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Fuel-cell Vehicles for Americans 384

Posted by CowboyNeal from the pimp-my-ride dept.
hey writes "An article titled Fuel-cell vehicles run clean, but is their future clear? in the Japan Times says Honda is leasing fuel-cell cars to individual Americans. The article mentions: 'Honda officials said it is easier for the automaker to start leasing in the U.S. because there are more hydrogen gas installations there than in Japan.'"
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Fuel-cell Vehicles for Americans More

Fuel-cell Vehicles for Americans

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  • Hydrogen gas? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by poopdeville ( 841677 )
    We have hydrogen gas installations? Do you have to go to an industrial chemical supplier to buy your fuel?
    • From your name are we to imply you provide a fuel supply for your own caddy? and if so is high fibre roughage cheaper then gas?
      • From your name are we to imply...

        You may imply what ever you wish, though you might suggest a hidden meaning if you where to infer instead. But if I where trying to read something into his user name, I'd be thinking more about methane.

    • I know that we have tons and tons of methane gas mactories, particularly in recliner chairs near most big-screen TVs over the weekend, but I've never seen any that produce hydrogen. Although once those methane facilities start processing, they do get you to move away from them pretty quickly.

      THAT'S the kind of engine we need! A Beer and Bratwurst Post-Production Methane engine! There's a virtually unlimited supply of that particular gaseous substance here in the States!

      ;)
      • tons and tons of methane gas mactories

        Oh, it's going to be one of those days, I see. What a hell is a "mactory"? *sigh* Where's a FireFox spell checker when you need one?
      • THAT'S the kind of engine we need! A Beer and Bratwurst Post-Production Methane engine! There's a virtually unlimited supply of that particular gaseous substance here in the States!

        There's an idea: install a gas-collection nozzle on the driver's seat, at the "strategic" location, so that the driver himself becomes the energy source when he sits down at the wheel. For refueling stations, the infrastructure is already there: just go to a Taco Bell drive-thru, "enjoy" your giant burrito with guacamole, wait
      • I was only being a smart ass with the methane crack (no pun intended) until I followed a link in a comment farther down in this whole thread that stated:

        Hydrogen is plentiful in fossil fuels such as methane and natural gas.

        So, I was right! I'd better get my Beer and Bratwurst Post-Production Methane Collector patented, copyrighted, and trademarked now!

  • If America goes hydrogen... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09, 2005 @11:00AM (#13020915)
    ...a lot of countries are going to get nervous about potential invasion. If you thought things were bad with us taking your oil, wait till we come calling for your precious precious hydrogen.
    • No kidding. This gives the U.S. grounds to attack any part of the universe, considering that Hydrogen is the most common element in the cosmos. Look out Alpha Centari, we've got our eye on you!
      • No kidding. This gives the U.S. grounds to attack any part of the universe, considering that Hydrogen is the most common element in the cosmos. Look out Alpha Centari, we've got our eye on you!

        Why go to Alpha Centauri? They could just attack the sea, or the sun if they really want raw H2 without having to crack it first.

    • ...a lot of countries are going to get nervous about potential invasion. If you thought things were bad with us taking your oil, wait till we come calling for your precious precious hydrogen.

      On the contrary: we've got plenty of H2O here. We welcome you to take the H2 away from us, as long as you let us keep the remaining oxygen.

      No wait... you can have the full H2O as well (some fish and heavy metals included).

  • Will fuel cell cars really help? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Krankheit ( 830769 ) on Saturday July 09, 2005 @11:03AM (#13020930)
    If it takes more oil to obtain hydrogen in proper form than just refining it to diesel or gasoline and using it in an internal combustion engine, is it going to help? We will still be dependent on foreign oil. Maybe we could power the fuel cell producing plants by burning soybean oil in modified disel generators? There is a John Deere diesel generator I saw that was modified with a heat exchanger to heat up used soybean oil and run it through the engine after it warms up, requiring disel (fossil fuel) ot only be used to start up and shut down. We could get that oil from Texas, or maybe Alaska.

