The government is about to go into deja-vu-all-over-again mode -- again -- when it comes to automotive efficiency and, very importantly now, global environmental health and well being.
In the '50s, '60s and '70s, American car makers and the government didn't take the Japanese seriously with their funny little, cheap-to-run, quality cars. Ditto with the Koreans when they showed up later, and ditto again when Toyota and Honda launched their hybrids in the last decade.
Now it's happening again: Barely in office, DoE secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel-Prize winning physicist, in his 2010 budget request wants to zero out the department's successful, relatively well-funded and well-working hydrogen and fuel cell program. He wants to cut it down to a bare-bones research effort, in sync with recommendations from a couple of well-meaning but blinkered, well plugged-in (pun intended) Washington plug-in hybrid zealots named Joseph Romm and James Woolsey. Romm is a physicist, a former high DoE official and now editor of the blog "ClimateProgress.org." Woolsey is a former head of the CIA and advised John McCain on energy policy during the last presidential campaign. Both were part of the Clinton administration.
Chu, Romm, Woolsey and others argue that plug-in hybrids are much closer to reality and a much better near-term technology to deal with climate issues than hydrogen and fuel cell cars. This is highly debatable, the Obama commitment to large federal incentives to get lots of plug-in hybrids on the road in six years notwithstanding: A Toyota executive was quoted in a May 18 Bloomberg story as saying while there will be a market for plug-in hybrids, demand may be limited by price, recharge time and battery durability. Sales may reach 50,000 units/year at most and could be as low as 3,500 units, Bill Reinert, Toyota's national advanced technology manager told a National Academy of Science panel in Washington.
The major car makers, the guys who will have to actually build clean cars in large numbers to a) make a living and b) make a long-term difference in alleviating global warming, are largely ignoring the plug-in dogmatists: Major car makers Honda, Toyota, and Daimler are continuing to develop hydrogen fuel cell cars for the market, said a May 11 Bloomberg story -- a few days after Secretary Chu announced his plans to gut DoE's hydrogen and fuel cell program. Germany's Daimler wants to start production this summer, and Toyota said it will start in 2015, maybe as early as 2014.
GM wants to move ahead on fuel cells as well with its large, 20-year-old, $1 billion program -- government money or not (Other than what seemed to have been relatively small bucks in the early '90s when GM acquired fuel cell technology from Los Alamos National Laboratory, GM never took DoE money for fuel cell r&d but still participates in DoE demo programs) -- but there is that pesky potential bankruptcy problem.
Sandy Thomas, a former aide to Sen. Tom Harkin with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and now the president of H2Gen, a maker of advanced hydrogen generation equipment in Alexandria, VA, has worked up a fascinating, instructive side-by-side comparison of the current status of fuel cell and plug-in hybrids. (The initial reduction in greenhouse gases per vehicle is about the same for both categories -- 46% -- according to Argonne National Laboratory and cited by Thomas):
How many manufacturer-built (as opposed to retrofits or inventor-builts, for example) vehicles are actually on the road?
Fuel cell vehicles: 318 world wide (Honda and Kia have plans for leasing or making available another 300 over the next three years, according to an internal GM document).
Plug-in vehicles: zero (from major manufacturers. Some aftermarket firms have retrofitted commercial hybrids by adding batteries to provide plug-in capability, according to Thomas)
How many vehicles made by manufacturers have been placed on American roads, with performance monitored by a U.S. national laboratory?
Fuel cells: 140.
Plug-in hybrids: zero.
How many miles have vehicles traveled in this real-life evaluation program?
Fuel cells: 1.92 million miles.
Plug-in hybrids: zero.
According to MIT, how much more would they cost consumers in mass production compared to regular gasoline cars (Fuel cell vehicles with 350 mile range, plug-in hybrids with 30 miles all-electric range)?
Fuel cells: $5,040
Plug-in hybrids: $6,020
According to Argonne National Laboratory, how much would these vehicles reduce oil consumption compared to regular cars?
