Why the obsession with hydrogen?
Someone at the Detroit Auto Show is showing a Saturn SUV that they added off-the-shelf components to, to make a plug-in hybrid. It gets equivalent 150 miles per gallon! It goes 70 or 80 miles per hour! The parts were about $8500.
Here are some replies to my replies:
a.) The source is a report on CNN News.
b.) How are Bush and Cheney going to have hydrogen vehicles in production in 12 months? After that, there would be a new, kinder, gentler administration in control of all of this.
c.) Yes, electricity takes energy to make - but hydrogen takes more energy.
d.) It costs about 1/4th as much to go a certain distance on electrical power as it does with petroleum.
e.) Some are concerned about the environment, but that is a different subject than the depletion of petroleum reserves.
People (esp. researchers) are enthusiastic about hydrogen because hydrogen is what the Bush administration and its backers have been willing to put money into. Gotta have money if you want to do research.
As for WHY this is their favorite thing...
Hydrogen has three major features:
1. It is most cheaply made from fossil fuels (reformed natural gas, gasified coal and oil). It is very expensive to make from e.g. sun and wind.
2. It lends itself to large, centralized systems (you don't want coal gasifiers in every garage).
3. There are a lot of problems to be solved before it can become a real market player.
The Bush administration is backed by oil and coal interests, so this fits perfectly with what they want: they'll have an advantage in the market for hydrogen, it'll take big-money investments so small companies can't compete, and the time lag means they'll get every possible penny out of their oil fields and refineries before the switch comes.
None of this is true for electricity. Conspiracy theory, or just "follow the money"?
EDIT: Here is the Green Car Congress post on the AFS Trinity, with better discussion than you'll get here:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/01/afs-trinity-unv.html
Tom claims "It is more efficient to burn fossil fuels in an automobile engine that it is to burn them to generate electricity to power a vehicle." He's dead wrong. Gasoline engines are lucky to hit 30% efficiency, but combined-cycle gas turbines can hit 60%. If the original fuel is coal, even old-fashioned steam powerplants are twice as good as auto engines because the coal-to-liquids process is only about 50% efficient. Plus, the PHEV can run on wind, solar, nuclear, or hydropower.
The future of ground transportation is electric.
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