Fuel Cell Car Goes Cross-Country 299
person-0.9a writes "CNN is currently running a story about Daimler-Chrysler's fuel-cell concept car completing a trek across America. The CNN article is more about the trip, but details about the vehicle can be found here."
Times running out... (Score:2, Insightful)
Won't this be a little late? Considering the dramatic climate change that's already taking place, I don't know if another 8 years is an option, considering George W.'s disgusting energy policy [wage-slave.org].
Let's hope better alternative energy sources appear sooner, rather than later.
Oil companies (Score:3, Insightful)
I am well aware that not all oil is made into gasolin and that some fuelcells can convert gasolin and that they could use the excess gas (which comes up with the oil) to power the cells. I am also well aware that it is posible through cracking to reduse the raw oil to more usable components.
Still the oil companies would suffer serious losses and so would some oil dependant contries. This might in turn lead to I price war where oil companies would subsidize traditional cars (especially american motors which uses way too much gas compared to their effect.) The fuel cell cars would then have few economical advantages over gas cars. Who would subsidize them? Green Peace?
Re:Oil companies (Score:3, Insightful)
not in the near future (Score:2, Insightful)
note that the countries where the oil lobbiests are not strong actually prodice economical cars, eg. Korea, Japan. look who is seriously pushing the next gen cars, Honda and Toyota. the american companies stage these shows so that they dont look too out of touch.
Re:Times running out... (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a big debate on whether the current measured climate change is being caused by human activity, or whether it is something that would have happened anyway. You certainly can't claim the case has been made that it is not due to human activity. In either case, it seems sensible to do something about it before it is too late.
One big advantage of fuel cells is that they fuel can be generated from renewable resources. For example, you could use wind turbines to generate electricity to electrolize water. I think fuel cell reactions are also reversable, so you could put 'green' electricity into a methanol fuel cell to get methanol out. The advantages are obvious compared to using up a finite non-renewable oil resource.
Re:Safety? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:BioDiesel (Score:5, Insightful)
a decent 'non tree hugging' post about *green* fuel.
The real reason you see so much pressure for hydrogen is because it can be distilled from current petrolium products.
Lessens the blow to the oil tycoons when GM says
Personally im all for BioDiesel
In baltimore alone there are some 40 odd abandoned blocks in the city
Anyways
Re:Bush's disgusting energy policy (Score:4, Insightful)
- people who hate SUV's because they can't see over them.... or just get mad when they see someone in a bigger car.
Vehicles that obstruct the view of the road for drivers behind them increase the risk of accidents for themselves and everyone else. In the case of large transport trucks it's unavoidable, but passenger vehicles can avoid this consequence.
- "Limousine environmentalists" who rail against SUV's and "greenhouse gases" while driving one themselves. Al Gore is one of these.
Agreed. I have little respect for those who don't practice what they preach.
- People who want to force automakers to make smaller flimsier dangerous cars with less passenger and cargo capacity that get more miles per gallon.
Smaller cars are only dangerous because they risk being involved in an accident with larger cars. If everyone's cars were smaller, everyone would be safer because collisions would, on average, be less energetic. Also, since smaller cars have shorter braking distances and better handling, the absolute number of accidents might be reduced as well. As far as cargo capacity, I can get myself, my wife, our kid, and a month's worth of groceries in our Honda Civic which gets >35mpg. People who claim they 'need' an SUV to go grocery shopping are lying, plain and simple. It might be useful for buying furniture, but that's not something you do on a regular basis. Rent a truck when you do, it's cheaper than paying for the gas you'll burn in the meantime.
- Centers for science in no-ones interest who perpetuate tentative and unproven manmade global warming theories.
There's a lot of good and bad science thrown around in the debate, but if there's even a chance that it's correct, it seems prudent to look for ways to reduce emissions - if it can be done without excessive cost. Driving more efficient cars is hardly excessively costly, in fact it generally has a negative cost.
Re:Bush's disgusting energy policy (Score:4, Insightful)
More like the other way around--yesterday I was nearly run off the right lane of a freeway by a patriotic American in a good-for-the-economy truck because he couldn't see my sedan over his high passenger window sill.
> or just get mad when they see someone in a bigger car
Yes, because in the end all people are motivated by the same Freudian need for larger things in life. The fact that some people might actually want more compact cars with less inertia and tight suspensions that can be thrown around corners (it's called "h-a-n-d-l-i-n-g") is obviously pure FUD thrown up by inferior foreign auto manufacturers that can't compete with the exquisite American sculptures-in-(lots-of)-steel.
> People who want to force automakers to make smaller flimsier dangerous cars
Structural rigidity decreases with increasing structure size, as any engineer will tell you. IOW, the larger a vehicle, the worse it does in collisions with objects of its own heft. Never mind that current trucks are not even particularly engineering for crashes--they feature inferior crumple zones and body rigidity. They are designed to survive crashes mainly due to the overwhelming odds that they will collide with a much smaller vehicle. Truck-on-truck collisions fare much worse than car-on-car collisions. Of course, in the US trucks are not measured on the same crashworthiness scale anyway, so they don't have to.
Re:Hydrogen is more dangerous than petrol. (Score:2, Insightful)