    • Oil isn't the only source of energy. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Saturday July 09, 2005 @11:08AM (#13020964)
      While the US government would want you to believe otherwise, oil is not the only source of energy. You can use a renewable power source, such as solar/hydroelectric/wind power, when producing hydrogen. While you still need the initial input to create the solar plant, dam or windmills, the amount of hydrogen produced with very little impact on the environment would be astronomical!
      • Solar power? Not very effective (yet). Very high initial investment (expensive to create the cells too), huge areas of the country, and times of the year when it's completely ineffective, and you need a LOT of cells for a little power. I assume you'd need a ton of cells to power any signifigant hydrogen production.

        Wind power? Same thing. HUGE areas of the country where this will never work, and many trimes of the year when it's not effective. Not to mention, they're big, ugly, and loud, and kill birds [insidebayarea.com] as s
        • We're not talking about using solar/wind/hydroelectric power for general, nation-wide consumption. No. In this case we are discussing the use of such sources as the way to provide energy to hydrogen refineries. Thus the hydrogen used in cars (and then perhaps in small-scale, decentralized home generation systems) could be produced efficiently and in an ecologically sound manner.

          • I understand this my point is--it's commonly said creation of hydrogren for fuel using petroleum fueled devices takes more energy to create the hydrogen than is returned.

            How much more true is this for the others?
            • Well, it would depend on the size of the facility, the type of the facility, and so on. Again, we'd need to take into account the specific situation in order to get you the answer you seek. It's quite possible, but of course not guaranteed. It's all in the specifics, really.
        • Solar power? Not very effective (yet).

          I'm still a fan of putting giant solar arrays in orbit and beaming their generated power down to receiving stations.. Of course, a 'dual-use' capability for the Akira-style vaporizing of pesky dictators is merely a secondary bonus..

        • Re:Oil isn't the only source of energy. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by patreek ( 896440 ) on Saturday July 09, 2005 @11:47AM (#13021195)
          and also if you're building dams, has HUGE (and potentially adverse) impact on the environment.


          Some of the adverse environmental impact is already in place in the form of water rentention dams, and with modifications these dams could be producing electricity.

          I few months ago I attended a lecture at the University of Kentucky by Jack Spadaro (http://www.jackspadaro.com/ [jackspadaro.com]), an accomplished mining engineer who helped draft much of the (poorly enforced) regulations for surface mining in the United States. At one point in the lecture he claimed that if all of the currently installed water retention dams in the West Virgina were converted to hydroelectric dams West Virginia could meet all of its power needs without using a single lump of coal.

          As for wind power, I agree that it only works in certain areas, requires large tracts of land, and can be unreliable. But modern wind turbines have significantly reduced noise by improvements in production techniques and aerodynamics, and are no more noisy than traditional power plants (Buffalo Mountain in Tenneesee is a prime example). Also, the bird deaths at sites like Altamont should be seen in context - proportionally automobiles, radio towers, and skyscrapers each kill more birds than wind farms do, and newer wind turbines are designed to prevent birds from perching/nesting on them and rotate at slower speeds. I would suggest going here (http://www.cogreenpower.org/Wind.htm [cogreenpower.org]) for more information on the subject.
        • and you need a LOT of cells for a little power. I assume you'd need a ton of cells to power any signifigant hydrogen production.

          Just so you know, most large scale solar energy collection is done through mirrors that direct light to a central point, that in turn heats water to drive a steam turbine. Slightly less efficent on a per area basis than individual cells, but tons cheaper, and generally pretty effective if you have a large enough area.

      • Re:Oil isn't the only source of energy. (Score:4, Informative)

        by Spectra72 ( 13146 ) on Saturday July 09, 2005 @11:32AM (#13021105)
        I'm no fan of the Bush Administration, but the "Bush is against anything but oil" rhetoric is getting stale. Try to stay current [whitehouse.gov] on what the White House is saying ok? Right now, the plan is Four-Fold: 1) tax incentives for hybrid and clean diesel vehicles 2) Increase domestic production capabilities 3) explore alternative fuels (hydrogen cells, ethanol, bio-diesel 4) help other countries become more fuel efficient & help them improve their energy outputs.

        Now, one can certainly debate those points and any priority you would give to each. One can debate the amount of money set aside for each of them (1.2 billion for hydrogen as an example). What is not debatable is the nonsense of "the US government would want you to believe otherwise", that's tinfoil hattery of the first order.

      • While the US government would want you to believe otherwise, oil is not the only source of energy.

        You're right. When it comes to electrical energy, you're looking at a whole lot of coal, mostly.

