Talk:Hydrogen vehicle/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2

Wired News

"In May 2008, Wired News reported that "experts say it will be 40 years or more before hydrogen has any meaningful impact on gasoline consumption or global warming, and we can't afford to wait that long. In the meantime, fuel cells are diverting resources from more immediate solutions."

This is purely subjective and cites no references... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.203.169.137 (talk) 09:38, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Note to Mion: User 98.203.169.137 added this, not me. I simply tried to clean up the format which was messing up the page format. See here. -- Ssilvers (talk) 01:33, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

The Comparison With Electric Vehicles Here Is A Bit Skewed...

particularly in the "Alternatives" section, but it resonates throughout other portions of the article as well. Were I convinced that the data supported such a slant, I would consider it absolutely appropriate for it to be represented as such here, but I'm not convinced. While it is true that a hydrogen economy would require significant infrastructural changes, it is absurd to act as though a country relying on battery-powered automobiles would be without big problems. All batteries must be replaced after a given number of charge cycles, and must be charged periodically to avoid deep discharges which degrade their life cycle. Currently, hybrid vehicles require periodic replacement of their very expensive batteries, which causes their cost-saving potential to be questionable at best. 100% electric cars have even worse battery lives because they are unable to offload their work onto a conventional engine. Neither disposing of nor refurbishing these batteries is friendly to the environment. Furthermore, with over six million car accidents a year in the United States alone, the potential environmental impact of hundreds of thousands of smashed lead acid or lithium ion batteries a year (among other types) and the liquids and fumes resulting from the rapid battery discharge that accompany such accidents is enormous. Already many firefighters are given special training when dealing with wrecked hybrid and electric vehicles because the area can quickly become hazardous to breath or touch. Yet, in the comparison that this article seems to be drawing between fuel cells and electric batteries, none of the negatives of batteries are more than briefly mentioned. If a comparison is going to be drawn between the two in this article (which I believe is inappropriate in the first place, but I'll avoid that rabbit hole) then it should be made fairly.

Finally, and probably most importantly, is the very little significance that this article gives to Generation IV nuclear reactors and/or retrofitted Gen III reactors used to co-produce electricity and hydrogen. It goes without saying, or ought to anyway, that if hydrogen is going to become a major part of our infrastructure, then it will be produced at nuclear plants - by far the most efficient locations. This is because the most efficient ways to produce hydrogen are high temperature electrolysis and thermochemical production. Both of these methods utilize a great deal of heat, and hot water is something that nuclear plants have more than enough of to go around. Both processes can be read about on this very encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production#Thermochemical_production and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_electrolysis Yet the efficiencies that this article repeatedly quotes when comparing a hydrogen economy to a "battery economy" do not reflect hydrogen as produced under these methods - without a doubt the methods that would be used. A fairly gross misrepresentation in my humble opinion. 76.177.211.28 (talk) 04:33, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree completely with 76.177.211.28. Really, one should start the comparison from a thermal source from which most of our electricity is (and will probably continue to be) produced. Thermo-chemical hydrogen production cycles avoid producing electricity, which may have as little as 35-40% efficiency. A good thermo-chemical cycle uses low-temperature waste heat which is a by-product of electrical production and essentially free. Although 76.177.211.28 is correct that current research complements nuclear electrical generation nicely, in theory, thermo-chemical cycles could be conducted at solar thermal, geothermal, or even coal plants as well. The electric vehicle efficiency chart also neglects non-insignificant transmission losses in the electrical grid. Bdentremont (talk) 07:09, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree with 76.177.211.28, too. Some more slants in perspective are in the graphic of energy cycles in EV's and hydrogen fuel-cell cars. First, the graphic starts with the grid, failing to account for the chief argument for hydrogen, which is that IT STORES RENEWABLE ENERGY NOT OTHERWISE STORABLE. Also, hydrogen need not be produced at centralized locations. Individual homes (or gas stations, using their perfectly-suited pump sheds surrounded by shade-less driveways) may generate and store hydrogen for local fuel pumps (electric or internal combustion) and heat pump motors for HVAC systems, and to charge metal hydride fuel canisters for use in cars, lawn mowers, scooters, vacation power-packs... Finally, the fuel canisters may be used to power systems directly (maybe a hydrogen gas lamp? or furnace burner?), semi-directly, as in an internal combustion engine, or via a chemical-electric fuel cell. The EV/fuel-cell graphic does not account for variation in the efficiency/impact of inputs to the electric grid, nor for the ability to bypass the grid altogether, nor for the fact that a hydrogen vehicle need not be an electric motor vehicle (it can bypass the fuel cell and burn hydrogen cleanly with internal combustion). --Robmonk (talk) 13:08, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't like how the presentation of alternative electric vehicles reads. It kind of reads like an advertisement for the Tesla roadster. I'm going to change it so it is more on topic and subjective. I wish I could change the image of the tesla roadster myself, but I won't. I suppose a picture alone doesn't hurt. Steelersfan7roe (talk) 02:17, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

The entire section has problems. The biggest, which I fixed and then was re-edited on, is that a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is an electric vehicle. What the current Electric vehicle section describes are battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and they should be described as such. 75.68.20.140 (talk) 17:20, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Hydrogen Cars Only Produce H2O

A part in this article is wrong. New innovations in Hydrogen Vehicles have made the cars able to produce ONLY H20. Not only water, but fully drinkable water.

67.53.149.146 (talk) 15:40, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Question: Is this water really drinkable? I've seen several demonstrations for the media in which someone tastes the water from the tailpipe, but for example piston coatings and valve seats can contain lead[1] and cadmium. Probably this is diluted out enough, but it would be fun if someone can find a study. Wnt (talk) 07:28, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I thought the idea was that a fuel cell wouldn't have pistons in it? Thus, no pollutants such as the lead. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.32.9 (talk) 20:46, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Merge with Fuel Cell Vehicle

I support merging Fuel Cell Vehicle into this article. Right now it's mostly a list of cars translated from the German page. Nobody to my knowledge is using any other sort of fuel cells in vehicles. (comment by Kslays)

I'd suggest renaming the Fuel Cell Vehicle article to List of Hydrogen vehicles. Seano1 22:32, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
I renamed Fuel Cell Vehicle to list of fuel cell vehicles. It is a list not an article and I do not think it should be merged into this article. The resulting article would be too big. In the future, Kslays, please add new sections to the bottom of the talk page and sign your posts by using ~~~~. Thanks, Kjkolb 11:16, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree, the resulting page would be far too long and couldn't possibly all the aspects that seperate pages would. I would also remind you that this page includes the internal combustion hydrogen powered vehicle too. Drizzt3737 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.175.178.246 (talk) 17:35, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think "hydrogen vehicle" should be merged with "fuel cell vehicle" because they are not identical categories. As noted above, hydrogen vehicles need not use a fuel cell (as in the BMW 7-series hydrogen cars). Similarly, fuel cell vehicles have been built that run on fuels other than hydrogen, such as some of the early methanol protoypes by Mercedes.[1] It is true that most current projects involve hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, but the fundamental distinction is that hydrogen refers to the energy carrier ("fuel") used by the vehicle, while fuel cell refers to the energy conversion device ("engine") used to propel the vehicle.[2] Twttf (talk) 04:26, 25 January 2009 (UTC)Twttf

After reading TWTTF's comment I'm beginning to think that "Hydrogen Vehicles" should Become a subtopic within the "Fuel Cell Vehicles" article. Azbassist74 (talk) 07:15, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Oppose if anything fuel cell vehicle should be a subtopic of hydrogen vehicle (the broader topic should contain the narrower one). But no doubt there are fuel cells that don't use hydrogen, so you'd just be confusing things even more. Greglocock (talk) 21:33, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

If it would really confuse people then maybe we should just leave the articles as is. But if a hydrogen vehicle is a form of fuel cell vehicle then shouldn't fuel cell vehicle be the broader topic? Azbassist74 (talk) 07:15, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Merge with Hydrogen Car (completed)

The content in Hydrogen vehicle was originally written for an article titled, "Hydrogen car." When the existence of both articles were discovered, a consensus was reached that the articles should be merged into Hydrogen vehicle. In addition, since Hydrogen car was much more in depth as far as content goes and already mentioned everything that was written in Hydrogen vehicle, the former article was moved into the latter article.

Discussion before merge

yes, please merge with hydrogen vehicle — Omegatron 04:44, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good, merge and redirect hydrogen car -to-> hydrogen vehicle, all car/vehicle articles are named vehicle. --D0li0 06:16, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Alright I'm glad everyone likes the idea. I'll wait until the end of the week for any objections to appear and if there are none, I'll move all the content in this article to Hydrogen vehicle (or let a sysop do it if there's one monitoring the discussion). --Solarusdude 19:31, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

Definately merge - very similar articles. anton 11:04, September 7, 2005 (UTC)
Yes, merging is the only way to keep these articles clean and readable. Kle0012 00:18, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
But there is projects with methanol transformator, they are fuel cell vehicles but not hydrogen vehicles.

Hydrogen as an energy source

Caution : we should not make the mistake that consists in taking hydrogen for a source of energy. Hydrogen is more a way to accumulate power than energy.

Energy is needed: - to get hydrogen by water electrolysis, - to get back electricity and water by oxydation, and the efficiency of the second operation, of course,is not 100%.

--- Wrong. Hydrogen is a fuel, a source of energy too, not just a carrier.anothe thig that there is top now is that what ever way you go the only thing that is stopping you from making a car crash i the stop sings and your moose and deer and rabbits and squirlls and homoes.

Hydrogen is a carrier, not a source. You can't mine hydrogen out of the ground. You have to produce it, which takes more energy than you get back out. It's like a battery. You charge it (split water into hydrogen and oxygen or extract hydrogen from methane) at the power plant (which runs on a power source such as solar, wind, nuclear, oil, etc.) and then discharge it at the load (car). Overall you spend more energy making the hydrogen than you get when you burn it. - Omegatron 23:04, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)
I added a section to clearly state (hopefully) what hydrogen fuel is, in more general terms. The phrasing does sound a bit convoluted (but so is every encyclopedia I've read). I tried to make the paragraph neutral, as hydrogen as a fuel is somewhat controversial. When we run out of fossil fuels, we will actually have a hard time polluting the air with CO2 and CO, unless we take it out first, so any future fuel source is likely to be clean in that respect. We could feasably make gasoline using CO2 from the air and water, and it would be just as clean as hydrogen in a closed loop, so any element that will react would work, to carry the power from the solar cells to your car. If you want a mind blowing experience, see Boron powered cars Splarka 00:52, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I wouldn't push the carrier-source distinction too far. It would be sufficient to note that hydrogen must be manufactured from feedstocks. So must crude oil (the feedstock) be refined into gasoline. Within the system envelope defined by the vehicle, the hydrogen certainly has enthalpy which is converted into electrical work by the fuel cell. That sounds like an energy source within the system of the automobile. If your system envelope is enlarged to include extraction of the feedstock (e.g., at the natural gas well), distribution, delivery, to torque in the wheels ("well-to-wheels") then the primary resource is going to be the feedstock. Define the system envelope first. As for whether it takes more energy making the hydrogen than you get when you burn it, I'm not so sure. A kilogram of hydrogen, when "burned," yields 141 megajoules. That's the change in Enthalpy. How much energy was required to move this kilo of hydrogen from the resource well to the tank of the automobile? Let's assume the supply chain, well-to-tank, is 60 percent efficient, i.e., extracting the resource and converting to hydrogen and delivering to the tank takes 40 percent of the enthalpy in one kilogram of hydrogen. See Journal of Energy Resources Technology, Vol. 126, December 2004, pp. 249-257. On a net basis, that leaves 50+ megajoules. So I would disagree that it takes more energy making the hydrogen than you get when you burn it.--PotomacFever 11:53, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

The main challenges in using hydrogen in cars are the high costs and the low energy efficiencies (see European fuel cell forum and Teslamotors technology comparison); so far, there is not much likelihood of overcoming these challenges. Consequently, only a few demonstration vehicles have been made at high cost.

