Students build Hydrogen Powered 1,336 MPG vehicle...

[Dave]

Originally Posted by TYEster

Great, but Obama won't be president forever and 50 years ago no one thought about having a 1000hp car.

Times change, and technology advances everyday.

fifty years ago someone thought building a racecar body out of magnesium wAs a really good idea.

[goof2]

Originally Posted by TYEster

Great, but Obama won't be president forever and 50 years ago no one thought about having a 1000hp car.

Times change, and technology advances everyday.

I agree with you that we need to find alternative fuel sources. Where we disagree is they haven't been found yet. They still cannot be legislated or wished in to existence.

People have been trying to do both with hydrogen fuel cells for at least 15 years, when I first started seeing people write about them. Hell, hydrogen fuel cells were on the Gemini and Apollo space vehicles. This isn't new technology. The fact still remains that currently, and for the foreseeable future, hydrogen fuel cells are no solution.

[Avatard]

As was mentioned already, the problem is that producing the hydrogen takes more energy than the resultant hydrogen contains. Remarkably, one of the most efficient alternative "fuel" cars today is a working French design, already in small-scale production that runs on compressed air.

[unknownroad]

Originally Posted by TYEster

Great, but Obama won't be president forever and 50 years ago no one thought about having a 1000hp car.

Sure they did. Take a WWII-surplus fighter plane engine (crazy cheap back then) and build a chassis around it, and you've got yourself a 2000-hp car!
(RIP Art Arfons)

[Avatard]

The green monster...

[Dave]

Originally Posted by unknownroad

Sure they did. Take a WWII-surplus fighter plane engine (crazy cheap back then) and build a chassis around it, and you've got yourself a 2000-hp car!
(RIP Art Arfons)

true story. ever heard of turbonique? Basically a liquid fuel rocket turbine with a gear drive you bolted directly to your rear diff. Could put an otherwise stock car deep in the single digits

[101lifts2]

Originally Posted by goof2

When they say it is a hydrogen powered car I assume it uses hydrogen fuel cells. This isn't new technology. Look up the Honda FCX Clarity for a bit more "consumer ready" version. The problem is hydrogen has some serious hurdles.

The primary issue is that it takes more energy to produce hydrogen than the resulting hydrogen contains. Basically it takes a lot of electricity to make hydrogen. That is electricity we currently don't have. Solar and wind can't even come close to meeting our needs now, much less adding this requirement on to it. If we aren't going to build nuclear power plants (which I don't see happening) that leaves us with coal/natural gas/gasoline being burned to create that energy. You now have a "green" fuel that results in a lot of hydrocarbons being burned. Awesome!

There is also no infrastructure to get hydrogen in to the cars. How many gas stations want to pay to install large, extremely high pressure tanks full of explosive gas to cater to a market that currently doesn't exist outside of a few California cities? Even if the answer is every gas station you have to get the hydrogen from the cracking facility to the gas stations. This would involve trucks carrying that same explosive gas under extremely high pressure.

Finally, instead of a gas tank at or near atmospheric pressure, cars would now need a hydrogen tank pressurized in the thousands of PSI. Most of what I have heard is around 10,000 PSI. That is bad enough, but it is pressurized with an explosive gas. Sounds like a great idea.

Your wishing has resulted in a "solution" that is impractical, expensive, potentially dangerous, and of doubtful benefit. I would say you are ready to join the Obama energy team if it weren't for the Obama administration already rejecting hydrogen fuel cell vehicles for the above reasons plus a few of their own.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/sc...=1&ref=science

Good points.

[101lifts2]

Originally Posted by Avatard

As was mentioned already, the problem is that producing the hydrogen takes more energy than the resultant hydrogen contains. Remarkably, one of the most efficient alternative "fuel" cars today is a working French design, already in small-scale production that runs on compressed air.

I've read about that..but its the same mojo. You have to use power to compress the air, unless you use windmills or hydro power.