    • The only way this will help is in the same vein as the Kyoto Treaty or "Make Poverty History". It's about raising awareness.

      It's not always about finding the end-all-be-all of alterna-fuels. It's about getting early adopters to fork over large sums of cash, test things out, kick the tires and find out what actually works and what doesn't. It's about getting people to realize there are alternatives. So fuel cell, hybrid, bio-diesel, cars that run on poop..whatever. They all need exposure.

    • Maybe we could power the fuel cell producing plants by burning soybean oil in modified disel generators?

      What you need is a Bio Oil Diesel system. See the below link for all your needs. It's available today! http://www.greasel.com/ [greasel.com]

    • Some points about hydrogen (Score:4, Informative)

      by orzetto ( 545509 ) on Saturday July 09, 2005 @11:26AM (#13021068)
      If it takes more oil to obtain hydrogen in proper form than just refining it to diesel or gasoline and using it in an internal combustion engine, is it going to help?

      Here we go again...

      • Gas engines have low efficiencies, between 30 and 10%. FCs have higher, about 50+%. So what you lose in the refinery you more than make up in the engine.
      • FCs are quiet. Acoustic pollution is not a secondary issue in many cities.
      • Hydrogen can be made out of many things. Oil is one. Natural gas another one. Nuclear, hydro, tidal, wind--you can make hydrogen out of pretty much anything, while you cannot make gasoline out of electricity. The keyword is flexibility: your country could gradually go over from oil to renewable, always delivering hydrogen as a fuel.
      • You made some good points. Hydrogen to cars is like ATP (adenosine triphosphate) to cells. We can take glucose, fructose in as energy, and it doesn't matter, it ends up as ATP. I never said I don't think we should use fuel cells in cars. I think we should, but we need to be aware of where the energy is coming from for these fuel cells. I don't really care what we do to the enviroment as long as I'm not alive when oxygen becomes rare enough to charge a fee for. But I do care about dependence on foreign fuel
      • > you can make hydrogen out of pretty much anything, while you cannot make gasoline out of electricity.

        Sez who?

        At some point, it will be more profitable to synthesize gasoline from short-chain hydrocarbons than to mine it out of the ground. I'm sure electricity will be an important input to the manufacturing process.

        Will it be more profitable than making an equivalent amount of hydrogen energy? That depends on who values the two processes...
    • Most power for the creation of hydrogen in the US will probably come most directly from Coal (which is burned to make electricity, which can be used to perform electrolysis on water, which gives us Hydrogen).

      The US has a shitload of coal [doe.gov]. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. If we switched entirely to coal power (we're already ~70% of the way there), we could go for another century, quite possibly two without importing any more. And the other ingredient for electrolysis, water...well, we have a fair bit of tha
    • The best thing we can do to get off of our oil dependency is to all become vegetarians and stop driving. Growing meat requires 10 times the amount of hydrocarbons as it does to grow vegetables. The US uses 25% of the world's total daily oil production, 2/3rds of that oil is used to fuel the 200 million cars in the US so 16% of the world's oil is used to fill up cars just in the US. The only solution is stop driving the way we drive today. We have to make public transportation work otherwise we're not going
      • I refuse to give up driving my Ford Explorer and eating my Big Macs! Seriously, "become a vegetarian and stop driving" sounds like a troll. We should be able to come up with better energy fuel sources for beef production and propelling my vehicle. Why should we compromise?
        • Well, if you want your grandchildren to live in the stoneage, don't compromise. I don't think many people realize how hooked we are on oil. We need oil to make absolutely everything. Plastics, drugs, cars (not just the energy requirements, the hydrocarbon chains of oil are actually an ingredient), absolutely everything is made with oil. With the reserves that we know of today, oil will be gone in less than 70 years, but that doesn't matter, because way before then we won't be able to afford oil. Oil at $60/
          • As a typical slashdotter, I don't think I will ever have childen, let alone grandchildren. I don't even have any friends. I get modded -1, Unfunny in real life. So I don't really give a bloody hell what happens when I am gone. You can blame people like the fucktards that oppose us putting oil wells in Alaska for the shortage of oil. I like how my Mac Mini is composed with hydrocarbons from oil as an ingredient. The intelligent will find new ways of getting around problems. Germany produced oil from coal. Th
      • China, as an up and coming economy, with a ever growing middle class, is going to get hit squarely with this issue. Right now, they have 1/4 of the world's population, with only 7% of the arable land for food production. They can barely handle their food needs now. As they get richer, that growing middle class is going to consume more and more meat. This middle class also is going to want to own a car or two. So..what do you think about 300+ million Chinese wanting to own 1.5 cars per household? They are g
    • It doesn't take prohibitive temperatures to crack water. Just yesterday, I was burning magnesium in the campfire in order to help kill bugs (they "rain" into the fire... really something to see). The magnesium burns hot enough to split water into hydrogen and oxygen so I often throw some ice onto the magnesium once it starts burning. This increases the brightness of the fire by an order of magnatude.

