Quote:
Originally Posted by DGthe3
Hydrogen isn't being held back by patents that are stashed away being un-used. There are a few really big reasons why you can't buy a hydrogen fueled car: there are essentially no places to fill the car up at, and its next to impossible to store a large volume of the stuff safely & cheaply. On top of that, gasoline has 4x the energy density per gallon that liquid hydrogen has. So even if a hydrogen car were to be twice as efficient as a gas engine, you would still need a tank twice the size to go just as far. Thats for liquid hydrogen -something that would be impossible to maintain in an automobile. Gasseous hydrogen is going to be bulkier than the liquid stuff to get the same energy, and at 'reasonable' temperatures & pressures its only going to be half as dense as the liquid. And even if you do manage to get sufficiently large capacity hydrogen tank, between fill ups a fairly high percentage of the fuel will escape through whatever vessel you're holding it in.
Lastly, hydrogen isn't a fuel. Its merely a means to store energy -it has to be processed from some other source, for a net loss in energy. At the level of the end user, this doesn't mean much. But at the infrastructure level, this poses massive problems, especially if you want to replace gasoline & diesel fuel (I don't think you do, but it is the logical conclusion to the claim that hydrogen is better than gasoline for cars). To switch to hydrogen en-mass would require some other energy source greater than the amount we get from oil. For the US to replace petroleum fuels with hydrogen for cars & trucks, it would probably take more energy then is currently produced by coal, nuclear, and hydro-electric combined. It wouldn't require a doubling of your electric power output, as there are non-electric means to produce hydrogen, but the take-home message is that there would need to be an insane amount of resources required in order to produce enough hydrogen to fuel America's vehicle fleet. And by resources, I don't mean just lumps of coal or pellets of uranium. I also mean money, to the tune of trillions and trillions of dollars. I don't see anyone footing the bill for the hydrogen revolution any time soon
Also, something is wrong with your logic. Why would a 'patent whore' automotive company simply sit on a patent for a revolutionary technology that allows people to have all the performance they want with 0 carbon emissions (which I'm sure they'd get a CAFE score well into the triple digits for), and instead accept that they'll lose hundreds of millions of dollars on hybrid and EV programs? And if its the oil companies that are squirreling it away ... if the technology is viable in the market one of the large automakers would have licensed it to solve their CAFE worries. It would probably be worth at least a billion per year to GM or Ford or Toyota or VW or any other major automaker.
|
That!
That has always been the 2nd level of conspiracy. It't not the oil companies, it's the OEMs, it's already been invented they are a) in cahoots with the oil companies b) been paid off by the oil companies or c) they are waiting for some unknown reason.
GM has had the "In your driveway" program for some years now. If you read up on that you will see the difficulties of fueling and driving a vehicle with 10,000 psi (that's a lot, look it up) tanks to give you a 250 mile range.
Honda too has had a small fleet of fuel cell vehicles and BMW has had a fleet of liquid hydrogen powered cars running around.
It isn't being hidden, they are all over the place. But it remains either a science experiment or simply a more expensive way to propel a vehicle.
Here is the rule, when profit can be made on it without government subsidies, it will happen on it's own. Until then gas is still cheap and any other alternative is far more expensive or simply has infrastructure problems or simply less usable range.
Gas is tough nut to crack. It transports easy, stores easy and burns the best.
Now about those spy shots...............................