Don't forget to consider the entire equation. The final product of a vehicle is motion. That is, you cannot compare fuels/sources until the cost per meter moved is calculated. Just because it is more expensive to make Hydrogen fuel, does not mean its more expensive to move a vehicle 100km. Gasoline Internal Combustion Engines are at best about %25 efficiant whereas Electrolytic Hydrogen Fuel Cell Generators are about 95%. Other things to consider is that 2 to 4 electric motors will replace a drive train. There is less enegery lost to friction in joints, the tranny, etc. Less weight would be a factor of lighter breaks (the motors can assist), no drive train, no lubricating fluids (ok maybe very limited at the motors, but probably less that a liter). As this is an article on vehicles, you must consider the entire equation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.134.164.113 (talk) 20:28, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

...There is not much likelihood of overcoming these challenges ...? Who says so? I have removed this paragraph from the article as this sounds like an uneducated guess at best. Unless the author has a fully operational crystal ball this is just a random opinion, there may be a monumental scientific breakthrough tomorrow.

I agree completely with the deletion for reasons noted and because the statement that low energy efficiencies are a problem for hydrogen vehicles has no basis in engineering.--PotomacFever 16:37, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Hydrogen crackers

And the following section has been removed for being ridiculous :-) (see perpetual motion). (a real hydrogen cracker appears to be a device for splitting hydrogen molecules H2 into atomic hydrogen H.):

Hydrogen Cracker
The Hydrogen Cracker solves the problems of the Hydrogen Fuel Cell. Instead of a bulky hydrogen tanks, or methane, gasoline, and ethanol fuel, it runs on ordinary water directly. The gas tank is filled with water from a garden hose. The water is boiled by an electric heater. The resulting hot water vapor passes into an electrolysis chamber. There, the vapor (H2O) is split or 'cracked' into hydrogen (H) gas and oxygen (O2) gas. The gases are seperated when they are attracted to the two opposite poles of the electromagnetic electrolysis chamber. The H and O2 gases go into two seperate chambers. By themeslves, they are just as flammable as gasoline. The hydrogen gas passes into the 4 cylinders, where it is ignited by the spark plugs. The oxygen gas is ignited in to the remaining 2 cylinders. The small explosions caused by the two gases drive the pistons, just like a gasoline powered engine.
The hydrogen cracker is simpler, more dependable, sturdier, and cheaper than the hydrogen fuel cell. It's a much older and more obvious technology. The hydrogen flame is high purity - a clear or invisible flame. Compare this to a blue gas flame. The blue color is the impurities being burned up. JPL Labs tested and developed the hydrogen cracker. The hydrogen cracker has water vapor emissions - no pollution. It can run on sea water and rain water too.
An additional benefit of the hydrogen cracker is that the customer doesn't have to buy a new car. The hydrogen cracker device is fitted into the customer's gas car between the tank and engine. The cylinders are disconnected and reconnected to the hydrogen cracker. The gas tank is drained of gasoline and the gas is relplaced with water. These minor adjustments take only minutes. This is much cheaper and more practical than buying a new car. The customer saves money every year in gas he no longer has to pay for.
And I bet the electrolysis comes from the engine, right? - Omegatron 23:04, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)

Quite right. I managed to generate more energy laughing at this section below than would ever be produced by this device.

Hydrogen has advantages over <other means of storing energy> (eg batteries) in that conventional IC engines can use it with little adjustment. It is less dense than oil so needs a lot of storage - so that instead of a huge battery you would need an enormous fuel tank.

Is it worth mentioning that in WW2 coal-gas powered vehicles operated in the UK? Coal gas is mostly hydrogen (AFAIK). The gas was stored in large bags.

Of course strictly speaking Hydrogen is a fuel - after all gasoline doesn't occur AS GASOLINE in the ground but is still a fuel - but unlike gasoline does require more energy to produce it than is contained in it.

Exile 14:16, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

sure. it's a fuel, but not a source. - Omegatron 14:45, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

The electrolysis comes from the added chamber on the device, not the engine. A gas cracker can split any gas molecule into atoms. A pot of boiling water is a gas cracker. It splits H2O into H and O. A hydrogen cracker, or hydrocracker, cracks H2 into H. But a water cracker splits H2O into H and O. The 'hydrogen cracker' was also the name for the water fueled car engine invented in the 70's or 80's. Actually, it was a water cracker, but the inventor named it a hydrogen cracker. Hydrogen is a fuel. The space shuttle fuel tanks are full of hydrogen fuel. It's not just a carrier. Not all fuels are mined out of the ground.

And where did they get that hydrogen from? (They produced it using lots of energy. More than it takes to shoot the space shuttle into space. They use it because it is a compact, convenient way to carry energy.) - Omegatron 02:48, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)

My source for the Hydrogen Cracker article is my father, who was a technical writer for Aerospace. He also said that this was front page news in the 1980s. He said they kept showing the invisible flame on TV 4 or 5 times, and that the inventor appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to demonstrate the Hydrogen Cracker. He demonstrated it many times to scientists and it was held universally as a working inventions. Headlines read something to the effect of: 'Water Car Invented - Gas Cars Days Numbered'. It was big news. Unfortunately, my father can't remember the inventor's name. he did remember that the U.S. government froze his stock so he couldn't sell it. The government seized the invention and gave it to JPL to further experiment with and develop it. The inventor was killed tragically in a car explosion. Some say it was a murder and others say it was a hydrogen explosion from a glitch in the car's hydrogen cracker. An episode of "The Lone Gunman' is based on the Hydrogen Cracker.

If the idea is out, and it works, then we would be running cars based on water. Who cares if the government covered it up? You know enough about it to reproduce it, many others know about it if it was front page news. So if it works, they would be everywhere, regardless of whether the almighty evil government kills everyone they find out has attempted it. Read the perpetual motion article. There was a huge thread somewhere where some guy got the bright idea to use a magnetron in an internal combustion engine. It would heat up the water in the chamber to steam, which would push the piston, which would provide power to the magnetron.  :-) - Omegatron 02:48, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)
Here it is:
http://www.eskimo.com/~bilb/freenrgl/magnet.txt
hehehehe. *stocks up on water* - Omegatron 02:52, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)

-

Thanks for the great thread, Omegatron. That episode of 'The Lone Gunman' (a spin-off of the X-Files TV series) featured the inventor of the water fueled car, named Stan Miser, if I remember right. The thread you gave me started with the real life inventor of the water fuel cell and car that is fueled by water, named Stanley Meyer. So the episode was based on him. Stanley Meyer died about 1999 of food poisoning, some say, not a car explosion. Stanley Meyer has a video called It runs on Water showing the working demonstration of his invention. There are a few websites on the net about murdered scientists, listing them and the year they died suddenly, with the theory that they are all killed by organized crime with investments in oil. In the book The Free-Energy Device Handbook, I believe it talks about murdered inventors too. 62 inventors have been murdered in the U.S. alone. They all invented working alternatives to oil. My father confirms the inventor hits. He says they are intimidated, sued, bought out, or extorted first. If those methods don't work, murder is next. Hitman exist - not only in the movies...

Why aren't we all driving around in water-fueled cars? Because the inventors who own the patents keep getting killed. And the oil companies or car manufacturers buy the patents from the grieving family often, for pennies of what the patents are worth. The financially struggling families are more likely to sell out than the inventor father with a vision of a water-fueled world. If we were all driving water-fueled cars, the oil companies would lose billions. It's economicly efficient to pay a street hitman $1,000 to kill an inventor, rather than lose $ billions. Or pay off the government in a million $ of donations per year to side with the oil companies against the inventor. This is a good example of why campaign contributions are so bad to the country. The oil companies bought out the controlling car manufacturer companies' stock. So the oil companies ordered the car manufacturers not to build cars that run on water, ethanol, steam, or anything else but oil. Anything that burns can be used as fuel. Hydrogen is a gas that burns.

You do not include any links to sources that back you up on the claim that any single or multiple inventor(s) have ever invented an engine that runs purely on tap water. I also find no evidence that any oil company has ever bought up such a patent from any grieving widows. The only patents I have found that have links to the automotive industry are those developed by Ford and GM. - Moocats 08:32, Aug 18, 2005 (GMT -6)
Here's some of Stanley Meyers patents involving the hydrogen fuel cell technology

When Americans buy gas at the pump, 15 cents of each dollar the customer pays for gas is used by oil shieks to build terrorist schools & buy weapons in the Middle East. if you really wanted to fight an effective war against terror, you would stop buying oil from nations that finacially sponsor terrorist schools and weapons. The U.S. would boycott oil from Saudi Arabia (most of the 9/11 terrorists on the planes were Saudis) and buy more oil from canada, and other countries, that now supply more oil collectively to the USA than the Middle East. Saddam was an oil shiek, and so is Osama Bin Laden's family. There is organized crime in the USA too, related to oil. ExxonMobil has human rights violations over the years (see anti-Exxon sites). Murder changes history. Only a handful of scientists invented everything: Ben Franklin, Edison, Nikola Tesla, (light & electricity), etc. If they were killed before they spread their inventions to the public, we would be reading by candle light now, instead of on a computer. what if Jesus, Buddha, Mohammhed, Hitler, Karl Marx were killed before the fruition of their creations? None of the major world religions would exist. paganism exisited for 1,000s of years with little to no change. Change only happens when an individual wakes up one morning and turns an idea to reality. And there are very few people like that in the world. if they are killed, civilization is paralyzed for the next 20, 50, 100, or 1,000 years until the next one comes along. Invention is not group-inspired. It is self-inspired.

The steam car on the thread link did work, just not very well. That can be expected for a first try. He only has to refine it now. It workes perfectly on his modified steam powered lawn mower, but not so well on his car, because of multiple steam pressure leaks. The fact that it ran on water at all, is a miracle of science!