      I imagine that it would be entirely possible to get a nuclear reactor to create hydrogen directly by heat

  • Won't take off in the US... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Saturday July 09, 2005 @11:05AM (#13020949) Homepage

    Until the legislation and tax rules are changed to make it un-economic to run a massive SUV. Sure these things are cleaner, but with Gas in the US being so much cheaper than pretty much all of the rest of the western world, and no additional taxes on large vehicles then what will be the incentive for the MAJORITY of Americans to do this?

    Sure one or two tree-hugging people will go for this, but it won't actually matter until its cheaper to buy a Fuel Cell powered vehicle, and its ridiculously expensive to buy ridiculous cars like the Ford Excursion.

    • Re:Won't take off in the US... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday July 09, 2005 @11:24AM (#13021054)
      but it won't actually matter until its cheaper to buy a Fuel Cell powered vehicle, and its ridiculously expensive to buy ridiculous cars like the Ford Excursion.

      You know, it's funny how people become completely blind about the cost of owning a vehicle: buying and using a Ford Excursion *is* ridiculously expensive. So is buying and using most other cars. It's strange, but most people only consider the price of gas when they think about how much a car costs them.

      I go around by bike and public transportation myself, and I occasionally call a cab, or rent a car whenever I need to. I'm not particularly ecology-minded, but I calculated that driving about 20000 miles per year (which isn't much really) in the mid-sized sedan I had costed about 5 grand a year. That included gasoline, insurance, amortization, repairs, parking tickets, etc etc etc... With my current scheme, I stay healthier and it costs a grand total of $1000 on bad years.

      $5000 is a big hole in many people's budget, yet they don't seem to realize. And I dare not imagine what it is when people buy cars on credit...
      • How do you expect me to make the 1.5 hour commute to work? There is an interstate, but no train or bus. Some of us *have* to drive a car or carpool with pals.
        • "How do you expect me to make the 1.5 hour commute to work?"

          Presumably, you (a) chose a house, and (b) chose a job. And the two are incompatible, and you're complaining to slashdot about it!

          I got my first job recently, and it took less than a month to find a decent place to live nearby. And by nearby I mean walking distance. And that's perfectly normal, as about half of my colleagues are about the same distance.

          So now I have a 4 mile cycle-ride to work, and you have a 1.5-hour (90 mile?) drive. WTF?

      • I completely agree with your point regarding total cost, most people don't factor everything. However, I would say that if you are willing to live without the status symbol of a new car, you can do a bit better with used cars.

        Most people can't bear to drive around a two generation old model and give up the status of owning the latest and greatest. But it is less than half the cost. If you are willing to drive slightly older vehicles, not only do you spend far less, but you save more of the environment. Th

    • >>Until the legislation and tax rules are changed to make it un-economic to run a massive SUV.

      Why should the government interfere? It's the free market that's finding a replacement for gasoline. Frankly, all of these little alternative fuel vehicles are tiny little death traps. What will REALLY make the market take off is the ability to drive something that's reasonably-sized using alternative fuels. So is your crusade against full-sized vehicles, or against gas guzzling? Will you step up in support

      • Re:Won't take off in the US... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by aengblom ( 123492 ) on Saturday July 09, 2005 @11:35AM (#13021123) Homepage
        Why should the government interfere? It's the free market that's finding a replacement for gasoline.

        Because the free market does not at this time account for the real cost of environmental pollution.

        The free market is so good because it provides very accurate price signals to account for time humans spend to make something. But (car manufacturers) are able to build cars and people are able to run their cars that cost pollution that they are not charged for.

