Hydrogen, Hybrid, Gasoline, Other

[Jeff The Great]

I got the idea for this thread from our diesel engine that runs on cooking oil discussion. We started talking about energy and which method was more efficient, etc. I was just wondering what everyone thought about the following options:

Cars running on Hydrogen fuel cells: Basically a complete redesign of the modern car. Hydrogen and Oxygen are combined in a controlled electrochemical reaction, the only byproduct is water. Due in 10 to 15 years.

Hybrid engines: Cars that use electrical power for starting and low speeds. Brakes recharge the batteries to gain back power for starting up again. Comercially available for 3 years. Car gets 50-60 miles to the gallon in the city and on the highway.

Gasoline: Make cars more fuel efficient using conventional methods. Comercially available in 1-2 years.

Other: Run cars on farts and happiness, used cooking oil, grandma's pills, etc.

[jitspoe]

Hehe, I'm gonna have to vote for hydrogen fuel cells (think one of those could take out an overpass? BOOOOOM!).

The problem with the farts and happiness engine is when the driver farts, the passangers aren't happy, thus reducing the happiness below the necessary threshold and causing the engine to stall. This then leads the driver to be unhappy, and the whole thing is at a standstill.

[Victor]

Your poll is fundamentally flawed. You're asking for an opinion on which of the options is best for the environment, but your options can obviously lead to a direct fact.

If we consider in the future there will be technology to produce hydrogen fuel cells without causing harm to the environment in the process, than of course driving cars via fuel cell engines will be better than any sort of hybrid, cleaner burning fossil fuel, or even fart. However, a car that produces no waste by-product will be better than a car that produces even just water. Can you imagine a hydrogen car traffic jam in LA and then the streets getting flooded?

I think you left out the most likely long-term solution - solar energy. It will be years and years before we will be able to create solar cells with enough efficiency to drive cars, but once we do it will be the best option. No matter how clean hydrogen fuel cells are or how cheaply we can produce the hydrogen, it will still take some form of energy to produce them. Imagine a vehicle that obsorbs all its energy from the sun through its paint, drives silently, and doesn't produce any by-product whatsoever except in the form of heat being produced by its friction moving across asphalt.

[Ecthelionn]

I continue to believe that nuclear energy is a better option than solar power

[Rob]

hydrogen is bad, mmkay

[Harksaw]

Gasoline tanks are explosive, as well as hydrogen. I'm pretty sure they can design some sturdy light tanks for hydrogen.

I wish people wouldn't get so bent out of shape over nuclear power because of some incident in the USSR decades ago. The meltdown at Three Mile Island, the most serious nuclear incident in the US (not even a true meltdown, the fuel melted but never left the coolant system) resulted in no deaths and no injuries to anyone. (NRC report) Since then, safety has only improved. The only pollution it causes is thermal pollution, which can be taken care of rather easily, and nuclear waste, which we have a nice new holding area for now. (Thanks Bush! He did something good!)

Besides, if hydrogen cars ever do become popular, where is the energy to produce the hydrogen going to come from? Hydrogen can be easily split from water using electric current, but burning the hydrogen results in less energy than was needed to separate it in the first place. This brings us back to the problem of where to get the energy from, and I think nuclear is a solid solution- one we already have while waiting for solar and other technologies to catch up to practicality.

[ZeroNine7]

solar energy is overrated...seriously...


Solar powered cars have quite a few shortcomings:

1) night/cloudy requires batteries, making them no better than current electric car designs (battery disposal, charge time, etc.)

2) solar cells will never be efficient enough to drive a car with 'typical' performance (acceleration, speed, etc.) while maintaining the 'typical' surface area of a modern car. The sun just doesn't emit that much energy at the earth's surface.

At the equator, best case scenario, 1.6 calories per cm^2 per minute on a sunny day. Running through the conversions, this is equivalent to roughly 0.112 Watts per cm^2. Assuming a car could be made with an effective surface area of 15' x 6' without much change to design and road infrastructure. This car has a surface area of 83,612.736 cm^2, thus the maximum solar energy that could be collected if you have 100% efficient energy conversion is 12.5 horsepower. That is all the energy that is available under best conditions. Good luck figuring out how to run air conditioning and electronics on 12.5 hp, not to mention actually moving anywhere at a decent speed.

Solar power sounds nice, but it is hardly the "limitless free energy anywhere any time" that people imagine it is.