  1. I don't like the way the oil companies do business either, and I wouldn't be surprised if they turn a blind eye to human rights violations that further their business. However, just the fact that a man who makes extraordinary claims died under suspicious circumstances doesn't mean that his claims are suddenly validated.
  2. "Only a handful of scientists invented everything: Ben Franklin, Edison, Nikola Tesla" - That's not true at all. Many many people contributed to every invention we use today. They all built on inventions and discoveries by others before them. Just because a few high-profile inventors took the credit for something doesn't mean they came up with it all by themselves. Read the Thomas Edison article; he ran a laboratory that employed many inventors, and filed the patents under his own name, only sometimes sharing the credit. How many people contributed to the design of the computer you are using to write this?
  3. The only point that is really relevant: You seem to describe a device that, when a quantity of water (at STP?) is input, outputs the same amount of water (at STP) plus a net release of energy. If such a device really exists, it breaks the theories of thermodynamics and conservation of energy that have been shown to be true over and over again. Every scientific theory is falsifiable, and if this example falsifies it, fine. But such an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. Perhaps these devices that seem to work are tapping into some unknown source of energy that would revolutionize our existence and drastically alter the theories of physics, in which case the information is already out there (just check the web!) and someone somewhere would be able to create a simple demonstration based on the same principles without being caught by the evil evil conspirators. More likely, there is another source of energy that is simply being overlooked. (Perhaps the input water is physically above the output water, and we're just seeing an elaborate conversion of gravitational potential energy.) If you want to contribute something about it to the Wikipedia, that's fine, but if it hasn't been shown by a large consensus of people to be a working, thoroughly tested device, then it has to be presented as such.
Hero worship, martyrdom, and elaborate conspiracy theories have no place in science. Skepticism is paramount. My opinion is that the best approach is to try to genuinely convince yourself that the exact opposite of what you currently believe is the truth. There's no reason not to: If what you currently believe is sound, it will stand up to any (fair) test. If it is not, a test will only bring the sum of your knowledge one step closer to the truth. - Omegatron 15:19, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

-

This has to be the longest talk page on Wikipedia! A handful of inventors provide the initial idea or spark, while a legion of engineers develop that spark, inspired by it. If Ben Franklin didn't fly that kite during the storm, dicovering electricity, the other inventors after him would not be aware that electrical inventions are possible. Inventions happen in spurts. For 1,000s of years, no one invented much, in comparison to the last 100 years. It's not hero worship. It's the sudden realization of one brain. Anyone can invent, but few do, because they simply didn't think of it, nor did the right experiment.

Over-unity is when more energy comes out than goes in. I'm not saying the water fuel cell can do that. Even if it works, it can't break the laws of physics. The inventors of these devices aren't saying that either. They've been misinterpreted by others who get too excited. The explanation is much more mundane. The inventor says his device creates free ($0) electricity or fuel or both. This means you can make your own electricity or fuel, or get it from nature, so you can skip paying your electric bills or buying gasloine. You can buy solar panels now and turn solar radiation into electricity to power your home. Is a solar panel and over-unity device? No. A water-fueled car and other such suppressed inventions are like the solar panel: they just haven't reached the market due to politics as usual. It's the old 'I scratch your back, you scratch mine' thing that makes 'politician' a dirty word to many. The govenment's not evil, just stuck in old political traditions that go back to the politics of ancient Rome. Jefferson and Washington didn't want political parties when they helped to found America, because they knew that the old politics, money, power struggles, and quarrels between parties would inevitabley follow. If you really think politics are honest now, you are not taking into account human nature's weaknesses. These weaknesses (esp. greed) are part of what it is to be human. We haven't evolved at all physically scince ancient times. Just because you can control your greed, doesn't mean other can, nor want to. Most college boys don't know this because they've never had to survive on the streets. The view of ugly human nature is best viewed when you are at the bottom of civilization's social ladder. The view is best at the bottom.

Gathering energy from the sun for less money than the initial investment is certainly "free energy", and scientifically sound. Gathering energy from a conversion of water into water is dubious. You can present something that is dubious on wikipedia (you are encouraged to, in fact), but it has to be labeled as such, and will of course attract criticisms. - Omegatron
All substances contain trapped electrons. Heating, evaporating, or digesting a substance frees these electrons into the air. Water is a substance. Electricity is made of electrons.
Removing electrons from a substance would require an input of energy. Also, it would make whatever you were removing electrons from highly charged. Are you saying the water going into the engine has a different number of electrons than the water coming out? - Omegatron

The confusuion comes when people think $0 cost energy means free energy means over-unity means perpetual motion. Free energy in physics is not the same as free energy $0 financially. You can get free electricity from the sun through solar panels. When you drink water from a mountain spring, you are getting free water, without paying a water bill. Many say 'Why pay for water, when over 75% of the world is covered with water?' The mountain spring is not breaking the laws of physics. With a $150 R/O Water Processor, anyone can turn ocean water into fresh water. You don't have to pay a monthly service charge for radio or non-cable TV. They are free ($0) too. If they are invented now, in the era of giant corporations and mergers, you would have to pay a monthly fee for radio and regular TV.

Television and radio are paid for by the products you buy after viewing advertisements.  :-) - Omegatron
So is cable TV and internet, but we still have to pay a monthly fee on top of that.
Heh. Good point. I don't even have a TV, and I pay for it through products, too, so I guess I get it the worst.  :-) - Omegatron

Electrons are floating around in the air, and in objects, and in everything we eat & drink. They are available and free to any who can figure out how to tap into them. Many say, 'Why pay for electricity and gas, when energy is all around us for free?' The free energy devices simply tap into and concentrate those free electrons, just as hydroelectric plants and other energy 'creating' generators do. A hydroelectric power plant doesn't actually 'create' energy. It gathers energy from the surrounding environment and focuses it. That's all power plants do. Energy can't be created nor destroyed.

Electrons are not energy. (Well, ignoring E=MC2 and everything. But shh...) Energy of one form or another can be used to push electrons, which can be used to do work somewhere else, transferring energy from one place (and/or form) to another. - Omegatron
Electricity is made of electrons. Electricity is energy. Igniting hydrogen gas in the car's engine causes the hydrogen gas to explode. The shockwave of the explosion pushes the pistons, like in a traditional gasoline engine. This is how BMW's internal combustion engine works.
Here is a good site explaining the many different uses of the word "electricity": http://www.amasci.com/miscon/elect.html as well as a specific article about energy and electricity here: http://www.amasci.com/miscon/eleca.html#exist

The universe and physics itself don't care about money. How much money creates supernova? $0. Everything in nature runs for free. Our sun runs on hydrogen gas for free. Nature is blind to money. It can't be hired nor bribed by campaign contributions. Energy can't be created, so it's not pysically free, or in other words new. Free ($0) energy devices obey the laws of physics of the free ($0) universe, better than do gas engines and nuclear power plants. Gas will eventually be used up (finite resource). That's a physical law. Nuclear enegy creates deadly waste: Another fact people ignore. These can be replaced with energy generation that is free ($0), safe, and infinite. But oil and electric companies would lose all their profits. The laws of physics (nature-made) are ignored for profits (money is man-made), just as surely as deforrestation is for profits.

Anything that burns or can be digested, can be used as fuel. The H2O breaks up into H and O in your stomach, as your body digests food & water. The human body is a complex machine and the stomach and digestive tract is the fuel tank and engine. Your stomach is a gas cracker. The energy (electrons) released by the split of food and water molecules, is what powers the body's nerve signal electricity. If a person is starving, he/she loses energy and slows down like a toy with a weak battery.

I don't know the details, but I'm sure that any breaking of water into hydrogen and oxygen in the human body requires a large input of energy, as it would elsewhere. I believe energy for nerve cells comes from ATP, just like everything else, but I could be wrong about this; I'm not an expert. - Omegatron 13:15, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)
The ATP molecule multiplies food's energy x16, like a living transformer. Stomach acid and beneficial bacteria living in the stomach dissolve food and water, causing the electron bridges to collapse, releasing some H and O gas. Bacterial activity gives off gases and heat this way.
How does it "multiply" energy? Wouldn't this create something out of nothing? - Omegatron 19:17, 12 November 2004 (UTC)

Removed section

I removed the following paragraph:

"In the future, oil wells will be completely depleted, leaving no conventional source of gasoline on this planet. Hydrogen, ethanol, shale, refined tar, and other fuel alternatives (see Renewable energy) will take the place of gasoline in cars. Today, rising gas prices show that the shortage is beginning. When the rising price of gas gets high enough, the hydrogen car will become more attractive and marketable."

This is problematic for a number of reasons. First of all, Wikipedia is not in the business of predicting the future: while it is almost certain that oil deposits (not "wells", which are used to tap the deposits) will be depleted at some point in the future, and that gas prices will rise, we cannot say whether this will make hydrogen fuel more marketable, or whether some other form of alternate fuel, or even alternate transportation, will have come along by that time. Second, rising gas prices do not show that the oil shortage is beginning; the pump price of gasoline depends on any number of factors besides the availability of oil. Third, the paragraph was under the heading "Hydrogen internal combustion," despite the fact that it deals with the desirability of hydrogen fuel in general without any specific relevance to the internal combustion engine.--Cholling 20:59, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

I find the paragraph quite true, and I find nothing wrong with it... Andrewrhchen 22:52, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Advert?

The Fuel Cell Car Kit is a working toy model car that runs on solar power, using a reversible fuel cell to store energy in the form of hydrogen and oxygen gas. It can then convert the fuel back into water to release the solar energy. They are available online [2].