        Somebody, eventually, will pay that cost though. Either through increased health care or by eventually being forced to use and even cleaner vehicle because the environment has absorbed all it can.

        Remember, purchasing a low-emission or no-emission does nothing to clean my air, so there's a huge free rider problem.
      • If your government wouldn't interfere (military bases in Saudi Arabia, etc.) you'd have the same fuel cost as in Europe.
      • Why should the government interfere? It's the free market that's finding a replacement for gasoline.

        The gov't already interferes. It's subsidizing the oil industry with all sort of tax breaks. They are keeping the price down so we won't go off looking for alternatives. This is why we're still hooked on petroleum. In a truly free and fair market, we would've abondoned it a long time ago.
      • Why should the government interfere? It's the free market that's finding a replacement for gasoline.

        The government steps in to correct market failures, and this is in fact an impending market failure. It takes a minimum of a decade to develop radically different cars and fuel systems, and even once they are developed it takes a minimum of another decade to switch over the infrastructure... not just the millions of cars on the road but the gas stations across the country. It's a chicken and egg problem, no
      • Using Michigan as a guide the federal and state taxes are $0.446 per gallon, my Continental averages 22 mpg, and my Expedition averages 16. I use them roughly half and half, let's say 10,000 miles each per year.

        In a little country called Denmark, something is rotten..
        the taxes for car that goes 22 miles/gallon is around $500 every half a year (based on CO2 emision), gasoline is $5.90 a gallon and when you buy a car, the registration taxes are 180%. The effect of this heavy taxation makes a damn Suzuki [suzuki.dk] an
    • We are goning have to wait for oil to become scarce and let the market decide. While oil is a very un-elastic commodity eventually supply and demand will force prices up to the point where even your biggest petrol heads start to think maybe we should be thinking about alternative fuel sources.

      If you look at oil prices over the first half of this year then it might not be as long as you think before we reach this point.
    • The free ride in the USA will come to an end soon enough. With demand outpacing supply gasoline is likely to hit $3 a gallon this summer and I'd be surprised if it didn't hit $6 a gallon in the next 5 years or so. Already the SUV is putting the squeeze on the budgets of those middle income soccer moms and as the price of gas skyrockets more and more of them will switch to higher mileage cars. We're already seeing a jump in the number of people buying hybrids to stretch out those gas dollars as much as they
    • Let's distill your comment into "Americans (or any sane people) will not buy this until fuel cell cars are cheaper to buy and operate than their existing vehicles".

      What big-ass SUVs, Americans (not especially known for frugality), taxes or legislation necessarily have to do with this is beyond me. It just makes you seem spiteful.

      While I do not understand the SUV craze, I understand mini-vans, station wagons and pick-up trucks (well most of them). Most of those don't get optimal fuel efficiency but have pr
      • While I do not understand the SUV craze, I understand mini-vans, station wagons

        Let me help. SUV == station wagon that can pull my boat. SUV == minivan without the femininity.

        I don't drive one, but that's what they're for.


  • Lease the cars because buying them would imperil the American economy.

    The U.S. has refused to sign on [the kyoto accord], however, citing concerns that adhering to its strict emissions limits would imperil their economy July 4, 2005. CTV News
  • In japan... only americans drive fuel efficient cars?

    Wait... the americans are the ones going to gas-alternatives?

    I'm very, very scared... hold me.
    • You may be trying to be funny, but it is not that Americans like using inefficient fossil fuel burning vehicles. Alot of us don't want to afford a new, efficient fuel cell vehicle. My older Ford Explorer and Dodge Grand Caravan have served me well with excellent performance and have been relatively trouble free (the Ford Explorer stalls sometimes and the Dodge Grand Caravan SE burns engine oil and goes through a transmission every nine-thirteen months.) I don't have to deal with car payments, which is impor
  • It might not work so well: the EV1 was leased too [washingtonpost.com] much to the dismay of owners (well, leasees) when GM killed it. Green-minded people might prefer to buy the Hondas outright, in the light of Californian EV1 owners' experiences.
  • At the G8 summit, Bush seemed to be looking for technological silver bullets rather than do as the rest of the developed world and actively reduce petrolium consumption via e.g. higher taxes on fuel. He claims the US economy would be wrecked by similar measures however it doesn't seem to have harmed the UK's (mind you we travel shorter distances). In an earlier statement he said that the US economy was overdependent on middle east fuel and this was a problem for national security and economic stability (so
    • Bush reduce petrolium consumption? Are you kidding? Most of the Bush family's money is from oil. His election campaigns were mostly funded by the big oil companies too.

