Electric Cars already leaving gas cars in the dust

[Jaws]

Originally Posted by brummelenj

Ever tried poring acid from the batteries around trees?? Nice new technology or not?
Manufacturers should forget this idea of electricity powered vehicles. Hydrogen is the future! Not the fuelcell-cars but the ones from BMW, I'd like to hear a car coming. We only have to think of producing H2 environment-friendly, it still needs to burn fossil fuels to produce H2. Anyone an idea?

So where is the hydrogen coming from? From cracking hydrocarbons.

[mayanh8]

Originally Posted by brummelenj

Ever tried poring acid from the batteries around trees?? Nice new technology or not?
Manufacturers should forget this idea of electricity powered vehicles. Hydrogen is the future! Not the fuelcell-cars but the ones from BMW, I'd like to hear a car coming. We only have to think of producing H2 environment-friendly, it still needs to burn fossil fuels to produce H2. Anyone an idea?

Hydrogen is not the future, at least not for next millenium. Car manufacturers keep wasting money on producing hydrogen cars. They are only doing it so the public thinks they have some vested interest in the alternative fuels future.

But one truth remains, the amount of power required to harvest enough hydrogen to fill a single car's hydrogen source is equal to the amount of power it takes to power a small city for a day. And whats worse is that while it's possible to draw hydrogen out of water, most use natural gas, as it is the most efficient way of harvesting pure hydrogen. Until the next Einstein comes along and revolutionizes the way we understand physics, hydrogen is just another pipe dream.

[Joop!]

Originally Posted by Jaws

So where is the hydrogen coming from? From cracking hydrocarbons.

H2 is coming from splitting H2O molecules, of which we have plenty, via electrolysis. The only downside: the H- and O-atoms "love eachother" that much that it's really difficult to split them, this cost a lot of energy. Energy could be given by electrical turbines, but according to English investigation it does cost the energy of 100,000 windturbines to create enough H2 for 30 million cars. To give you an idea how much 100,000 winturbines are: it's a line of windturbines 10km wide all the way round the shoreline of the UK. It's also possible to get the energy out of solarpower: it'll need 9 solar-units to create 1-unit H2

The other way to "get" it, is extracting it outof methane (CH4), this may be easier, but it also here are big energy-losses compared to what energy is in the earthgas, and what you're actually keep in the end. To give you an idea:
Producing methane out of earthgas or coal gives a los in energy of around 32-44%/. The "steamthreatment" to gain H2 gives a loss of around 35%. The conversion from earthgas to methane gives a byproduct: NO2, and this is a 58 times stronger greenhousegas than CO2, or i.e. gives more pollution. The conversion gives byproducts like CO2 and mercury.

Third way: to create H2 out of Biomass. This only require large agriculture grounds. But this is not actually suited to create pure H2, needed for powering vehicles with.

How it is produced, it will always cost a lot of energy. Given how much energy H2 will give at the end, you'll know it may not be the most efficient fuel. To compare: there are 3000 units H2 needed for 1 unit petrol.

Bottom line:
it may be clean, but there are a lot of practical problems to actually get it. The short-term sollution may be to produce leight(er)-weight vehicles and more fuel-efficient engines (diesel and petrol), so that less energy is needed to propell the vehicle. BMW knows this for long and is already producing lesser weighing vehicles, but when you shave weight of a vehicle and put back weight in the form of extra crumple-zones and heavy-weight electrics for e.g. safety-devices and luxuoury-items, you will know the actually vehicle will weigh nothing less than before. For example: the first 3-series (E21) did weigh 1070kg, the current E90 will weigh around the 1400kg-1500kg mark.
Weight-saving is the short-term sollution.

What's next in the long term: Hydrogen or will it electrical cars. No one actually knows.

[herbz]

Fill up Death Valley, the Arizona desert, and the Nevada desert with solar panels. That's all the electricity we'll ever need.

[NaTuReB0Y]

somebody killed the electric car........so that's out of the question.

[ALPINE6SPD]

Originally Posted by magamaga

Watching Discovery tonight, I just saw this car that runs on Electricity and it rocks!

Check it out!

So I guess you own one then

[magamaga]

I wish I had one. The price is hefty and only affordable to millionaires.
Anyways, I'm glad I started this thread and that so many people are interested in alternative sources of power for our fast luxury cars!