[Jeff The Great]

If we consider in the future there will be technology to produce hydrogen fuel cells without causing harm to the environment in the process, than of course driving cars via fuel cell engines will be better than any sort of hybrid, cleaner burning fossil fuel, or even fart.

Here's the reason I started the poll. Whenever someone says future, people immediately think 10-20 years ahead. I'm sorry folks, but we have a fossil fuel problem that needs to be solved now.

Hydrogen fuel cells were invented in the 70s. They are used to run electronic equipment on the space shuttle, which has been in operation since the early 80s. A little side note, the method for separating hydrogen from water was invented in the 50s. During the gasoline crisis, people thought that hydrogen would replace gasoline, it didn't. In the early 1990s, GHW Bush promised funding to convert all cars to hydrogen by the year 2000. Oops. Now W and his cronies are making the same promise: Buy SUVs now and use up our gasoline, and in 10 or 15 years, we'll give you something better. Am I the only one who thinks we're getting the run around here?

I'm a big supporter of hybrid cars. The big problem with standard cars is that they're terminally inefficient. Given the actual chemical energy stored in gasoline, they only really convert about 20% of it into motion. The rest goes out as heat, noise and fumes. Hybrid cars are designed to capitalize on areas where cars lose energy. Regenerative brakes, idle speed battery charging, continuously variable transmissions, all of those things reclaim efficiency. The best thing is that hybrid cars are here now. They get twice the fuel efficiency of an SUV on the highway, and three times the efficiency in the city.

And if people would just eat a little more Harcombe food, they would find out that there is more than enough energy to run a car on farts alone.

[Harksaw]

The problem with hybrid cars is people don't want to buy them because they don't know what happens to them when they are 10 years old, and how much they cost in maintenance, replacing that huge battery, etc.

[Jeff The Great]

Normally, I would agree with you. But the fact that hybrid cars can last for 10 years on a single battery is a good thing. Let's take my two buddies Cooter and Nigel.

Cooter owns a V8 Ford Explorer with an average fuel efficiency of 18 miles/gallon (pretty generous actually, but I'm a conservative estimator). He drives the car a standard 12,000 miles per year and keeps the car for 10 years. At 120,000 miles, he has purchased 6667 gallons of gasoline. Let's break with reality for a moment and say that the gasoline prices stay fixed for 10 years at $1.55. Cooter has spent $10,333 on gasoline.

Nigel owns a Toyota Prius with a fuel efficiency of 50 miles/gallon. At 120,000 miles he has purchased 2400 gallons of gasoline and spent $3720 on gasoline. The net profit for Nigel is $6613. A new battery costs around $4000. Net profit to Nigel is $2613. I didn't even factor in that the Toyota Prius fully loaded is about $15,000 less than the Ford Explorer.

That's the wonderful thing about these hybrid cars, they are better for the environment (the Prius has the lowest emission rating of any other car on the market), and they are more economical.

[Rob]

hybrid and electric cars have the same problems previously stated about solar power and hydrogren power. There still has to be a source of that electricity somewhere along the line. The electricity is produced in a power plant somewhere thats burning coal. It still uses fossil fuels, but when they calculate gas mileage they certaintly don't take that into account.

I also support nuclear power as the power source for the future. Use nuclear power to split water to make hydrogen for hydrogen fuel cell cars. Use nuclear power to make electricity for hybrid cars.

Rob

[Jeff The Great]

Hybrid cars never need to be plugged in. The power source is the brakes, going down hill, and idling. Regenerative brakes recharge the battery when applied, a special generator takes stored kinetic energy as you go downhill, and the gasoline engine recharges the batteries when idling.

Oh, by the way. I'm a huge supporter of nuclear power myself. It's too bad that there is too much public ignorance on the subject. This whole "not in my backyard" mentality is only going to make our energy crisis worse.

[Harksaw]

I'm a proponent of hybrid cars, but by your estimates, Jeff, the operating costs of a Ford Explorer are only $2600 more than a Prius over ten years? With results like that, most people would much rather have the bigger car for $260 a year.

I believe hybrid cars will take off much more after being around a bit longer to show their durability, and when the general public understands them more.

Note: There is a $2000 Clean Fuel Vehicle Federal Tax Deduction for hybrids.. Nice.

[Rob]

didn't realize they charge themselves, is this the case with all hybrids? i thoguth some had to be plugged in?

[Harksaw]

Nope, they all use their own engine as a generator.