      It was no coincidence that petrolium prices at the pump went up massively about 3 weeks after he was elected the first time round, and haven't come back down ever since.

      • Bush reduce petrolium consumption? Are you kidding? Most of the Bush family's money is from oil.

        Yes but as other /.tters are pointing out, the main viable source of hydrogen at the moment is... fossil fuels. The same companies that control oil refining can control this market too. As the oil runs out they can come up with alternative sources and still control the market. What about the emissions? Time to fire another of those silver bullets: bury CO2 emissions from power stations and hydrogen production

      • It was no coincidence that petrolium prices at the pump went up massively about 3 weeks after he was elected the first time round, and haven't come back down ever since.

        Not entirely accurate.. but yea, in the four years GW has been in office, the price of oil has doubled (and I see it at the pump - I remember paying about $1.25/gal before the Iraq war - now its near $2.50/gal). And it only helps GW and his family (their margins are about 10% - however 10% of a $50/barrel of oil is $5 while 10% of a $20/ba
    • Hell no. Why would people with a vested financial interest in the oil business actively participate in the funding of alternative energy sources? Financially it doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense financially, it probably won't happen.

      Secondly, any money he puts towards it (which of course won't happen) would be your money. You're the one paying the taxes that he'd be used to subsidize these efforts. So you might as well just give the money to the car manufacturers directly, either by purchasi
      • >>Hell no. Why would people with a vested financial interest in the oil business actively participate in the funding of alternative energy sources? Financially it doesn't make sense. And if it doesn't make sense financially, it probably won't happen.

        Hell, I'm just a stupid, little engineer with no knowledge of the oil business. I do know, though, that oil is running out. I hope to God that the oil executives know the same thing!

        Based on that knowledge they're becoming "energy companies" rather than

    • Re:Will Bush subsidise this? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by truckaxle ( 883149 ) on Saturday July 09, 2005 @12:18PM (#13021348) Homepage
      Well in my opinion we should be looking for the "technological silver bullets" becauase that is were the future resides. Bush is worried that the US economy would be wrecked by taxing energy consumption, then what does he think a disastrous war that is costing hundreds of billions of dollars [costofwar.com] is going to do.

      I use to think that people were naive if you thought the war in Iraq was about oil and now I think you are naive if you think it wasn't about the control of oil and contracts in oil field development. Lets just put it this way, the war in Iraq was not about WMD and it wasn't about terrorism.

      It is good tho to see Bush acknowledging that our dependance on oil is a national security. Amory Lovins [rmi.org] has been saying this for years [context.org]. In fact, our dependence is not unlike a chemically dependent junkie who will do things to get his next fix that he would not normally do.

      Regardless imagine if the money that was spent in Iraq was spent on the development of new demand and supply side technology such as hybrid vehicles, cheap diode lighting, solar sail lighting, better building techniques and terrestrial and extraterrestrial solar energy production, safer and cleaner nuclear, wave energy and of couse the holy grail of fusion energy.

      Further the taxing of energy consumption would not create economic disaster as Bush states and as you note in the UK. It would harm certain segments such as traditional energy suppliers but creates and fosters others industries that are self sustaining and pay long term dividends. It would create a whole new economy dedicated to supplying new forms of energy and using what we have more efficiently.
  • I forget where (possibly wired, but I couldn't find the article, at least not without getting a debt collector after me), but I recall reading that the most cost effective methods (in other words, the ones that will most likely be used for a while) for refining the fuel needed for fuel cells created almost as much pollution as the vehicles themselves would be emitting using gas power. Wish I could find the article again, it was a rather interesting look on the situation.
    • But it's easier to build better power plants every few years than to get everyone to buy better cars every few years. Centralized energy production may not be more effective right now but it has a better perspective. At least so I think.

