On Thursday, April 24, 2014 3:27:51 PM UTC+1, John Williamson wrote:
On 24/04/2014 14:20, wrote:
On Thursday, April 24, 2014 11:19:35 AM UTC+1, Rick Hughes wrote:

The most important engine design for future of the car is the Honda FCX
Clarity approach ...
Hydrogen fuel cell ... has the benefits of hardly any noise, no
batteries, zero emissions ... and 61mpg
Exists is in production and out with users in California ...
Hydrogen is manufactured at point-of-sale pumps, just storing enough
Hydrogen for next couple of fills ... so no bulk storage issues.
Honda also developing home Generation stations for you to produce your
own Hydrogen.
Fixes the problem of the benefit of electric drive and the problem of
battery weight & charging - no charging & no batteries.
Hydrogen no longer needing to be stored as super cooled liquid, with
insulation issues.
Government was in talks with Honda UK to subsidies installation of
Hydrogen fuel filling points along M4 corridor ... to kick-start this,
not sure of current status.
Hydrogen is the easiest gas to manufacture and is in unlimited supply
(water) ... for the eco tree huggers, you could use wind/wave/solar to
provide the electricity required for electrolysis.
Saw a programme on this car ... it's no concept now on sales, looks
pretty similar to Civic, not like a milk float.
http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/

Hydrogen as car fuel has to be one of the most hopeless ideas out there.

Energywise, you go from oil to electricity at 40% efficiency, then electricity to hydrogen with more losses, so the car uses triple the amount of energy for the same job.

Costwise, as well as the usual oil costs you pay for the elec gen plant that currently roughly triples the cost of the energy.

The whole thing's bonkers. Its not even green - you get to use triple the energy for the same result.

One way to make it green would be to install one of the small modular
reactors on site to generate the electricity, and pipe the water in.
I believe that the current method in common use, though, is to use heat
to crack methane, using fossil fuel to generate the heat required.

However you generate it, you're still using high price electricity to replace low cost oil, you've still got 1 or 2 lossy conversion steps, and the extra costs of generation mean consumed energy. It so doesnt add up.


NT