Fuel cells: 100%
Plug-in hybrids: 60%
And finally, how much would the hydrogen fueling infrastructure for fuel cell vehicles and the electrical charging outlets for plug-in hybrids cost, respectively, according to the National Academy of Sciences (for fuel cell vehicles) and Idaho National Laboratory (for plug-in hybrids)?
Fuel cells: $955/vehicle
Plug-in hybrids: $878 to $2,150/vehicle.
OK. Enough. It seems the United States is once again proudly poised to slip behind. Bottom line: Ten, 15 years down the road, the National Commentariat will once again wring hands collectively and lament in blistering j'accuse prose, "how could we let the Japanese and the Germans and the Koreans (and maybe the Chinese by then), get ahead of us? Didn't anybody see this coming in 2009?" (Of course some saw it, but just not the folks in command).
Sandy Thomas, the “president of H2Gen, a hydrogen equipment maker” has produced a study that, no surprise, cherry picks its assumptions and data to show fuel cell powered vehicles are somehow competitive with plug in hybrids.
These cherry picked assumptions and data combine to be a laughable pile of engineering non-sense. Up to $2150 per charging station for a plug in hybrid?? With a $20 extension cord I can plug into a 110 V outlet for overnight charging or cheaply add a 220 V outlet if that’s not a fast enough charge.
When a plug in hybrid is not running its combustion engine, (the way I plan to run mine 80% of the time), it is at least 30% more efficient than a fuel cell car powered by electrically generated H2.
If you assume the source of both the H2 and the electricity for the plug in hybrid is natural gas, then by running a fuel cell permanently in your home connected to a natural gas line to produce hot water and home heat as a byproduct while it generates electricity to recharge your hybrid, you might use less than half the amount of natural gas required for an H2 fuel cell car plus natural gas for home heating just due to less wasted energy.
It is such a relief to have someone like Steven Chu in government. I was so tired of the incompetent political hacks in the Bush administration.
Thanks, but I pass on that notion and encourage you to learn a little thermodynamics.
Revolutionary breakthroughs make possible a Self Powered Internal Combustion Engine - SPICE™.
A SPICE can be used to power a hybrid. It needs no fuel and will end the need to plug-in, as the engine can run when parked and wirelessly transmit and sell power to the local utility.
The SPICE is powered by hydrinos. One barrel of hydrinos can equal several hundred barrels of oil.
To learn more about SPICE and hydrinos see: www.chavaenergy.com Look under the heading HOW?
Until now, car ownership has been an expense. A few plug-in hybrids, equipped with a two way plug, can feed power to the local utility while parked. The owner of such a car could earn up to $4,000 every year.
Payments to car owner’s driving a hybrid powered by a SPICE are likely to be substantially more.
When a substantial number of vehicles selling power to the grid fill a parking garage, it will have become a multi-megawatt power plant.
The cost of many vehicles might be paid for by utilities, as they purchase power whenever needed.
The parked cars each become decentralized power plants - a rapid, cost-effective alternative to the many tough and costly challenges of constructing new coal burning and nuclear power generation facilities.
http://www.fibacanning.com/photogallery/compressed%20gas%20trailer2.jpg
This is the only practical way to transport hydrogen right now. The largest ones hold about 250,000 cubic feet of hydrogen (at normal pressure). That happens to be about 7080m^3. Now, since hydrogen at normal pressure has a density of a mere 90g/m^3, the largest compressed gas tanker can hold no more than 640kg of hydrogen. If we multiply this by four to five we arrive at the mass of an equivalent amount of hydrocarbons that bind that amount of hydrogen chemically. So that's roughly three metric tons of liquid gasoline. Now... in comparison a regular gasoline truck carries about 25 tons of liquid... eight times as much. Moreover, by burning the carbon in the gasoline, we also get a lot more energy out of gasoline than we would out of its hydrogen content alone, making the effective transportation density of hydrogen more than an order of magnitude smaller than that of ordinary gas.
