About three years ago, there was a discussion of Stuart Energy and their hydrogen generator for auto fuel, are they working yet?

I don’t think so, I said it was BS.

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Who Killed the Electric Car?

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GM & Ford, for now.

In the past people said, “We would be able to get hydrogen essentially free”, no way. It take more energy, i.e. fossil fuels, to get hydrogen from water. In fact, more fossil fuel energy burned than the energy in the resulting hydrogen.

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Gene,

GM and Ford did not "kill" the electric car. High production costs and lack of interest did.

"Hydrogen" may well be the future, but its years and years away... (I am a car dealer by trade) And until gas prices got to the current level there was not much interest in "Hybrids" either.

David

Not to mention that hydrogen fuel cells are pretty volatile. They have to figure out how to make it safe first.

That'll take more time and money.

My garage has an outlet for the future all-electric car. But that'll probably cost more than the A/C during summer and the energy prices for electricity seem to be rising with the gas.

Summary: We're f***ed.

Re 4 & 5

As for GM & Ford, they killed their electric car projects due to “…High production costs and lack of interest…” Unless some radical battery technology comes on line, batteries are not viable.

I was attempting to draw out the people that posted they were saving to buy a hydrogen fueled car and hydrogen generator from Stuart Energy. They could not conceive that the energy required to break water into oxygen and hydrogen was more than the energy available from the resulting hydrogen.

Unless we used a nuclear power, plant to generate the hydrogen it would not be feasible. In fact, if we went with non-nuclear hydrogen we would end up with a net gain in the amount of fossil fuel we used to create the hydrogen.

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I know one of the guys at GM who is the head of the alternate fuels division. It's clear that they're pushing Ethanol (E85). He downplayed Bio-diesel, which he claims is "too expensive" to manufacture.

Being your Ford insider, I know that they're working on a Hydrogen-powered car, but I think the focus is on a flex-fuel vehicle that uses either Gasoline of E85.

Ford origionally had some sort of merger (or friendly relationship) with a Finnish company called iThink. This was their electric car offering - the sales of it were abyssimal. Funny thing that someone whould mention the electric cars on this thread, because out in one of the vehicle bays they had one of those iThink golf carts. Someone was working on it, but for what reason, I'm not sure.

One of the reason electric cars are a unworkable in the short-term has to do with a number of factors. First, they have an extremely limited range. Increasing the range means adding more batteries, which is, in a way, self-defeating. More load applied means more current is required to drive the motor. A second problem is charging the batteries - it takes an AWFUL amount of current, and time. Then there is the depreciation of the amount of "juice" a batter can hold over time. Like your cellphone battery, these things wear out over time. But while a cellphone battery is cheap, and easy to replace, a charge unit for a vehicle is huge, and EXPENSIVE. Another slightly annoying habit of most batteries is the fac that - on rare occasion - they can have an internal short during charging, overheat, and explode. I worked a company whose building burned down one day - a large, 1 story office building that held about 300 people. The fire burned so hot that the huge, 4-foot thick, steel I-beams that supported the roof bent like a licorice stick near the source of the flame. A a result of this fire, the entire building had to be demolished. The cause of the inferno? A cellphone battery exploded in it's charger overnight, while the building was empty.

Needless to say, you won't see electric cars dominating the highways for some time to come.

Hydrogen is a very tricky "substance" to handle. First, it's one of the most explosive elements in nature, which makes it a great fuel, but VERY dangerous to handle. Seeing that it really doen't occur naturally, it has to be extracted from something, and this costs money. Then, it has to be trasported in special containers that prevent leakage, and dispensed in a way that will prevent a mammoth explosion, simply because someone lights-up a cigarette some twenty feet away.

In my opinion (and I'm no expert), either E85 or Bio-diesel are the fuels of the future. I know that Canada is making Bio-diesel out of slaughterhouse parts, and rubbuish. Down in Missouri they've mandated that a percentage of pig waste (excement) be set aside for the production of either Gasoline of Bio-diesel; I'm not exactly sure which. Brewers are now getting involved in mass-producing E85 (a little known fact that American brewers were essential for the production of penicillin back during WWII). There are people home-brewing their own Bio-diesel for about $0.85 a gallon - they have kits you can purchase.

Despite the cries of the cost of producing either of the aforementioned fuels, historically when ANYTHING is placed in a mass-production environment, the price drops off significantly.

Hope this answers a few questions.

Some discussion I heard a couple of years ago revolved around wind generation plants and hydrogen production. The electrolysis process takes a boatload of electrical energy and you have to get it cheap for the process to be feasible. Wind generation is one possibility. Essentially you use the power from the wind generation arrays when market demand is low- at night. The production of hydrogen essentially acts as a battery for the excess current produced when demand is low. Then you have to store it and transport it. And as potts points out, the stuff is pretty explosive (as is methane- another miracle alternative fuel that seemed like a good bet in the 60's and 60's.)
Until you can get shareholders some fast gains, you'll not see this type of massive investment into new technology on the scale that would allow it to be "mass-market". And without being mass-market, it won't be feasible. Catch 22.
Best bet: Stop looking for the miracle and settle down into using less- of whatever fuel you're using.
I would guess a goal is going to be get down to one car per family. I totalled what I spend on a new car (Sub Outback) in one year, divided by 12 = well over $1000/mo including a $342/mo payment (at 4.9% interest-makes some "sense" to finance). That's everything included; brakes every 50K, tires, oil, gas, registration...
That's a big load...and most families have 2. Reduce those payments, reduce the fuel use...put the money into a house closer to where one of you works.
Anyway, I digress...sort of.

and where are you going to fill up your H2 vehicle? You'll need filling stations built (good luck in California getting past the air resource board). Then the general public wouldn't be capable of hooking up vapor recovery hoses and and dealing with pressurized hydrogen. So now there needs to be a specially trained technician to refuel the cars. He/She probally wouldn't do the job for minimum wage so expect a 40+k year job for them. It just isn't cost worthy and isn't going to happen overnite. Mazda recently put out a press article stating they'll have a production H2 vehicle in 5 years.

Yes, I'd love to be leaving the bar at 2:35 a.m. with about 50 hydrogen cars in the parking lot ...

My friend whose a brainiac told me that the pressures and temperatures needed to store hydrogen are unbeleivable. Trying to reproduce these basic needs to store it in a car safely is a real challenge indeed.

"Buh-lown up, sir!"

The upside to Hydrogen is that it's been used on a mass scale in the past. Consider the that Zepplins (no, not Jimmy Page and Robert Plant) were the products of wide-scale hydrogen generation, using old processes may still be feasible.

Then again, look at what happened with the Hindenburg.

Saw this old-azz thread so it's prompted this crazy question - anyone here have or know someone what has a hydrogen car? If so, thoughts?