Does this seem like it's bordering on advertising to anyone else? Whitejay251 18:44, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

It does sort of read like an ad but I also think it's notable to mention. Maybe that passage could be rewritten so it sounds more NPOV. Solarusdude 19:09, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
It was pretty much the "they are available online" and link straight to a place to buy it that made it seem advertisish. I removed that sentence and found a more appropriate link. So I think the tone is better now. Whitejay251 18:34, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I have both of these kits and the Thames & Kosmos version if far superior, as is it's accompaning educational materials (professionally bound with, color pages, laminated cover)... I've added a link to the T&K kit page, rather than the previous sales page. The other (new) kit is from FuelCellStore.com where there are many other car kits, including a ~$8000 RC car (the closest most of us will come to a functional and affordable HFC vehicle) which has a useable and practical 12vdc outlet (like a real car!). Anyway, hope my changes to the main article are satisfactory. --D0li0 07:46, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Half of this article consists of advertisements and company names. That's the state of hydrogen vehicles at the moment. Is there a Wikipedia policy against this or something? The problem is that this article is mostly outdated and removing links to available products keeps it that way. Somebody needs to remove all the non-NPOV sections claiming hydrogen vehicles are "research-only" and "not available" etc.. --Benjamindees 04:30, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
Well I'm not touching it, IMO HFC-EV's and H-ICE's are the wrong solution for quite a few reasons. Aren't they still "Research-only" and "Not available", I haven't seen any in dealer show rooms. Even when they do become available they are more likely to be exotice vehicles unlikely to be widely adopted and as such make little to no differance in the grand scheme of things. The kits I provided links to are affordable ways for anyone to discover how expensive, delecate, ineffecient, and impractical this technology it, for autos anyway. Afterall someone could buy 2 pretty fun RC EV's for the price of just one of those kits. Anyway, feel free to do whatever you like to this article, I won't feel bad about it at all. --D0li0 09:42, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
Benjamindes, peerhaps you misunderstood my original objection to the text. It was really towards:
  • the tone of those two sentences sounded more like an advertisement than an encylopedia article - which is subjective matter to judge, I'll admit. I asked before I changed anything for this reason.
  • the fact that the ONLY external link was to a page to buy the model kit. That is walking the line of the WP:SPAM policy IMO. I think it's more important to link to pages discussing that they exist, than to point out where you can buy them.
Surveying the current state of development of hydrogen vehicels - who is working on them etc. is fine.
How is stating the FACT that hydrogen cars are demonstration models and not available to the general public a POV statement? ("research-only" and "not available" may not exactly be the right choice of words to communicate this fact granted). Can you give me one example of a hydrogen car I can go out and buy? Whitejay251 18:27, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
Yep. Here: http://www.hydrogennow.org/whats_available/AutomobileConv.htm. And it's POV because it focuses on only one type of hydrogen car, those fuel cell monstrosities that no one will ever be able to afford, while ignoring that hydrogen ICE have been around for decades, and deployed on several occasions. Just because you can't buy one at your local Big Three dealership doesn't mean they are research-only. But thank you for the SPAM policy link. I looked but couldn't find it. And just for the record I have no objection to rewording things to make them sound less salesman-ish. I just don't see the point in the knee-jerk reaction against documenting things that happen to be for sale. This article especially, is one big sales pitch. What's the justification for removing some advertisements but not others? --Benjamindees 08:42, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I see your point on the POV. And sorry if I jumped on you a bit.
I don't necessarily think the copy is "salesman-ish" as stands, again it is a survey of the state of development (although only development by huge corporations that are likely behind the curve). It is not exorciating you to go out and buy this stuff that you can't or including an external link straight to a commercial page. Referring back to the original advertisement-like statement, all I did was remove the sentence "You can buy it online", which did sound salesman-ish, and changed the external link to one which wasn't a sales site, and hence was more appropriate. So I don't think we have an instance of removing some advertising while leaving others intact.
All which is besides the point, really, if it needs more work to fix the POV. Whitejay251 18:36, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
One way to see how unwise a hydrogen car is, try some science fair experiments on the practicality and feasibility of the hydrogen car, if only in your mind.

First experiment: Take a small model car with an electric motor and batteries. Use fresh batteries and find out how far it runs.

Then, take the same fresh batteries and use the batteries up to separate hydrogen from water and to compress the maximum amount of hydrogen. Make it so that the hydrogen and the fuel cells fit in the place of the batteries. This helps demonstrate the extent of the losses of energy when electrical energy is used to make hydrogen and to compress the hydrogen. Watch the model car go such a very small fraction of the distance, that the car went with the batteries. The reason that the hydrogen car goes such a very small fraction of the distance is that there is a large energy lost in separating and compressing the hydrogen.

Do the same experiment with a full sized electric battery car using the same amount of energy that charges the batteries, to separate and compress the hydrogen. The results will be the same, where the charged battery takes the car much further than the hydrogen. Electric battery cars are not too efficient either, because there is energy lost in charging the battery, and in the transmission lines from the power plant. And there is the environmental impact in generating the electrical energy in the first place. That is something that California caught on to, several years after they made car companies, make battery cars. California gave up on the electrical car pseudo panacea, but their new governor of the Hollywood and Hydrogen cults, has a new pseudo panacea. Governor Schwarzenegger just does not know is that it makes far more real sense to to have a small biodiesel engine in the car to keep the battery charged and provide additional power. Governor Schwarzenegger does not know how much hydrogen cars are inefficient and is off trying to set up hydrogen stations. Governor Schwarzenegger, in his ignorance, is only making the energy fall of California more likely. Mikemikef 11:01 4 May 2006 (UTC)


the future of hydrogen vehicles

I think in the future a lot of car manufacturers will make hydrogen cars. One should state this.

I think in the future car manufacturers will realize hydrogen is a bad idea and go with Li-ion battery powered cars instead. The point is the article should not state what you or I think, but what the car manufacturers actually say. --PeR 07:30, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
GM has consistently been shooting for a 2010/2011 production date for its hydrogen vehicles and they're dumping $1B into the initiative.TMLutas 21:43, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Ok--let be begin by saying that the article had mostly a pessimistic aire to it with regard to the feasibility of these vehicles. The environmentalists/interest groups have clearly had a hand in putting a negative spin on this. I want to take up issue with some of their cliamed causes for pessimism as well as thier alternatives. First bio-fuels are the root cause of the spreading crisis in rising food-costs i.e. bio-fuels are causing global famine (this can be seen today in places such as Philippines, Haiti, and several sub-saharan countries in Africa). Bio-fuels are also as bad if not worse producers of GHG due to the clear-cutting and crop-switching practices they spurn. The idea that you can judge the merits of Hydrogen fuel-cell technology by testing the concepts on a small scale, with tape, pipe-cleaners and AA batteries in your back-yard is garbage; the the whole essence of experimental/future technologies seems misunderstood--while they may not be available at present (in K-mart et al) they may become the standard in the future--Perhaps GM will have to take a huge financial hit by mass marketing and producing a cosumer hydrogen vehicle--but think of all those smug early adopters who would gladly throw down 50 grand to have a car with the bumper sticker "being Green is H2Outstanding" or something. Sure cracking hydrogen is an energy intensive process, but who's to say that energy might not come from nuclear or solar? I mean it seems like there's never anything good enough for environmentalists, and this is part of the reason we have been stuck in this vicious cylce with oil for the past half-century (which sure makes them seem like masochists). I remember seeing a Greep Peace add that had a girl walking on a beach. She looks up hearing this roaring in the sky--a 747 flies into a nuclear power plant that was over on a hill behind her. Do they know 70 percent of France's energy (a country with eighty million residents) is produced from nuclear energy? The bottom line is these people just don't like the human race, and whatever it takes to maintain this aweful global arrangement,the better it serves their suicidal and teleological egos.

~M.B.F. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.59.39.109 (talk) 03:04, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

the storage of hydrogen

in the section on internal combustion engines, there is a mention of the solid tank made of metal hydride. According to the Hydrogen Hopes episode of the PBS US TV documentary series Scientific American Frontiers, the solid storage tank was developped by Stan Ovshinsky. Seems to me his name should be present, and wikified. Jerome Potts 04:25, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Apples and oranges

Hydrogen is not a pre-existing source of energy like fossil fuels, but a carrier, much like a battery. It is renewable in a realistic time scale, unlike fossil fuels which can take millions of years to replenish. (Paragraph three of the current introduction.)

We can't have it both ways. The first sentence says (correctly IMO) that hydrogen is not an energy source. The second states that it is renewable. That's a confused and confusing way of thinking, and all too common in the energy debate. Any carrier of energy is renewable, if you like to use the word in this context, but let's not. The second sentence sounds very much as if hydrogen is being treated as an energy source, a common misconception. Andrewa 08:58, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I was going to agree with you but on second thought I think the phrase is okay as it stands. Energy carriers can be disposable, batteries for instance, or renewable. Chemical elements are technically all renewable (aside from nuclear reactions) but, for a chemical energy carrier, some reactions are outside the realm of technical feasibility. It can't hurt to point out that hydrogen reactions are almost 100% reversible, in a reasonable amount of time, with known technology. --Benjamindees 03:39, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

"Current hydrogen production methods utilizing hydrocarbons produce less pollution than would direct consumption of the same hydrocarbon fuel, gasoline, diesel or methane, in a modern internal combustion engine..." (from Research and prototypes). More apples and oranges, with similar reference issues as the "citation needed" section below. Producing hydrogen produces less pollution than driving a car? How much hydrogen, and how far do we drive it?  ;-) 132.229.116.79 15:06, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Hydrogen Combustion Range? The Ford F-250 Super Chief gets 150 miles on H2.

The article states that for hydrogen combustion vehicles "A full tank of hydrogen, in the gaseous state, would last only a few miles before the tank is empty." and that may be true for some, but the Ford F-250 Super Chief concept pickup gets an impressive 150 mile range on hydrogen. Maybe that vehicle uses metal hydrides in its tank in addition to compression and maybe Ford is exaggerating the actual range, but even taking those thing into account surely can't give that kind of range beyond compression alone, can it? I had written off hydrogen combustion as too impractical due to range limitations, but the F-250 Super Chief has made me reconsider. Was the original estimate of "only a few miles" too low and should the article be rephrased? Given that hydrogen refueling can be done at home with electrolosis and that most people drive less than 20 miles per day, I'm wondering if hydrogen compatible combustion vehicles could be very practical very soon (without the massive upgrade to fuel cell electric vehicles) and put a huge dent in petroleum usage in only several years time.

That is indeed just from compression. At one atmosphere of pressure, the tank would only last a few miles. I don't know the pressure that the Super Chief was rated for, but most tanks today are 350-700 atmosphere tanks - and have several hundred times the range of a tank at one atmossphere.--Eljamoquio 02:11, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Energy Required for Compression?

For whatever the standard compression is for hydrogen tanks in hydrogen vehicles (for sake of argument assuming no use of metal hydride storage) how much energy goes into the compression? If, running through a fuel cell, a full tank of hydrogen at standard compression produces 100 units of energy, how much energy went into filling the tank in the first place? Is it low, like 1 or 2 units, or is it huge, like 10 to 30? From what I understand compression energy is one of the dirty little secrets of hydrogen as a vehicular fuel/energy carrier/whatever and I'm wondering if it's a slight drag on the economics or a huge one. How much can use of metal hydrides reduce this? Shouldn't the required compression energy be mentioned in the article?

This report [3] states 7.2 % for low pressure tanks. 13 % for high pressure tanks (typically used in vehicles since the range would be short anyway). For liquification the typically quoted number is 30 %. --PeR 11:36, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Ambiguous Title?

Should a title like "Hydrogen Powered Vehicles" not be more appropriate for this article? "Hydrogen Vehicle" can mean anything, like: a vehicle made out of hydrogen, a tanker carrying hydrogen, a vehicle called Hydrogen... (May sound stupid, but just examples). A title should convey an unambiguous and to the point information as far as possible (That's a POV).