That's the reality of hydrogen....
That, of course, is only an illusion. We are fascinated by what we do not see, like the twin in the magically disappearing and then reappearing magician's assistant trick.
Hydroxy Gas doesnt clump when it sits in a metal tank.
Hydroxy Gas (THE NEW PROPANE)
can be burned in your existing vehicle using a propane converter
Propane Powered Vehicles as an Alternative Fuel Option | 2008 Gas ...Information on using propane as an alternative fuel for your vehicle. ... Saab, Saturn, Scion, Smart, Subaru, Suzuki, Toyota, Volkswagen, Volvo ... For over 25 years, propane has been an efficient fuel for the automotive industry. ...
www.autotropolis.com/wiki/index.php?title=Propane_as_an_Alternative_Fuel
-Nissan, Mitsubishi, Chrysler, GM and Ford have already committed plans for plugins by 2012, with 1st year production figures from 10K-30K first year, for each.
-Saturn (whose EVs will now to GMC), BMW, Toyota, Chevy, Audi, Hyundai, Tesla, BYD, Mercedes and Volkswagen have announced for plans for plug-ins or plugin-hybrids for 2011-2013.
-Detriot Electric is planning 30K EVs for the US by 2011 and another supplier, Magna, is marketing their EV around to the automakers (Ford has already signed on) and want it produced in high quantities to lower the price.
There will be at least 70K full EVs on the US market by 2012, and at least double that in plug-in hybrids by 2013-14....with production for all those vehicles doubling or tripling for the next couple years after that. This manufacturing capacity will also drive down battery costs making these vehicles even more attractive, stimulating further demand.
In ten, 15 years, the cost of battery packs for EVs will have significantly declined, while their range will be predictably significantly longer. If Mitsubitchi, Ford, and Mercedes can release a 100mile range plug-in in 2011, imagine where they will be doing 10-15 years after continued battery advances and competition. In ten years nobody will regret committing to EVs over unproven and impossibly expensive hydrogen.
The real pushers behind hydrogen are the oil lobby. Right now hydrogen is made from steam-treated natural gas...Natural gas is found in the same places oil is extracted from...on land owned by the oil companies. Hydrogen poses no threat to the oil cartel, they'd profit either way. If we switched to hydrogen tomorrow the oil companies would still be in full control, making money from the pit to the pump, just as they do now with oil. EVs destroy that profit model.
Fortunately, through huffingtonpost, I and thousands of readers are allowed to share insightful opinions and facts which either can corrobate with an article or tear its' fundamentals to shreds, as is the case with this article by you Hoffmann. Please read my earlier post below.
Thank you Ariana Huffington for allowing free expression of thought. You are light years ahead of all the major media news outlets. I love Huffington post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/26/warren-buffett-to-help-vo_n_207902.html
I will wait for the electric hybrid Aptera vehicle coming to market this October and gets 100+ miles per charge.
If they can become a commercial reality direct methanol fuel cells have some advantages.
Hydrogen is pretty much a storage medium. We would probably make it using electricity. That is one issue. But the part that is of concern in autos is that H2 is not such a safe or convenient storage medium. Unlike most gases, it has a very wide range of explosive concentrations. It is a tiny molecule and tends to leak through seals easier than other gases.
Methanol is a liquid and is a lot easier to handle safely.
Of course, any final implementation will depend on a lot of factors and it is hard to predict the practical solution at this time.
What's the system efficiency of methanol from production to wheel?
Just asking because I haven't looked at methanol in detail, yet. Could be a winner... could be a loser. We should together look at the numbers and see if they can compete against wind, solar and batteries.
So far asking specifics about how much methanol we can realistically produce has gotten me nothing but the online equivalent of a blank look.
So I'm open minded, but frankly suspicious.
Hey, it's possible.