Technical issues stall hydrogen vehicles

[russ 1]

I plead ignorance. What does that mean?

The same way trains run on elecrified track and bumper cars move on an electrified floor. That solves the electrical storage problem with electric cars, and lowers their mass, which adds to efficiency.

This is all Hollywood and political BS anyway. If we truly cared about reducing carbon emissions, cars are the worst place to start. There are many millions of cars that require a high energy density fuel source. There are relatively few power plants that are much dirtier.

An easier start, with much less economic impact, would be to eliminate the use of coal in power generation. Coal, Natural gas, and Oil are all equally as bad for releasing carbon into the atmosphere. Coal is by far the dirtiest power source though. Replacing it completely with nuclear power would eliminate a huge percentage of US carbon emissions. Replacing oil and gas heat in the north with Electric heat would be another huge savings in carbon emissions, assuming power generation was more than 80% nuclear.

Burning coal probably releases more radioctivity in one day than the cummulative total of all US reactor accidents.

The US has plenty of coal, and almost no oil - so don't hold your breath for this to happen. Coal mining is now a very profitable business in the States.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I plead ignorance. What does that mean?

The same way trains run on elecrified track and bumper cars move on an electrified floor. That solves the electrical storage problem with electric cars, and lowers their mass, which adds to efficiency.

This is all Hollywood and political BS anyway. If we truly cared about reducing carbon emissions, cars are the worst place to start. There are many millions of cars that require a high energy density fuel source. There are relatively few power plants that are much dirtier.

An easier start, with much less economic impact, would be to eliminate the use of coal in power generation. Coal, Natural gas, and Oil are all equally as bad for releasing carbon into the atmosphere. Coal is by far the dirtiest power source though. Replacing it completely with nuclear power would eliminate a huge percentage of US carbon emissions. Replacing oil and gas heat in the north with Electric heat would be another huge savings in carbon emissions, assuming power generation was more than 80% nuclear.

Burning coal probably releases more radioctivity in one day than the cummulative total of all US reactor accidents.

The US has plenty of coal, and almost no oil - so don't hold your breath for this to happen. Coal mining is now a very profitable business in the States.

It's not just CO2 emissions that cars emit.

...

"GM: The battery is dead

"Automaker phases out its electric vehicles amid lack of interest, easing of emission rules

"...As California retreats from its strict pollution regulation, GM is taking the cars off the road...scrapping them...Over the past decade, state regulators have caved to pressure as car makers vigorously fought at hearings and in court to halt the regulation. Major automakers have stopped production...The California Air Resources Board is poised to make changes that reflect that the cars are a commercial failure and to promote more promising technologies that have emerged...a combination of low-polluting gas-powered vehicles, gas-electric hybrids, and a couple of hundred fuel-cell cars down the road...The fuel cell cars have already doubled the range of electric cars...".

(AP, Brian Melley, printed in the Orange County Register Wed, Apr. 9, 2003)

This pathetic apologia validates David Freeman's statement that

"...They've been singing that tune while they built the dang things...Back in 1990 when the Air Resources Board laid down the zero-emission rule, there were no electric cars, it was a dream. Now that the dream is a reality, they're prepared to abandon it."

Who killed the EV: former ARB Chairman Alan Lloyd and 7 other members of the Air Resources Board (three prudent Board members voted to retain the EV, DeSaulnier, McKinnon and D'Adamo). ARB voted 8 to 3 to submit to auto makers and oil companies, and abandon the work that had been done before to make the dream reality.

Now, 4 years later, fuel cells cars are increasingly seen as unrealistic, not to say a hoax. Curiously, when asked where they would get the hydrogen, it all seems to come from "renewable sources". But when charging EVs, fuel cell folks argue that it all comes from burning coal.

Ethanol has been denounced from IBD to Consumer Reports, while bio-diesel can't possibly replace gasoline in cars. There isn't enough of it. We are burning oil, the sequestered energy of millions of years of plant-stored solar energy, in one year; far more than one year's growth of plants to make ethanol, or bio-fuel.

GloWarm has finally been recognized as due largely to automobile exhaust and the DEBRIS OF THE OIL ECONOMY.

By bending to the will of the oil and auto companies, 8 members of Lloyd's 2003 Air Resources Board abandoned America, violated our trust, and condemned us to lose at least a decade while oil consumption still rises and hybrids have not made even a tiny dent in average miles per gallon or gasoline usage.