hydrogen-powdered urban car provides fuel for thought

The Riversimple Urban Car, a hydrogen-powered two-seater capable of speeds up to 50mph and of traveling more than 200 miles without refueling, was unveiled in London this week. While the prototype car is itself a welcome development in sustainable travel, the aim of the company behind it is even more ambitious: to completely eliminate the environmental impact of personal transport. Nine years in the making and seen for the first time this week, the car weighs just 772lbs (350kg), does the petrol equivalent of 300mpg and produces greenhouse gas emissions of 30g/km CO2 – less than a third produced by the latest hybrid cars. Riversimple hydrogen-powdered urban car provides fuel for thought

Hydrogen is a very expensive fuel, and there is no infrastructure for refueling. Regardless of whether the hydrogen is burned or run through a fuel cell, any practical and economical use of hydrogen as a fuel remains a distant dream.

Tom

Not only is hydrogen expensive, but it is produced using fossil fuel! Thus, its environmental impact is the same as for fossil fuel.

Not only is there no infrastructure for the delivery of hydrogen, but fuel cells are extremely expensive and don't last very long. If you think a transmission overhaul is expensive, replacing fuel cells as they wear out will make transmission jobs appear like chump change.

Hydrogen is a boondoggle to distract us from electric cars, which are the environmental alternative to gasoline.

The quote from Jules Verne on their web page, touting water as an inexhaustible source of energy, is a clue that the company is a SCAM! They will never market a single car, but they'll probably sucker a few investors into giving them money.

Jules Verne apparently did not understand the laws of thermodynamics, and imagined there would be some magical way to break apart the molecules of water, so they could be burned for energy. Sadly some people still fail to understand basic physics and insist that "scientists don't know everything" and that "maybe some day" we'll have magical perpetual motion machines.

The really depressing thing is that we do actually have a plentiful source of energy: the sun; but oil companies are so politically powerful that they've been very successful in blocking the large-scale adoption of solar and wind power.

Never, ever underestimate just how ignorant and gullible the masses are. It's far easier to have faith in a hopeless - but cheerful - fantasy than in depressing cold hard facts. The only example I have to provide is the booming business in the various state lotteries

"You can't win if you don't play!"

You can extract hydrogen gas without using fossil fuel, but that is an even more expensive process which requires a lot of clean electricity.

Tom

You can. But we don't. And if we did, burning it in an ICE or a turbine would be far more economical than a fuel cell, and this is the proof that hydrogen is a boondoggle:

We could have hydrogen cars today just by modifying our present engines. The focus on an expensive and unreliable technology (fuel cells) when a reliable technology is available (turbines) demonstrates that the people behind it have no intention of actually marketing a hydrogen car.

Fuel cells are a good for specialized applications, such as space ships, where cost is no object, but space and moving parts are an issue. For cars they are just plain stupid. I would love to have a fuel cell for my boat for electrical generation. They are quiet and compact, both of which are good features for a cruising boat. Unfortunately they are hideously expensive, fickle, and require expensive fuel (pure methanol). The technology is worth developing, but I don't ever see it working out for cars.

Tom

Hydrogen is fail unless we can generate it with the massive surplus of energy we create... but then, we don't create massive surpluses of energy.

We need a ton more nuke plants... then off-peak power surpluses could be used to electrolyze water.

Hydrogen is not a 'source' of energy, it is a carrier, and it's not very efficient at it.

I'd much rather see electrical storage in the form of very advanced batteries or capacitors.

The problem with a large number of nukes is that we are dooming future generations to a world infested with horribly deadly waste that cannot be safely disposed of, and an ever-increasing number of decommissioned plants which, after their useful life is over, remain intensely radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.

Nukes today = uninhabitable Earth tomorrow. The ultimate in selfish disregard for generations yet to come.

The only place hydrogen power makes the slightest sense is Iceland, where there's an abundance of unused thermal power. Even there, it would be far less expensive to charge batteries instead of generating hydrogen to run fuel cells.

If they really have more thermal energy than they need, they could make H2 with it, and burn the H2 in ICEs or turbines. No need for fuel cells. Fuel cells are just much too expensive.

How about the sun? If you lived on the sun, hydrogen would be a good option. On the other hand, air conditioning cost would be high. Perhaps if you only lived there at night?

Tom

Hehehehehe

You've been drinking again, haven't you??

But I don't live on the sun. Even at night.

I can see why. Being from WA you couldn't stand that much sun.

Tom

We get a lot of sun (and not much rain) in Spokane. You're thinking of Seattle. There are two mountain ranges between me and the coast. Seattle is always wet, has great coffee, and is politically leftist. Spokane is dry, gets colder in winter, and is conservative. Spokane also has bears all over downtown. Fiberglass polar bears, each from an identical mold, but each painted differently.

I stand corrected (actually I'm sitting, but why quibble). I saw WA and painted you all with the coastal brush.

Tom

Silly man!

Yep, he must be hitting the bottle again. I knew it was a mistake to take him out drinking

I thought you said stove alcohol made for good cocktails. Now my head feels fuzzy...

Tom