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Aeons (talk • contribs) 18:39, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Hydrogen fuel cells

The last paragraph in the hydrogen fuel cells section probably doesn't belong, or needs to be cleaned up. It called Israel a "repressive regime," which I fixed, but other parts are undeniably questionable. --MZMcBride 00:12, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree -- A discussion of geopolitics or the problems associated with oil based economies doesn't seem quite right under the heading of Hydrogen Fuel Cells. At a minimum, I would move this under a separate heading (maybe "The Push For Hydrogen Vehicles") or consider moving to an article that is more focused on energy independance. --rrouse 19:08 CST, 22 April 2006

Yea, I was trying to find out info on Hydrogen fuel cells, but found myself reading about how America would better it's popularity with the Muslims if they starting using Hydrogen powered cars... It should be moved under a new heading. --clragon 00:27, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

"However, within the past few years, a nickel-tin catalyst has been developed which drastically lowers the cost of a hydrogen fuel cell car to make it an economically viable car." Where is that verified? I thought the nickel-tin catalyst was strictly for hydrogen production, and not suitable for the hydrogen to water direction.

"Hydrogen is nearly twice as efficient than traditional combustion engines, which only have an efficiency of 15-25%. Hydrogen has a thermodynamic efficiency of 50-60%." Where is that verified?

I removed the last paragraph in this section. GarlicBreath 12:40, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Polllution from producing hydrogen: citation needed

"However, current hydrogen production methods utilizing hydrocarbons produce more pollution and cost per mile driven, than would direct consumption of the same hydrocarbon fuel (e.g., methane or gasoline) in a modern internal combustion engine."

Is there a citation for this? There was a recent question in the reference desk about this, and the general consensus seemed to be that electricity-producing powerplants (which are needed for hydrogen production) are much cleaner with the fossil fuels they use than cars are. Thus, while the fuel they use may or may not be more than what a car would use, they produce less pollution. Also, it was mentioned that transportation of electricity (through wire) is a virtually pollution-free endevour, while transportation of petrol to petrol stations adds extra pollution.

So is there a citation for the sentence above? Or should it mention that the isue isn't clear-cut? — Asbestos | Talk (RFC) 14:14, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

A 2005 book called The Hype about Hydrogen clears up the issue. Even though power plants can produce power more cleanly than internal combustion engines in a vehicle, the loss of efficiency in producing the hydrogen for fuel cells to be used in cars, and the inefficiency of producing and using the fuel cells, combine to squander this benefit. --Ssilvers 16:45, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
I'd suggest checking peer reviewed literature instead. The hydrogen pathway involving extracting natural gas from the well, reforming the NG into hydrogen, and delivering it to the tank is about 60 percent efficient (thermal efficiency). See Journal of Energy Resources Technology, Vol. 126, December 2004, pp. 249-257. For comparison, delivering gasoline to the tank is about 80 percent efficient, well-to-tank, so that's not free either. Since globally 30 million tons of hydrogen are made from natural gas ever year it would be hard to ignore this hydrogen pathway. --PotomacFever 15:33, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that in-city pollution should be considered also. From a public health point of view, even if gasoline cars are less polluting, hydrogen cars bring less of this pollution into urban centers where it would cause significant health problems. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.139.226.37 (talk) 17:55, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Neither citations ("Hell & Hydrogen" and "Does a Hydrogen Economy Make Sense") supporting the statement that hydrogen power produces more pollution than conventional fuel specific what these supposed pollutants are, or in what quantities they are produced. Needs better citation, or statement must be removed! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.230.209.135 (talk) 18:30, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Cost of Hydrogen Combustion Compatibility?

There's been a lot of talk about how little it costs to make (at the factory) gasoline powered vehicles E85 certified. It's sometimes stated as no more than a few hundred dollars and at other times rounded down to zero. It's for that reason that there are plans to eventually require that every gasoline powered vehicle be made E85 comptable. (It certainly can't hurt to do so.)

I was wondering, for hydrogen combustion but not the hydrogen storage and fuel lines (and whatever outside of the engine might be necessary to store and burn hydrogen), how much additional cost does hydrogen compatibility cost? If the cost is trivial like for E85 compatibility, would it be a good idea to eventually require that all gasoline/ethanol engines also be hydrogen compatible? While the vast majority of vehicles would never be equipped for hydrogen combustion, this could allow the small number that might to burn it with less modification (mostly just add a tank and fuel lines and you'd be set, right?) and this could allow used vehicles many years down to the line to get new life as hydrogen vehicles. If making gasoline/E85 engines hydrogen compatible cost more than several hundred dollars per vehicle this wouldn't be worth it, but if it's less, then I'd say they should do it.

It costs anywhere from $60,000 and up currently. Some manufacturers actually offer such a service, but news articles indicate that they have had few takers. --Ssilvers 02:43, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Wow! $60,000!? Are you sure that's for the engine alone and not adding the hydrogen fuel tank, fuel lines, compressor and whatnot? It may sound strange (since a H2 compatible engine isn't much good if it can't get the fuel to burn), but I want to know the additional cost of H2 compatibility for the engine alone, manufactured at the factory, not modified later. The Ford F-250 Super Chief mentioned above has a H2 compatible engine, and you're saying that engine cost at least $60,000 more than a comparable gasoline/E85 engine? If so my idea that every gasoline/E85 engine also be H2 compatible will never be economically viable.


The technology used to make the engine run on hydrogen alone in mass production is on the order of ~$500-$2000, depending on what you want to do. The big costs are the tanks and fuel lines.--Eljamoquio 02:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Number of hydrogen filling stations

I added "a limited number of" to qualify the statement about hydrogen filling stations, but somebody reverted it. There are only 13 hydrogen filling stations in California, and less than that in the rest of the US. Does anyone have any figures on the total number? Regards, Ssilvers 02:43, 7 June 2006 (UTC), ja, sorry. i did, because nobody knows the exact numbers, we can make a list by country, or just start a world list ? Reg. Mion 07:30, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

There's now a US hydrogen station finder in the ref list and we've got about 50 stations as of this writing TMLutas 21:46, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

How about a note that the Stanley Meyers fuel cell was a hoax?

I came to this page to read up on hydrogen-powered cars. Imagine my surprise when I downloaded the video for "It Runs On Water" and discovered that cars can run on tap water and generate perpetual motion, but the evil corporate empire had been working to cover it up. When I looked up Stanley Meyers to read more about this unbelievable new discovery, I found out it was hoax, which makes a lot more sense.

I'd recommend that editors put some kind of notice that it's hoax, especially if you're going to link to a video that makes it look like the truth. I understand if you're using it as an example, but to someone who's not an expert and just comes this article out of the blue, it's almost presented as fact. What about Daniel Dingle, was that a real water-powered car, or another hoax? I don't know what to believe now.

Just a recommendation, since it really discredits this article to a layman. Or, if I just misread something, feel free to dismiss me. I don't feel comfortable editing an article I know nothing about.  :)

Coming from the frontpage The "Hydrogen on Demand" method, originally credited to Daniel Dingle of the Philippines (somebody removed this! Why?) Mion 13:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

The Bottom Line

The third paragraph of the article is not substantiated in the body of the text or with references. I personally think it goes too far, but see what you think after reading:

The main challenges in using hydrogen in cars are the very high costs and the low energy efficiencies; so far, there is not much likelihood of overcoming these challenges.

Further down, the article notes that the vehicles have high efficiency, so if anything the article contradicts the above sentence. Here's why I don't agree that efficiency alone is killing the hydrogen fuel cell car. The supply chain of moving the hydrogen from the reservoir (e.g., of natural gas), converting from methane to hydrogen, and compressing/liquefying it and delivering to the tank is less efficient than the same process for gasoline. It's fair to say that much. For hydrogen, a good estimate of well-to-tank efficiency is 60 percent. See Journal of Energy Resources Technology, Vol. 126, December 2004, pp. 249-257. For gasoline, it is better, or about 80 percent.

So hydrogen is behind at the point of delivery to the tank. But then the fuel cell converts more of the enthalpy in the hydrogen into electricity and torque in the wheels than does an automobile's gasoline engine and transmission. The fuel cell vehicle is more than twice as efficient versus the gasoline fueled autos, even assuming the latter is a hybrid. See M. Wang, Journal of Power Sources, vol. 112, pp. 307-321. Thus, on a well-to-wheels basis, hydrogen in a fuel cell vehicle is very similar to gasoline in an auto. Consider a gallon of gasoline versus a kilo of hydrogen; after subtracting off the energy required to manufacture/refine and deliver either fuel to the tank, the net energy that is left will provide the same miles of travel in either case.

Efficiency alone does not suffice to kill fuel cell vehicles. --PotomacFever 12:46, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Links

This article had more external links than any other article I have ever seen, with the exception of the Chernobyl disaster article. I removed most of them. Many were dead or redirected to the home page of the linked site. This hit the links to articles very hard. Some of the removed links were either inappropriate or unhelpful for the purposes of this article. A good external link should be a supplement to the article, but some of the links were to find hydrogen vehicles or to promote them (with little or no useful information given), which is not what an encyclopedia should be doing. A few of the links had such an extreme POV that they were not useful - linking to a site making blatantly unfair comparisons is worse than not having a link at all. At least two links were irrelevant and a couple were overly specific. You are welcome to put back any that you truly think are helpful or even to delete some of the links that remain (they are not great, just better than the ones that were deleted, in my opinion). I recommend that you do not revert, since so many of the links were dead or just plain crap. Instead, please go through them individually. However, if you revert, I will not revert back without discussing it on the talk page. -- Kjkolb 10:03, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the article still has many links, though all of them are moderately to highly useful. Andrewrhchen 22:55, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I wish the guys working on internal combustion engine hydrogen would talk

First of all, I'd like to see the comparative BTU values of hydrogen vs. natural gas (methane), LP gas, acetylene, and other commonly compressed fuel gasses.

de:Brennstoff, its in Joule. If you like you can add it to the english page yourself. This question should be on the page Fuel.Mion 12:32, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Energy density.Mion 14:34, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

We will be talking ONLY about the gaseous state, right, since this stuff is a liquid only way down near absolute zero K?

Liquid hydrogen exists at -450 degrees Fahrenheit and is already in use in some hydrogen vehicles ~~
Too much energy is lost cooling it down.Mion 12:32, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Around 20 K, actually, and it's being seriously considered (though 700 bar tanks seem to be winning ATM). Theoretically the liquification cost is something like 30%. Practically it's something like 40%. These numbers are comparable to losses with other approaches. 132.229.116.79 15:09, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

The way I see it, fitting a conventional internal combustion engine for hydrogen involves very specialized metals and especially tooled fittings to go from "tank to engine."