  • FCV's (Score:4, Informative)

    by rerunn ( 181278 ) on Saturday July 09, 2005 @11:25AM (#13021061)
    Good explanation of alternative fuel vehicles here: http://www.midamericanenergy.com/eew/more/alt.html [midamericanenergy.com]

    Here's a good snippet regarding Fuel Cells:

    FCVs are twice as efficient as gasoline or diesel engines, and they produce no pollutants or carbon dioxide. The only tailpipe emission is water vapor. The biggest challenge now facing the developers of FCVs is where to get the hydrogen.

    Hydrogen is plentiful in fossil fuels such as methane and natural gas. At the present time, fossil fuels are the most convenient source of hydrogen. But using fossil fuels to produce hydrogen creates pollution and adds to the consumption of nonrenewable resources

  • Price note (Score:4, Informative)

    by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Saturday July 09, 2005 @11:34AM (#13021114) Homepage
    The article cites the current cost to produce this fuel cell car at about 100 million Yen each. Based on current exchange rates that is about:
    512,000 UK,
    740,000 Euro,
    890,000 US,
    1,090,000 Canadian,
    1,200,000 Australian,
    1,300,000,000 Iraqi (yes, that's B as in Billion).

    The insane cost is to a large extent due to the use of Palladium in the fuel cells and other exotic metals.

    The cars do not appear to be available for actual sale. They are being leased for aroud $500 US per month, at a substantial loss. This is a massively subsidized testing program, not a viable product.

    -
    • Also: How do you dig up Palladium? Ooooh - that's right - you NEED OIL to do it - the mining machinery is all diesel.

      HYDROGEN IS NOT THE SOLUTION.

      Hydrogen fuel cells are more like "batteries", and I think calling them FUEL cells is deeply misleading. We need to do the following, ASAP:

      1.Reduce our population (without resorting to war and famine and such like)
      2. Stop Using Oil
      3. develop a lifestyle that is slower, more decentralised, and a few orders of magnitude more efficient.

      Otherwise, we're g

      • I'll bite anyway

        1. The amount of oil required to mine palladium is so many orders of magnitude smaller than the amount of oil the car would burn over its lifetime

        2. There's nothing misleading about calling them fuel cells. They oxidise fuel (methanol/hydrogen etc..) to produce electricity. A fuel cell is a very accurate descrtiption of what it does.

      • I dont think anyone has said that we will be completly off oil with fuel cells. After all, plastics are made from oil as well as other things. But, the idea is to decrease our oil consumption, and so we still have enough oil for its other uses and rely less on oil comming from other countries.

      • Re:Price note (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Mattintosh ( 758112 )
        You, sir, are the reason the words "nutjob" and "hippie" were invented. Let me count the ways...

        1) We're not running out of oil anytime soon.

        Oil isn't just a biomatter byproduct, it's also a naturally-occurring geochemical substance. Remember, this planet has been here for billions of years, and has had life on it for most (80% or more) of that time. That alone provides more biological oil than we could use in thousands of years.

        Add to that the quantity of geochemical oils that are produced by normal
  • There's a NYT writer who's been driving a Honda FCX in Fairfield CT - when he ran out of fuel, the car had to go in a trailer to Latham NY (Albany) to the nearest usable hydrogen filling station.
  • Here's a review of the Honda FCX [thewatt.com] (the car that the family is renting for $500/month).

    Bascally, the cost is $1-2 million, the engine is 86 kilowatt fuel cell with an ultracapacitor which is charged from regenerative brakes, the car can go about 190 miles before a fill up the fuel efficiency is about 57 miles per gallon of gasoline equivalent.

  • Storing Materials (For example, Gasoline), and using it to produce energy is primitive and inadecuate. What we need is better, smaller batterys. So, we have a form of energy (Electricity), that is clean, easy to store, cheap, and that is portable across different aplications (That is, you can power allmost anything with electricity, engines for different aplications, a radio, a computer, a cellphone ...), and the most important is: You can produce electricity in lots of different ways, from nuclear power, hidroelectric facilities, wind, solar power, using oil, etc.
    So, we have a virtually unlimited resource (Since it's present in nature, is renovable, and can be produced in many ways, some of them are not renovable, but some are).

    The only problem with this technology are batteries, because they are not sufficiently evolved, we just need to put more effort into producing better batteries, and in creating a standard so you can plug any batterie in any device.
    • Storing Materials (For example, Gasoline), and using it to produce energy is primitive and inadecuate. What we need is better, smaller batterys.

