171–175 of 175 posts
The article deftly steps around the real issue: Fuel Cells are entirely an petroleum industry promotion. The goal is to provide a seemingly credible (but in reality completely unworkable) clean alternative so politicians, car companies and oil companies together can work "towards a clean future" while deep down knowing that it's a stalling tactic to keep the petroleum infrastructure in place. Any fuel cell funding su…
I really don't understand the whole cars are in league with big oil. What on earth do the car companies have to get out of it? The big name in the 90s, Ballard, had buy in from a couple of car companies and no oil companies.
Oil companies don't like electric cars for obvious reasons.
Car companies on the other hand have a different reasons: electric cars hardly require maintenance, and a large part of the money car companies make is by selling replacement parts. Car makers were perfectly happy with the current situation, and the new-one threatens part of their business model, and nobody likes to switch from a working proven business model to a new-one.
However, the difference between car companies and the oil industry is that the latter cannot adapt to this new situation. Car makers could just postpone introducing pure electric cars, or introduce even more complex 'hybrid' solutions under the pretense of being environmentally-friendly, while selling even more replacement parts and maintenance - which in my opinion was always silly.
They could hold the boat off as long as nobody else tried to make a real production-ready electric car. So it's no surprise that it was a new-comer to the market that made it first. Suddenly, a lot of car manufacturers jumped the electric train: Renault, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes, ... You really think none of them thought of making an electric car before? GM did, just check out the "who killed the electric car" documentary. I don't believe for a second not every single car maker saw what was inevitably coming, but why kill the goose that lays golden eggs? It would be really hard to explain that to shareholders at a time when the industry is going through a very harsh period.
On solution to the long distance car storage is simply not to. There are less than 50,000 miles of interstate highways in the US. If we added a 3rd rail or similar system for powering cars as they traveled range and efficiency quickly become a non issue. Granted, the interstate highway system would just be the start eventually you would want to cover just about every road. Not to mention safety concerns etc, but it's…
Your numbers [1] are off by 3x - the federal highway administration calculates 164K miles of highway. However, like Tesla's Supercharger idea perhaps a targeted rollout of functionality to connect major centers combined with the existing charging infrastructure would settle the "range anxiety" issues. [1] http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/hf/pl11028/ch...
ex-FC researcher here. pretty much gets it. some other context: it's hydrogen for cars because of the chemistry ie, start-up, shut-down and response times. most FC claims are more of a 'displaced emmissions' scheme than zero-emmissions (unless you're in say, NZ where we have @#$# loads of renewables on our grid). PEM fuel cells are limited to 100 dC due to the hydrogen ion transport via liquid water - that's a proble…
(writer of the blog post here) Interesting, can you divulge a bit more about where and when you did FC research? Was it academic or for a manufacturer? You are absolutely right; PEM FCs - and I glossed over this in the blog post, might want to readdress it in a future part - are the only portable-enough technology for fuel cells and they inherently come with this ion transport problem and by extension cooling problem…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There is no excess ...yet. But solar and wind power are becoming the cheapest way to generate electricity. Their naturally variable production will mean that there will be periods of excess power available, and finding a good use for that excess would be nice. But I agree that batteries, not hydrogen, are the way to go.
When you factor in all the sources of energy consumed in this country, captured solar power amounts to well less than 1 quadrillion Btu out of an annual total of 96.5 quadrillion. There will never be an excess of solar or wind. Even if you continue the dramatic growth in renewables of the past decade there is utterly no chance that renewables can replace fossil fuels. The gap is too great. You are living in a dreamwo…
1. Wind and solar energy is currently about 3% of the world's supply, and projected to grow at 6-8% per annum (source: BP Energy Outlook 2015, and others), meaning it doubles every 10 years or so... wind and solar may well become the dominant energy in our lifetimes.
2. There already is an excess of wind power, in some places at some times. Where I live (Perth, Australia) wholesale energy prices go negative several times per month, typically at night when the wind is blowing and power demand is low.
> You are living in a dreamworld if you think that the path to a sustainable future can be found through technology alone. Sustainability can only be achieved by dramatically lowering our energy consumption rate.
I disagree completely - lets see what happens say over the next ten years.