There is already some experience with the technology since 1823, see Döbereiner's lamp and Hydrogen technologies.Demand is rising and once mass production kicks in the prices will steeply fall.
Hydrogen Engines don't require any exotic metals. The fittings, etcetera, are basically the same as CNG fittings. I don't know what you consider exotic; but in my opinion, the only exotic part of the setup is the tank.--Eljamoquio 02:08, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


Until we get some more specifics, we will all be guessing and marveling that it costs $100,000 per vehicle

Homebuilding 04:00, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Automobile and bus makers

updating section in the coming weeks: Added the list Fuel cell vehicles (fuel cell only and hybrids) coming up new list Hydrogen combustion vehicles (hydrogen only and hybrids). Mion 08:40, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

nuclear to hidrogen

The main problem with the nuclear-to-hydrogen economy is that hydrogen is ultimately only an energy carrier. The costs associated with electrolysis and transportation and storage of hydrogen may make this method uneconomical in comparison to direct utilization of electricity. Is this a correct sentence? Im not positive its not enough to dare to change it, but isnt the point of nuclear-to-hydrogen of using thermolysis and not electrolysis of water to produce H2, which (besides making this sentence simply incorrect), given the extreme temperature nuclear power generates anyways, would be relatively efficient, certainly in comparison to electrolysis? --89.172.80.221 04:35, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Not quite thermolysis, but not just electrolysis - the article on hydrogen economy speaks of some specific process of high temperature electrolysis (HTE), for use with gen IV nuclear reactors. Supposedly very efficient and economic even with todays prices of hydrogen production, only experimental (there are no gen IV nuclear reactors yet). According to a recent EU paper on future energy strategy, http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/energy_transport/figures/scenarios/doc/2006_scenarios_on_energy_efficiency.pdf even given ambitious goals of reducing greenhouse gasses by 20% and energy consumption by 20% (though this last number is not in absolute terms, i think, but in its ratio to GDP level, that is in decreasing energy intensity - but its a negative num in absolute terms too) AND increasing the renewable sources generated energy to 20% by 2020 while maintaining GDP growth, they would still likely phase a lot of nuclear energy out, maybe even faster than the baseline scenario, for the simple reason that current electricity consumption offers many opportunities for greater energy efficiency so they simply would not have much use of all that nuclear-generated electricity. Given this, converting it efficiently into hydrogen would make sense. --83.131.157.166 14:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Fuel Cell Train

East Japan Railway Company to Test World's First Fuel Cell-Powered Train in Summer 2007. This is an interesting news. However, I don't have a good knowledge to write much about this. Anyway, I think it should be mentioned in this article. Piyatad 14:38, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me more applicable to the hydrogen economy article, rather than hydrogen vehicles, which really means cars, trucks and, I suppose, aircraft. --- Ssilvers 15:20, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Info

I rode in GM's Hydrogen-3 Vehicle at an alternative energy expo today and had a chance to thoroughly examine the engine and its components so I may be able to field some questions...72.83.117.107 21:43, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Hydrogen cycle engine

The idea is to run completely without air, thus on the inert Nitrogen existing In the Air which forms Nitrogen Oxides with the combustion (Dissipation). An additional oxygen tank would by necessery with substancial costs in particular from the saftey aspect to burn pure oxigen

A Conversion of exhaust gases is intendet ( Exhaust gas recirculation ). This is made possible by replasing the air intake completely with hydrogen. The flow resistance minimises its higher fluidity (diffusion characteristic) and optimises the volumetric efficiency ( no Nitrogen ) . the achievment is adjusted totally over the quantity of the injectet oxygen ( higher power density ) The surpuls unburned hydrogen water Vapour can condense in the exhaust- intake system, whereby the negative pressure with fresh hydrogen results in mole contraction becoming balanced. Because of such a Rich mix the oxidizer (Oxigen ) is fully converted. Also there is decrease in the combustion temperature. A further characteristic is that there is a Oxyhydrogen chain reaction, branched out strongly to a greater fragmentation ( Less binding energy ) in the combustion chamber. With modern rocket propulsion one uses likewise this effect, which results from a hydrogen surplus. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.68.97.51 (talk) 15:11, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

How is this a benefit? Reduced pollution?: "A primary benefit of using pure hydrogen as a power source would be that it uses oxygen from the air to produce water vapor as exhaust." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.230.9.86 (talk) 14:48, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

The Oberth Effect:

That seems to be the correct term for saying that, under some circumstances, it is better to use fuel deep inside a gravity well. Fuel provides ΔV, and a given ΔV provides a greater change of energy when applied at higher V. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.129.245.148 (talk) 08:53, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

hydrogen vehicles 280 miles

The standard for hydrogen vehicles that the US government is striving for in its fuel tank capacity targets is that they will be able to drive 300 miles, just like gasoline powered vehicles. The only way anybody's going to buy such a beast is if they either have a local station with a hydrogen pump or they have a hydrogen generator at home. If you leave home with a full tank and let's say you have 10 miles to the highway. there is no way that you're going to run out of fuel until the next pump even if the 'previous' hydrogen station is only 2 miles prior to your entrance.

The point of the exercise is to provide a case study in how one would calculate the cost of putting in a 'thin' system that would allow for national travel no matter what the country. You take the number of national highway miles, divide by 300 (or some smaller number like the 280 I picked) and multiply by the 30k cost per pump. 4.5B USD is not something I'd like to pull out of my personal piggy bank but it's really not that big for a government infrastructure program covering the US.

The rest of the pumps are going to come via private investment driven by market demand, in other words, over a period of many years, gasoline pumps will be replaced by hydrogen pumps. 0.5T spread out over 15 years in an economy that's already 14T and growing is not really that big of a deal. In many cases money that would have been spent replacing worn/broken gasoline pumps will go toward buying hydrogen, reducing costs below 0.5T. TMLutas 20:59, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I see what you're saying, but whether you can convince me or not, it's entirely WP:OR (original research). Can you come up with any citation for the cost of a "thin" system published in a reliable source (see WP:RS)? By the way, lets conduct this discussion on the talk page so that others can participate. Best regards, -- Ssilvers 22:40, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Reference #1

Reference number one is a link to a review published by technologyreview.com. Although well written and entertaining, the review, which is used to support at least four extremely important claims in this article, is nothing more than a personal account followed by several unexplained and unreferenced numbers which supposedly prove the authors point. A more definitive source needs to be used.—Preceding unsigned comment added by OlJanx (talk • contribs) 06:56, 2 June 2007

I agree. More generally, the article is backsliding towards being a collection of quotes by beltway bandits. The debate on hydrogen is captured in the article on hydrogen economy, so this article just rehashes the same old same old. Suggest we revert this article to the technical focus it had until a few weeks ago.PotomacFever 12:09, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality

"A potential benefit of using hydrogen as an energy carrier in vehicles (if the hydrogen is not produced using fossil fuels), is that it could decrease the control of the energy producer cartels over the energy markets and weaken their ability to manipulate prices (such as occurred in connection with the oil shocks of the 1970s)." Maybe it's just me but this statement seems a little slanted... Enelson 17:15, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Good point. Removed. -- Ssilvers 18:30, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

viability

Hydrogen has to be cooled to -252 C or pressuized to store it properly. Are these the sorts of things that you want in your family car? And hydrogen is flammable. So why waste money on fuel cells and little electric motors when tried and tested technology would work just as well? How much energy does it take to prepare the hydrogen? T.Neo (talk) 08:53, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that gasoline is not flammable, or does not need to be stored carefully? -LesPaul75 (talk) 10:54, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
According to this site, it's very safe: [4] We should keep using tried and tested technology? Maybe we should just walk everywhere instead. That's tried and tested. As for your question of preparing hydrogen, I think Honda has set up some kind of home refueling station that uses solar panels and electrolysis. I don't know very much about electrolysis, but I doubt it would take much to convert water to hydrogen with a solar converter. I'm guessing that it takes more energy to pump oil from the ground in the Middle East, fly it to the U.S., purify it (I don't know where they do that) and transport it with a diesel than it takes for generating hydrogen in the U.S. and having it transported to a station (assuming you live in the U.S.) Cheaper, too. 64.255.92.159 (talk) 02:07, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
See The Hype about Hydrogen, or read the actual book for some healthy skepticism of hydrogen. Paul Studier (talk) 04:58, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

One-sided

Is it just me or does this article seem a bit one-sided? The article mentions a few advantages of hydrogen powered vehicles in the first two sections, but it then goes into a giant section about all of the disadvantages! Plus, it gives very little information on how hydrogen powered vehicles actually work. 69.107.113.89 (talk) 04:56, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the article is properly balanced, though not very well written. Ballard recently pulled out of the Hydrogen vehicle business, Research Capital analyst Jon Hykawy concluded that Ballard saw the industry going nowhere and said: "In my view, the hydrogen car was never alive. The problem was never could you build a fuel cell that would consume hydrogen, produce electricity, and fit in a car. The problem was always, can you make hydrogen fuel at a price point that makes any sense to anybody. And the answer to that to date has been no."[5] See also this article, this one, this one, and this one. See also The Hype about Hydrogen. Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 15:20, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
I think you are missing the whole point of the Ballard action, more recent about the myths [[6]] [[7]] and [[8]], and that book from 2005 is running out of steam. Cheers Mion (talk) 00:16, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
I think this article is way to positive about fuel cells. Fuel cells are really just a scam by oil companies and car companies to produce inefficient fuel based cars that need frequent service and expensive fuel. Instead of EVs which are by far the most efficient option which need no fuel infrastructure and are much simpler than other cars and have less parts that need to be serviced. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.207.94.1 (talk) 04:58, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
A problem with purely electric vehicles is that they do not reduce pollution. They simply transfer the pollution from the tailpipe (of a gasoline powered car) to the power plant. You have to produce that electricity somehow, and you're going to be hard pressed to do it at the power plant, transmit it over power lines, store it in a battery, and then power an electric motor... all more efficiently than producing the power directly in the vehicle. Hydrogen doesn't really solve this problem, either, though, as it technically just serves as a battery. Electric vehicles are only a solution once the world has abundant, cleanly produced electricity, and vastly improved battery technology. -LesPaul75 (talk) 11:17, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

this whole article seems biased against hydrogen vehicles

The source against "hydrogen fuel causing more pollution than fossil fuels" seems VERY LAUGHABLE to me. Hydrogen as a fuel can be gathered through electrolysis of water can it not? Wouldn't it produce HHO (gases) when separated from water, and its "waste" would be H20 (water)? Since when does burning hydrogen cause high levels of carbons? Maybe I'm retarded but I've never once heard of burning hydrogen causing high levels of carbon ? About the only 2 problems with hydrogen I've seen is 1. storage and 2. secondary devices needed to extract hydrogen from water, which can be easily solved using secondary engines (e.g. air compressor engine, battery, solar power, etc. etc. etc.) So I mean the whole "validity" of that argument seems very ..... invalid.70.157.65.111 (talk) 14:44, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Most likeely the energy put into electrolysis would be from fossil fuels, and the energy return in the fuel cell is only about 40% of what you could get from directly burning the fossil fuel and therefore to go the same distance in a hydrogen car it would take more fossil fuels than a fossil fuel or hybrid car. Also, hydrogen requires additional transport after the fossil fuel has already been transported to the site where the hydrogen is produced so it wastes even more energy. If you want to argue that the power could come from renewables, you could simply use a battery electric car which would (according to this article) be 93% efficient in energy return. (how much of what you put in you get out) Hydrogen is just meant to be a futuristic fuel to distract people from better alternatives that don't require a fuel distribution infrastructure or frequently serviced parts. 98.207.94.1 (talk) 05:16, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Could someone give some examples of better alternatives? I'm very curious. 64.255.92.159 (talk) 02:14, 24 August 2008 (UTC)