      That is a stupid statement. Batteries are just as much 'storing materials' as oil or hydrogen. It's all chemical energy. Only that batteries are far worse at it! There is much less energy to be had oxidizing a pound of lead than oxidizing a pound of gasoline.

      So, we have a form of energy (Electricity), that is clean, easy to store, cheap, and that is portable acr

  • It's fairly interesting to me... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by suitepotato ( 863945 ) on Saturday July 09, 2005 @12:06PM (#13021292)
    ...that /. readers go apoplectic over the Supreme Court decision to let the government of the city of New London, CT take property from private individuals to give to developers, but are more than happy to suggest further intrusions on property and basic economic rights when it comes to alternative energy and environmental pet issues.

    There are many many issues to be worked and a top-down socialistic approach of using coercion and forcing the people to make changes that people haven't thought through or properly justified to a degree commensurate with the methods being used is only a prescription for disaster.

    The American economy is part and parcel of the world economy. If the American economy takes a total nose dive, then so too does the rest of the planet since we all trade with each other. Consider it an economic food chain or food web. You can't total any sizeable portion of it without totalling the rest.

    Let's say they use punitive taxation to force people to use alternative and hybrid vehicles? What about the fleets of trailers and diesel locomotives that bring goods to the people? Will they be similarly targeted? Of course, why leave those polluting behemoths out? Up goes their costs, there's no near-term solutions, drastic moves cost money, and guess who that gets passed to? We're going to save the environment by making Americans pay $10 for a gallon of milk and $20 a pound of beef? Increase the costs of every damn thing on the shelf of every store because the cost of getting it there skyrocketed? At the same time their cost of getting to work in the morning and back home in the evening has gone up 5000%?

    Give me a break.

    The solution is to keep putting hybrids out, keep making them more efficient and cost-competitive, and allow them to be hooked up to power at home to kick-start them, without having to make owners mod them to do it. They need to make engines for the hybrids that run on gasoline, ethanol, diesel, etc. Pretty much rotary or gas turbines.

    The solution is to keep working on increased efficiency and decreased cost of solar panels and solar water heating systems, making them something you'd find standard at the big home stores like Home Depot and Lowes and something that high end home builders would include in their homes encouraging them to be commonplace and low cost enough for lower end home buyers to install.

    The solution is to come up with systems that turn sewage into methane and other useful things, perhaps even within the home itself, putting out less pollution into the sewage systems in the first place.

    The solutions are indeed technological advancement and economic positioning to bring costs down to make adoption natural and not something that will crash a powerful part of the world's economy.

    If anyone proved that top-down control of society by the state is not an answer, it was the Soviet Union and where is Russia now? Struggling to dig out from under. Where is China now? Struggling to find a way to join the modern world without undergoing a dangerous destabilizing total revolution that would set them back for decades never mind the rest of the world that is doing business with them. Statist solutions are not solutions, they're a guaranteed ticket to global disaster.
  • The article states that the vehicle has an operational range of 330 kilometers with a full fuel tank. That translates into, roughly, 206 miles or so. Not so great. My Dodge Stratus with a 2.4L engine gets about 300 miles on a full fuel tank. The article isn't clear on exactly how much fuel the Honda FCX holds, or how much a full tank would cost, but at 26 dollars to fill my tank currently (from absolutely bone-dry empty), with an effective range of 150 miles, compared to the 100 miles in the Honda FCX, well

  • It's the people (Score:3, Insightful)

    by eander315 ( 448340 ) * on Saturday July 09, 2005 @12:43PM (#13021503)
    I'm not sure that the U.S. oil problem is caused so much by the huge 10 mpg SUVs as it is the people who choose to drive those vehicles. What is going to make someone who drives a Ford Excusion choose a hydrogen-powered car over a civic that's been available for decades? By the time gas prices in the US hit a point where people start reconsidering their SUVs, the economy and the whole country will be in a very bad place.
  • It's not an effective way to store energy. Batteries are much better. Modern Lithium Ion batteries have energy density high enough to make all-electric vehicles more realistic. Announcements such as this one [toshiba.co.jp] may cut "refueling" times of electric vehicles down to minutes, making them practical for long trips not just subarban commute.

    Would you object to owning this [universale...ehicle.com] as your next automobile? The future is bright, the future's electric. Remember you heard it here first.

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