FCV's

[Lizzard[MPE]]

GM bets its fuel-cell vehicle prototype is the shape of things to come.

http://www.thecarconnection.com/index.asp?article=5178&sid=175&n=156

hmmmm... whaddya think

[GNEP]

Personally, I think that they have great potential.

I work for an *ahem* "energy" company, and there are plenty of documents around discussing the merits, potentential and problems.

I think that the main debate has been whether to go to an interim step first - using methanol as a fuel with a reformer - or straight to hydrogen. The problems with hydrogen mostly centre around distribution networks and storage.

gnep

[SpiralDragon]

.... we (the world) should have moved on to alternative fule sorces along time ago.. maybe then oil countries (especialy soudi arabia) would have become less pretentious and arogant.... and we would have probably avoided several wars.... this is the way the world should move..... one may argue that this will creat job losses but with the advent of a new industry other jobs will open up thus creating a relative balance...... its more or less how nature works but we humans are to absorbed in our "superiority" that we have forgotten our origins ..... and further more why the hell am i ranting ????

[Wombat]

we (the world) should have moved on to alternative fule sorces along time ago

We can't move to what we didn't have. Fuel cells aren't quite ready yet, and electric cars have not quite reached viability, mostly due to the lack of sufficient batteries. Then there's the equally significant matter of infrastructure.

[[GDI]Raptor]

The design of that car isn't bad, its about time that we start using difrent kinds of energy. The big oil companys specialy in USA won't like this!

[Reverend Maynard]

That is the butt-ugliest car I have ever seen, no question.

[Kruzin]

The body on the car is ugly.
But it is interchangable. Read the article.
Potentially, you could buy the chassis, then put whatever bodys on it that are available. Buy a few bodies, and drive a different looking car when it suits you.

As far as alternative energy, we have always had all we could ever need. It's right up there in the sky. If the amount of research into solar was 1/2 of what fossil energy research got over the last 100 years, things would be much different today.

[KRSESQ]

Most concept cars (with few exceptions) are frankly butt-ugly. It's up to marketing to refine the design into something the public will buy, and the engineers to execute that vision (insert favorite Dilbert cartoon here).

If storage and distribution weren't such a problem we could be burning hydrogen in the internal combustion engines we have now (many experiments conducted along those lines during the past 3 decades). Hydrogen has the highest energy-to-mass ratio of any fuel you care to name that isn't radioactive.

It's the hazard hydrogen presents that forces us to use more stable forms, in which the hydrogen is bonded with carbon and oxygen in various ratios to create a fuel that's liquid at normal atmospheric pressure and temp. 'Course, we don't create these liquids, we just distill them from their naturally occurring raw state.

The philosophy behind the fuel cell is to drastically minimize the use of petroleum in the entire machine.

An interesting aside: I saw a site (can't remember URL) which stated that some scientists are beginning to reject the "dead dinosaur" theory of petroleum formation. The reason being that oil deposits are typically found in deep geological formations that preclude any fossilization mechanism. Instead, they suggest that oil is formed in the Earth's crust under intense heat and pressure from methane gas that was trapped within the Earth at the time of its formation. They further suggest that this is why old wells that were once thought "dry" begin to produce again after a number of years.

If I can find the link I'll post it.

Don't ya hate a showoff?

Kevin

[Wombat]

If the amount of research into solar was 1/2 of what fossil energy research got over the last 100 years, things would be much different today.

Except that the solar cell wasn't invented until 1941 - well after the petroleum infrastructures were in place. Add a few more decades before solar was usable (and even now it's not much more than an expensive battery), and that's why we are where we are.

[Dr Mordrid]

What I want to see is fuel cell home power. This would get rid of a lot of problems with electrical grids; as in widespread power outages etc. Most distribution plans I've heard of would have home users lease them. If one failed they'd just truck one out and swap 'em out.

There are already home fuel cell power units made in Japan (a bit low on total output for American homes though) and several American companies are coming out with them in the next couple of years.

Once the economics of scale take hold to bring the price down it'll be a very attractive alternative power technology.

Dr. Mordrid

[SpiralDragon]

Originally posted by [GDI]Raptor
The design of that car isn't bad, its about time that we start using difrent kinds of energy. The big oil companys specialy in USA won't like this!

to hell with the oil companies. they have put a cork on this one for too long

[impact]

Originally posted by SpiralDragon



to hell with the oil companies. they have put a cork on this one for too long

You are so naive.

So if you used to refill gas at Shell*, now you will be able to refill hydrogen at Shell*. Talk about a change... why do you think that from all the alternative power sources, hydrogen was selected... well, unlike water, or electricity, hydrogen is one of those things you cant easily get anywhere, no sir, you gotta go to the Shell* to refill it and pay for it.

*obviously, you can replace Shell with your fav oil empire

[Dr Mordrid]

Actually most of the home fuel cells will use methane (natural gas) because it is already piped everywhere and doesn't degrade some pipelines like hydrogen does. These devices will use a catalytic reactor to extract hydrogen from the methane on-site, which will then be run to the fuel cell proper.

Uppance: here in Detroit the major natural gas provider (MichCon) is owned by DTE (Detroit Edison), not an oil company.

There has been a lot of info coming from the automakers that they too are looking very hard at natural gas since several commercial fleets here have experience with it in their vehicles (delivery, busses etc). As such the basic infrastructure technologies are already in use (albeit limited) and proven.

Dr. Mordrid

[Technoid]

I read a sci-fi book once that in a reference mentioned that when the Cold fusion and several other energy sources made OIL uninteresting, the super powers withdraw and the Arab states and almost their neighbours vanished from existence due to a nuclear war!

[Dogbert]

a. They'll still use oil to power the facilities which in turn will 'produce hydrogen.

B. This car is B**t ugly.