I can not understand why no one here can even begin to realize that no matter how you intended to use the hydrogen, the only real problem is how to efficently split H2O into H and O. That is where the focus should be. Not on how much you can store, not on how many filling stations it will take, not on how far a car can go on a tank of hydrogen, but instead how can we take water and extract the hydrogen and oxygen from it on-demand. The future will not require filling stations and the tanks should only be needed to hold water which would then not be a danger. I don't know how this can be done but it is something I have been studying for years and I feel like that will be discovered one day. Also if someone figures out a real solution, then stop being greedy and just post the details on the internet. Don't try to get a patent and keep everything to yourself. There is no government that can stop the knowledge from spreading over the internet like they may have been able to 20 years ago. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.90.24.170 (talk) 19:11, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

This is an active area of research. See: [9]. Getting a patent doesn't imply "keeping everything to yourself." Once you apply for a patent, the technology becomes visible to everyone, so it's actually quite the opposite. If you believe there's a big cover-up of this technology using patents, then do a patent search and learn all about the technology. All the patent would mean (if it actually did exist) is that you would have to pay the original inventor a licensing fee if you plan to actually build a commercial device. -LesPaul75 (talk) 11:05, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Out of Context

The final sentence of the introduction states:

"For mobile applications, hydrogen has been called the least efficient and most expensive possible replacement for gasoline"[4].

However, the fifth paragraph of the cited Reference #4 states:

"A hydrogen car is one of the least efficient, most expensive ways to reduce greenhouse gases," said Joseph Romm, a physicist who was in charge of renewable energy research in the Carter administration. "If you want to slow down global warming, you're not going to do it with a hydrogen car."

The sentence in the article suggests that hydrogen used in propulsion is inefficient and expensive for energy transfer while the article clearly states that hydrogen is only a poor solution for reducing greenhouse gases. Therefore it seems the sentence has been taken out of the context of the reference. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.60.79.115 (talk) 15:07, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I have put the exact quote into the article for clarity. -- Ssilvers (talk) 18:10, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

+++++++++ I agree that the overall tone of the article slants negative against this potential technology. Also, material from and a link to the US DOE's hydrogen program would enhance this section. http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.129.233.29 (talk) 05:22, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

H2O as a greenhouse gas

I was under the impression that water vapour is the worst greenhouse gas, something that has been said by both my chemistry lecturers and New Scientist. Greenhouse Gas states this too. Doesn't this mean that Hydrogen cars will not solve the problem of global warming as they are touted as able to do? If everyone buys one we'll be increasing the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wheatleya (talk • contribs) 10:42, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Ha! Amazing find! This is very interesting indeed...but I think that water vapor is leagues better than CO2. --haha169 (talk) 00:28, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Water vapor is in equilibrium with all the rivers, lakes, oceans, deserts, forests, and mountains of the world. This equilibrium is expressed through climate and weather and often called the water cycle. Rain and snow are processes by which the system reaches a lower energy state. The water vapor currently exhausted by cars burning hydrocarbons or by cars burning hydrogen in a theoretical future won't impact this water cycle significantly. The carbon cycle is more sensitive since there aren't terrestrial lakes of CO2 for dry ice to snow into. This isn't to say that forests and oceans don't act like act like sinks for carbon dioxide in the carbon cycle, they just don't have the capacity the ocean has for water. The atmospheric levels of water vapor will rise if the temperature of the entire system is changed. How that temperature could change s the basics of global warming (climate change) and greenhouse gas something that might be worth looking at more detail. In addition, since life depends on an appropriate greenhouse effect so saying "water vapour is the worst greenhouse gas" or "water vapor is leagues better than CO2" are inappropriate value judgments. Carbon dioxide might have the highest radiative forcing of compounds commonly found in the atmosphere or its large atmospheric content might compensate for a lower per molecule heat absorption to give the largest greenhouse effect. I don't know and wasn't able to learn with a quick web search. I do know the location of a gas in the atmosphere plays a role in the magnitude of its greenhouse effect. Chances are this level of detail information isn't ready for the New Scientist or text books. I think your misconceptions are pretty common. I hope this clears things up.--OMCV (talk) 12:11, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
I understand what you are saying, but to be fair my physical chem lecturer is an expert in the field (presumably has to be to gain the position), so surely he has access to this level of information? Wheatleya (talk) 22:03, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

next week

hydrogen economy needs a rewrite and trials needs a cleanup and a connection to automobiles, thats for next week, i tried to restructure a bit, feel free to edit. Mion (talk) 21:21, 19 July 2008 (UTC)


I do not like your restructuring at all. Why did you take away the difficulties? I'm reading the articles and I'm a bit confused as to why "Alternatives" are offered with no explanation. It should be under a "difficulties" section. Without it, all I see is alternatives and I'm left wondering why alternatives are offered and making it under a larger difficulties section would make more sense because it's easier to find out why there are alternatives offered. Steelersfan7roe (talk) 02:14, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Obstacles

The page states, "at least four technical obstacles and other political considerations exist regarding the development and use of a fuel cell-powered hydrogen car," which is followed by only three specific obstacles: cost, freezing, and service life. Is something missing, or should the word "four" just be changed to "three?" -LesPaul75 (talk) 14:08, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Unrelated question: How does this [[10]] relate to fuel cell vehicles? Could this bring us any closer to a vehicle that could internally split water into hydrogen and oxygen (by solar power or by plugging in) and then combine the two in a fuel cell for power? -LesPaul75 (talk) 14:08, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

For the first question, the section has to reflect Fuel_cell#Fuel_cell_design_issues, it needs a bit of a rewrite, for the second question the link belongs to Artificial photosynthesis, its in its early stages, i think to early to bring it in in relation to well to wheel. Cheers Mion (talk) 14:26, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Maybe worth mentioning in the fuel cell section, DOE Fuel Cell Program Key Targets [[11]], so we can do some benchmarking, or mentioning that some research is ongoing [12]. Mion (talk) 15:08, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


comparision with fuel cell / hydrogen vehicles - batteries much better at the moment

see http://www.claverton-energy.com/why-batteries-not-hydrogen-fuel-cells-are-the-future-of-private-motoring-geoerge-wallis.html

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Engineman (talk • contribs) 13:52, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Vehicles are not the same thing

Fuel Cells can use more than Hydrogen to produce electricity.

A Hydrogen vehicle runs on Hydrogen, either by being burned in an internal combustion engine or using a Fuel Cell.

The topics should not be merged - they are distinct.

Richard Boettner, richardboettner.com --216.43.158.8 (talk) 16:32, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

They're not distinct, they have overlap, but they're certainly not synonymous, so it would make for a poor article.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 17:15, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Comparison graphic wheel-to-well

Shouldn't this include electric grid inefficiencies (turbine to socket) to be a fair comparison? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.68.20.140 (talk) 01:36, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Hydrogen vehicles are a bad idea

Hydrogen vehicles are a bad idea:expensives and without autonomy. Electric cars are (probably)a good idea in the future. Agre22 (talk) 01:10, 6 September 2009 (UTC)agre22

Comparison with other vehicles

User:Mrwobbles added a considerable amount of material and synthesis to support a POV critical of the various vehicles that present alternatives to hydrogen vehicles. User:AniRaptor2001 placed a POV tag on the article and reorganized the section, hiding most of the new material. I support removal of the hidden materials. Also see WP:RS and WP:OR. -- Ssilvers (talk) 15:39, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

i.m.o. the presently-hidden POV and synthesis information ought to be deleted. Adequate relevant references are the minimum WP requirement here - and they are lacking. - Tim riley (talk) 19:24, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand the neutrality issue. Perhaps you could explain it to me. As I read the article, the graphic was the first thing that sprung to mind. Firstly you cannot deny that electric motors run on DC, nor that the grid transfers in AC. I can reference both of these facts if needed. A transformer is needed and this will reduce efficiency, also if references are needed they can be suppled. Secondly you cannot deny that a battery of that size will need a cooling system, you can argue with my assumptions but not the issue of a cooling system being used. I have referenced the GM Volt's cooling system as an example. Thirdly, the added weight of a BEV will make the BEV less efficient at generating distance. Work Done = 1/2 * Mass * Velocity^2. A 50% increase in mass results in a 50% increase in work done. Simple GCSE physics. A simple scale up of the Volt's battery pack weight provides a suitable weight/range comparison with the Honda FCX. Fourthly, grid transmission efficiency in the UK is 93% as referenced earlier in the article. Fifth, the FCX Clarity is 60% efficient, I provided a reference for this yet the grpahic uses a 40% figure. To say that the article after my edits is unbiased when you yourself have contributed to over 1/2 a dozen EV articles is hardly fair. You remove or water-down all criticism of EVs leaving the article with biased information supplied by an EV manufacturer. If anyone had any reason to not be neutral on this issue then Tesla Motors certainly do. I appreciate that the language used in the BEV page is somewhat inflammatory, however the points raised are valid ones that many do not take into consideration when comparing different forms of transport. I think that with some changes to the language this could remain neutral whilst still raising some important points.

Since the previous response raises one of the points I have brought up then I think to delete the material would be nothing other than a loosely veiled attempt to suppress valid points in order to present a one sided view. The theoretical maximum efficiency cannot be argued with since all facts are referenced. --User:Mrwobbles

If you have research criticizing Battery Electric Vehicles and PHEVs, the place to discuss that research is at those articles. The Hydrogen vehicles article contains a very brief summary of how those technologies compare to Hydrogen vehicles. It is not the place to argue about the value of BEVs and PHEVs. The points you raise go beyond the scope of this article. After you have convinced the editors at the BEV article to make your changes, then by all means, update the summary in this article. As to your points above, Tesla, which supplied the data for the graph, is building these cars already, so the data from the graph is real world data. Your discussion above makes assumptions that contradict the graph, but you do not cite any WP:Reliable sources to show that the graph is not correct. You merely make a hypothesis that the graph is incorrect and then gather a bunch of data about related issues and give us an arithmetic lesson to try to prove it. This is not permitted in Wikipedia articles. See the discussion of "Synthesis" here. -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:11, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

"The Hydrogen vehicles article contains a very brief summary of how those technologies compare to Hydrogen vehicles. It is not the place to argue about the value of BEVs and PHEVs." A comparison requires balanced analysis of both the advantages and disadvantages of the alternatives. This is exactly the point to argue the merits of one mode of transport over another.

