and since the explosions are so much stronger with hydrogen, the engine's power output would be increased.

Apparently a BMW executive - who has actually been doing some work on fuel cell vehicles - said that it was next to impossible to not allow tire spin, even feathering an automatic transmission, on a 7 series Bimmer running on hydrogen.

What exactly is the hold up?

It sounds like Hippies and Red Necks can really find a true happy medium here... and we are dinking around with wind-up toy electric cars... what gives?

[TimeLord]

Fuel cells are still far off unfortunately.

Hydrogen takes twice as much energy to produce[fossil fuels here] than it stores or produces,until that can be beat and an infrastructure[Nationwide] can be inplanted don't hold your breath.

15-20 year window!!!!!

[Jay 02 TA ws6]

Originally posted by TimeLord
Fuel cells are still far off unfortunately.

Hydrogen takes twice as much energy to produce[fossil fuels here] than it stores or produces,until that can be beat and an infrastructure[Nationwide] can be inplanted don't hold your breath.

15-20 year window!!!!!

Couldn't nuclear power be used to produce it?

[TimeLord]

They have 50 years worth of waste allready,,,,,,,

Not the most fashionable power at the moment,but it might be possible.

[Jay 02 TA ws6]

Yeah but the theory of running out of places to put nuclear waste is like the theory of the cemetary-death of the earth (one day, the whole world will be a cemetary)...

Nuclear energy is the best thing we have going right now by far.

[Jeff_in_Atl]

Originally posted by Jay 02 TA ws6
Couldn't nuclear power be used to produce it?

Delorian come back.

[Steve95formula]

Hydrogen is not quite ready but the hybrids offer the best for both worlds of electric and a real internal combustion engine. The engine can also drive a generator to charge up the batteries.

[Firehawk734]

The word on Nuclear power, at least I am pretty sure I heard this from a fairly good source, is that they are coming out with a nuclear fusion plant, where there is virtually no waste and it produces several times the power that nuclear fission plants (currently we use these) produce.

[TimeLord]

Still far off unfortunately,,,,,,,,,and even more so for commercial use!!!

[markd79ta]

In another life, I served as a legislative analyst on a Energy and Utilities Committee at a state legislature. The biggest and only problem with modern nuclear facilities is public perception. They have been demonized so much that it is almost impossible to build one and put it on-line. The BPA (Bonneville Power Authority) had a nuclear venture that was stifled by public out...the facilities never went on-line and are just sitting there...while the customers are paying for them along with the fish mitigation on the dams. It is very stupid political B.S.

Anyhow, the plants of choice over the last 15 years are (natural) Gas Fired Turbine Plants that use a horrific amount of cubic feet of gas to produce electricity. The enviros like it because it is so-called "clean", but we are going to experience some pretty bad shortages in the years to come. Anyhow, it is all stupid interest group politics that pretty much scr*ws the rest of us. The next ten years are going to show some pretty frightening consequences of our energy policy...not good!

The Hydrogen power car sounds pretty cool though! However, that fuel cell would cost a fortune to make it safe under impacts. I would be a little freaked to have a hydrogen bomb in that back of my car.

[Dave M]

I work at a nuclear power plant (perhaps the world's most famous plant, TMI) and I can tell you with 100% certainty that nuclear fusion plant (combining atoms instead of splitting them) technology is not even on the radar screen. This technology is still essentially theoretical and not even close to commercial application. But when and if it arrives, it would be pollution and waste free, and produce an enormous amount of power.

The company I work for, and now a few others, have filed early site permits with the NRC. This is the first step is construction of new nuclear plants. My company (Exelon) claims to have no plans for a new reactor, but is simply "banking" the site for possible future use (early site permits are good for 20 years).

What these new plants may contain, technology-wise, is anyone's guess. There IS a new type of plant being considered that uses helium instead of water to cool the fuel. According to the industry, it would be much safer and cheaper to build a plant of this design than a traditonal water-cooled plant. Of course there are always those that disagree. There is a prototype plant of this design being constructed in South Africa now. I'm not sure if it's online yet, but it is being built. This is probably the future of nuclear power, assuming there are no accidents or problems with the technology in the near future.

My guess would be, that with todays energy needs and fossil fuel prices constantly rising, you may start to see new plant construction within the next 10-15 years. It would have happened already if not for the public resistance; nuclear plants are an electric utility's most profitable by a wide marging, due to the shear amount of power they can produce.

Hydrogen powered cars are far off because of the design problems (crash resistance) and the need for hydrogen "gas stations" before it can become widespread. Hybrid vehicles really are the best choice right now. 60 mpg in the city? I'd take that for my daily driver. 0-60 is sluggish at about 9-10 seconds but that's why it is a daily driver and not my track car.

[wolfdogs]

As most of yall know, I work for the Federal Government....... have since 1975. I was based in the National Automotive Center for years...then bounced around the country running the Federal Tire Qualificaiton program, now im back in DC...in the operations division of the second largest fleet in the country......GSA Fleet.
and let me tell you........AFV vehicles are the biggest pain in the arse in the world. first off..hybrids (elec) are not really afv's.........thats a seperate battle in itself.......

but..Congress has legislation that mandates the use of AFV's by Federal Agencies, and this use is to increase by year. Its been on the decrease because of the real world problems we have with them. Our fleet serves all the Federal Agencies..they lease their cars and trucks from us, we have 195,000 on the road Nationwide... 37,000 are AFV's... 31,000 of those are E85's (flex fuel) ehthenol. and you know why? cause that satisfies the Congress......but you know what? they run on gasoline. And do you know why? cause there are very few stations that they can get the ethenol fuel from........so they dont even bother.

sux.

[Black97]

Mark I like your coments

I'm all for Nukes but the long term storage of the waste products has to be solved. Just finished a job at the Zimmer plant in Cincinnati Ohio. It was originally a nuke but was never fueled up. Years later it was converted to coal using some of the existing turbine - generator equipment.

It's a shame that after Three Mile Island the whole nuke program in the US went down the drain. Our company supplied 8 large steam turbine units to TVA. Two of them were built but never ran. 4 were in construction when they were stopped. Two were never started building. What a waist of money. Several coal fired units were built for short term until those nukes would go online. They were built cheap since they only had to last a couple of years. Now over 30 year later these plants are still running and a lot of money is sunk into them to keep em running.

Nukes will have a comeback, when the time is right.

As for alternative fuel cars, right now the oil industry has no desire to give up their monopoly and try everything to keep it that way.

[immgeorge]

I've read that the production and distribution of the hydrogen is the biggest setback... I also read the next step will be combining hydrogen with fossil fuels in internal combustion engines; more performance, less pollutants they figure... I wonder how effective the hydrogen is...

[TimeLord]

All the US has to do is have less retarded laws that are made by tree huggers.

In europe Diesels are everywhere and are a lot cleaner than over here,they account for 30-40% of the automobile market and get amazing fuel mileage.

Because the CARB mandated one element need be cleaner in your fuel than theirs they will never come over here.

Their diesels are cleaner than a lot of gas engines !!!!!!

GOVERMENT STUPIDITY !!!!!!