It is not a hypothesis. The graph is wrong. It failes to take into account grid inefficiencies for a start and also AC/DC conversion, 93% in the UK as referenced earlier in the article. How can you accept this fact and then ignore it in the well to wheel analysis? This is either wrong or intentionally misleading and should be removed. It can never represent 'real world' data till it takes into account at least these two facts. This is also mentioned by several others on this discussion and hence should warrant the deletion of the graph. The battery cooling and added weight of the BEV is also not taken into account. The efficiency of the fuel cell in the graph is 2/3 of the fuel cell being produced by Honda. This is also referenced.

I'll accept that sythesis is against the rules, however the references I've provided have highlighted how wrong that graph is. If you remove the calculations and leave the reported efficiencies of each step this would give everyone an accurate idea of the true losses from EVs whilst not breaking the rules on synthesis.

Mrwobbles please give some references, and NO, its not against the rules,, it would help. Thanks Mion (talk) 00:23, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
""Work Done = 1/2 * Mass * Velocity^2. A 50% increase in mass results in a 50% increase in work done. Simple GCSE physics." and yet curiously irrelevant. Only a small proportion of the power used in a car is devoted to creating KE, and half of that is recovered when braking by regen, in most PHEVs and BEVs. So colour me unimpressed by your analytical powers. Greglocock (talk) 23:45, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Irrelevant? Regardless of the proportions of energy used to generate KE, a 50% heavier object will require 50% more Work to accelerate to the same speed over the same distance. If you then can only gain back half (very generous imho and without reference) this still represents a 25% increase in work done. This is not irrelevant as it means the BEV is 80% efficient at generating distance due to weight alone. Further if you are saying that most of the energy in the battery isnt used to generate KE, then you are saying that EVs generally and batteries especially are inherently inefficient. Weight is a serious concern to all vehicle manufacturers.

That picture had been removed by Tesla Motors from their website because it was factually inaccurate and hence it should be deleted permanently. I also think this backs-up my case to have the inefficiencies in each step to the electric vehicle be posted without a synthesis. This will highlight the problems faced by PHEV/BEV that most people ignore.

If you were coloured unimpressed, then I guess I am dumbfounded that someone could claim that the weight of a vehicle is irrelevant to its work done. I'll be adding the efficiencies of each step and leaving out the calculation. I'll reference every fact provided but not synthesize a conclusion. Why would F1 teams spend billions of pounds reducing the weight of their cars? It produces higher performance from the same energy requirements.

One last thing. The statement in the first line of BEVs cannot be backed up by the EFCF website since this is a self Publicized report. The reports he puts out are sadly lacking in credible facts and he often references himself, something that doesnt really instill confidence in the widespread acceptance of his views. He also fails to list any of the assumptions he is using for his calculations and list none of the energy transfer steps for the EV case. That report is woefully short on credible fact and solid reference. Also the Transportation Energy Databook merely lists facts and figures. It makes no conclusions to support the idea that BEV are more efficient on a well to wheel basis. If you wish to reference facts from their to support this but the exact figures should be given. Also owing to the 300+ pages, page references wouldnt hurt.

I don't need references since this is a talk page. Since you are starting from a ridiculous premise then there isn't much point trying to point out your errors . I suggest you go away and find out how much of the fuel a car uses is devoted to gaining KE in a realistic drive cycle. Then crunch the numbers. I'm not really going to take this seriously, hydrogen cars are a joke and this article will have absolutely zero effect in the real world. Oh by the way, 29 years ago before I went to uni I wrote a program that estimated the performance and fuel consumption of cars for the car company I worked for. 6 years later that program was still in use. Maybe, just maybe, you are picking a fight with someone who knows exactly what they are talking about. Incidentally I did not say that weight was irrelevant. Do not misquote me in future. Greglocock (talk) 23:45, 19 September 2009 (UTC)


You say and I quote """Work Done = 1/2 * Mass * Velocity^2. A 50% increase in mass results in a 50% increase in work done. Simple GCSE physics." and yet curiously irrelevant." I cant find any other way to read that than increases in mass are irrelevant. Perhaps there is something in the 'and yet curiously irrelevant' part that I have misunderstood. Maybe thats true, or maybe it isnt, either way I tend to believe only what I can verify or has been reported from a credible source. I would like to know exactly what ridiculous premise it is that I am starting from? All I have done is to highlight inefficiencies in electricity supply that I felt were lacking from the article. I have referenced all of these inefficiencies and haven't synthesized a conclusion.
The KE part is the irrelevant bit. I suggest you go away and find out how much of the fuel a car uses is devoted to gaining KE in a realistic drive cycle. Then crunch the numbers. And sign your posts.Greglocock (talk) 00:29, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
Very little, I would imagine around 20-25% if we're talking ICE. Regardless of the proportion of energy devoted to gaining KE, an increase in mass will result in an equal increase in the work done to generate that same KE. You have yet to convince me that it is misleading. It's Newtons 2nd Law. Heavier objects require more force to accelerate.
I didn't suggest you 'imagine' an answer, I suggested you go away and find out. and sign your posts. Greglocock (talk) 01:09, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
Your suggestion was and I quote "find out how much of the fuel a car uses is devoted to gaining KE." What car are we talking here petrol ICE, diesel ICE, wankel engine, ethanol ICE, hydrogen ICE, PHEV, BEV, FCV? If you are going to make suggestions at least be specific. The quoted figure on the Wiki page is 18-20% thou these sources are dubious. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrwobbles (talk • contribs) 02:32, 20 September 2009
In which case the extra cost of 25% more weight is 4.5% - 5% more fuel consumed. Actually it will be less because the slower acceleration will mean it does not make its cruising speed so often. If, as suggested, regenerative breaking can recover half this then it is less still, still relevant but maybe 2-3% rather than 25%. Rich Farmbrough, 02:54, 20 September 2009 (UTC).
The best approach is to define a 3 way pareto, aero, rolling resistance, and KE(which is brakes). Then you need to know how much of brakes is recoverable, and what the efficiency of your regen system is. As you can see two of those classes are mass sensitive, and for most urban or city drive cycles, for normal cars, the proportion of the three is very roughly equal. A recent SAE paper suggests that cars with regen are roughly half as sensitive to increased mass compared with non regen cars. Greglocock (talk) 04:27, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
Well, as it happens good numbers for the proportion of KE related energy in a given drive cycle isn't particularly easy to find. The best source I've got to date is SAE paper 1999-01-2929, which looks at the impact of regen on Prius and Corolla class cars across 6 different drive cycles. Unfortunately Table 6 in this paper, which deals directly with the estimate of braking energy compared with positive tractive energy, seems to have many errors in it. I can only hope that the final %ages are correct. These suggest that for urban type cycles, somewhere between 32 and 44% of the total positive energy generated at the wheels, is burnt in the brakes. When you go to CAFE numbers, you get 20%.
You need to bear in mind that not all the energy put into KE is 'lost', some is used for coasting. But all the rest is burnt in the brakes.
The proportion of this energy that is recoverable via regen, according to this paper, is 71-93%, however their modelling is very simplistic, and their estimate for the efficiency of the recovery process is 20% high, I vaguely remember that Prius gets about 50% if you run a more sophisticated model.
Just in case this is a bit too technical, what it means is that the KE part of the equation is at most 44%, and much more typically 20%, of the energy usage in a car. Of that roughly half, or a bit more, can be reclaimed by regen.Greglocock (talk) 11:20, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
"These suggest that for urban type cycles, somewhere between 32 and 44% of the total positive energy generated at the wheels, is burnt in the brakes. When you go to CAFE numbers, you get 20%." This would imply that with the 51-73% recovery (taking account of the 20% you say they overestimate) the recoverable KE is 51-73% of 20-40% depending on SAE or CAFE figures. This amounts to 10.2-29.2% of KE generated at the wheels being recoverable. I assume by "total positive energy generated at the wheels" you mean KE.
No, I mean total positive energy, that is KE+rolling resistance+aero. Your fixation on KE is bizarre. Greglocock (talk) 00:16, 21 September 2009 (UTC)


Either way if between 20-40% is burnt at the wheels and then 51-73% of this is recoverable by regenerative brakes, then 10-30% of the positive energy generated is recoverable. This sounds a reasonable estimate to me seeing as most thermal systems are usually somewhere in that range.Mrwobbles (talk) 12:38, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
Oh and Rich regardless of the efficiency of the engine to accelerate an object with 25% more mass to the same speed over the same distance will require 25% more force, I make no mention of fuel. In a 20% efficient engine a 5% increase in fuel will result in a 1% increase in KE. Say you need 20J of KE to move an object and need 100J of fuel to produce that energy, to accelerate a 25% heavier object to the same speed over the same distance will require 25J of KE and 125J of fuel. I think you might be trying to get at the differences in efficiencies of the two engines which will make a difference to the fuel requirements needed to generate the added KE needed. However accurate efficiencies of EVs are few on the ground and since high performance diesel engines have efficiencies in the region of 55% I cant see EVs being much more than about 10% more efficient. And thats excluding battery cooling.Mrwobbles (talk) 14:22, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

SAE paper 2004-01-0572 includes a breakdown of the traction energy used by a conventional car in the CAFE cycle (table 4c). Of a total work in the cycle, 7184 kJ, aero was 2278, tires, 2515, and inertia work (ie your KE equation) the balance, 2391. Therefore your fixation on KE results in a very large error. Greglocock (talk) 01:34, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Okay then since friction (F=(mu)*R with R=mg) and KE (1/2*m*v^2) are directly proportional to the mass of the object in question, a 25% increase in the weight of that conventional car would lead to 3143kJ of frictional resistance and 2988kJ of inertia. Since aerodynamic drag is related to surface area and assuming this increase in mass has no effect on surface area, aerodynamic drag should not be affected. The overall increase would be 1225kJ or 17.1% in work done. I'm still till yet to be convinced that work is irrelevant or that to say increased mass results in increased work is misleading.Mrwobbles (talk) 12:38, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
The ONLY person who said that weight was irrelevant was you, which you falsely attributed to me. I was objecting to your exageration of the importance of your 'GCSE' equation. KE (that is braking energy) is NOT the dominant energy sink, as the figures show, and your revised analysis indicates. I agree with the rest of your comment above, and your analysis. The same paper identifies the sensitivity of energy usage to mass for regen and non regen cars. For example table 10 shows a Prius sized car. A 10% increase in mass increases the mpg from 39.2 to 36.2 for the conventional powertrain version, without regen, and from 64.7 to 60.6 for the FWD full hybrid version. Greglocock (talk) 01:16, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
Which would suggest about a 17% decrease in sensitivity to mass (6.33% decrease in fuel economy of regen compared to 7.65% in non regen) which would fit with the rough analysis above. Apologies for my misunderstanding, my original take on what you said was that mass was irrelevant, I concede that was not your intent.Mrwobbles (talk) 11:47, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
  1. ^ Holt, D.J., "Fuel Cell Powered Vehicles," SAE Technology Profile, Warrendale, PA: Society of Automotive Engineers (2001)
  2. ^ "Fuel Cell Vehicles," Encyclopedia of Energy, Vol 2., pp. 759ff, Elsevier (2004)
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