The Hydrogen Car

Welcome to The Hydrogen Car

The hydrogen is going to be the preeminent energy source of the new millennium. It will change the way we live.

The hydrogen car is here

The hydrogen fuel cell is the holy grail of greener motoring and Honda has got there first

There was every conceivable type of environmentally friendly car on show at the Tokyo motor show last week, but Honda scooped them all by announcing it will be putting the world’s first hydrogen fuel cell car into production next year.

The car will travel an estimated 270 miles at speeds of up to 100mph and will produce only water vapour from its exhaust. It is expected to cost £50,000 and will be available initially only in America and Japan.

To be unveiled at the Los Angeles motor show next month, the car is expected to closely follow the design of the FCX concept car. Inside, it will provide space for four in a futuristic looking cabin. Instead of a fuel gauge there will be a range meter that tells you how far you can travel with the hydrogen left in the tank.

It is also expected to feature lithium-ion batteries to recover energy during braking. The transmission will be gearless so you will simply select neutral or drive.

The announcement by Takeo Fukui, president and chief executive of Honda Motor Company, is a landmark in new car technology. The fuel cell has long been the holy grail of eco-motoring because it produces a smooth, almost silent ride and zero emissions. Honda has been working on various forms of the FCX for more than five years. However, last week’s announcement took the motoring world by surprise: previous estimates for a viable fuel cell car ranged from 10 years to 20 years in the future, while the modest price tag means the Honda will cost less than many current prestige family saloons.

As well as technical difficulties, there are practical hurdles, too. Hydrogen takes up more space than the amount of petrol required to travel a similar distance, meaning that fuel tanks for hydrogen have been bulky, while the lack of infrastructure means there are few places where drivers will be able to fill up with hydrogen fuel.

“When the car was invented, countries weren’t full of petrol stations,” said Fukui in response to questions about the lack of infrastructure. “When the demand is there it [the hydrogen economy] will happen.” Other car companies are also vying to harness to the power of hydrogen. BMW last year built 100 hydrogen-powered 7-series cars (although they were not for sale and use a combustion engine rather than a fuel cell) and Mazda revealed its Premacy RE hydrogen hybrid at the Tokyo show.

The Premacy features a rotary engine that can run on hydrogen or petrol and will become part of a commercial leasing scheme next year. It has a range of about 120 miles on hydrogen and will be used as part of the HyNor project, a scheme to introduce a 110-mile “hydrogen highway” in Norway between Oslo and Stavanger.

Not all car makers at the Tokyo show see hydrogen as the future. Away from the spotlights and flashguns, Toyota – the world’s largest car company and maker of the hybrid Prius – was quietly testing the car it sees as the future of green motoring at its track at the foot of Mount Fuji.

Powered by a battery pack twice the size of that of the existing Prius, the new vehicle will be able to run much greater distances on electricity alone than the existing model.

It plugs into the mains overnight, and, says Toyota, has lower running costs and emissions than the Prius. Toyota hopes the newCO2 technology will be the solution to a problem that the company privately acknowledges: the Prius is not as fuel-efficient as many conventional cars.

The prototype on test last week was fitted with nickel-hydride batteries, but when the new model goes on sale – possibly in 2009 – it may be equipped with more compact and lighter lithium-ion batteries.

Toyota claims a twofold advantage for these vehicles. First, more energy can be stored, giving increased range. Second, mileage costs are reduced because electrical recharging is far cheaper than refuelling with petrol or diesel. The new Prius has been designed with an eye on the American market, where some Prius owners have been paying several thousand dollars to convert their car to make it mains-rechargeable.

A recent American study showed that applying the cost of US electricity at the typical rate of 9 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), 30 miles of electric driving costs 81 cents.

Toyota also says that compared with the current Prius, the new model achieves a 13% reduction in CO2 emissions on a 15-mile journey. But the plug-in hybrid could add little environmental benefit unless the mains electricity comes from a source that does , such as solar or not emit CO2 nuclear power. “Otherwise there is the issue of just shifting the pollution from cars to power stations,” said Scott Brownlee, of Toyota UK.

UK buyers without a garage or driveway would also need to overcome the legal obstacle of a cable trailing across a pavement between home and car.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, Toyota believes plug-in hybrid technology is the way forward. In Tokyo it unveiled the 1/X concept car, a hybrid plug-in family car that it says points towards the longer-term future of car design.

Not surprisingly Honda, flushed with the success of its fuel cell project, said further development of hybrids was no more than an expensive sideshow. “Carrying a [mains rechargeable] battery [as well as an engine] is dead weight,” said Fukui, adding that Toyota’s enthusiasm for plug-ins was fuelled by the desire to be able to use more mains electricity produced by US-sourced coal rather than imported oil.

“It is highly political,” said Fukui, “but, technically speaking it’s nonsense.”

Stars of the show

VW Space UP! The Space UP! is a minivan version of the UP! people’s car unveiled in Frankfurt. It has rear-hinged “suicide” doors and space for four adults, while a split tailgate such as the new Mini Clubman’s improves rear access. The final UP! concept, rumoured to be a fuel-efficient SUV, should be at the Los Angeles motor show at the end of November.

Volvo ReCharge First seen at the Frankfurt show last month this plug-in hybrid is fitted with a 1.6 litre engine and four individual electric motors – one in each wheel. The ReCharge can run on battery power alone for up to 62 miles and Volvo says the lithium-polymer batteries can be recharged fully in just three hours, with a one-hour charge providing enough power for a 30-mile journey.

Honda Puyo The maker says that due to this concept’s lack of sharp edges and it being covered in soft silicone it can absorb light collisions. As if that isn’t radical enough, it replaces the steering wheel with a joystick and glows in different colours, depending on whether it is running or standing still. Under the bonnet is a fuel cell that creates electricity from hydrogen and oxygen, emitting only water as its “exhaust”. But unlike the FCX, it’s only a showcase.

Nissan Pivo2 Carlos Ghosn, head of Renault and Nissan, claims the Pivo2’s lithium-ion batteries are “compact, high powered and safe” – a reference to safety fears that such batteries tend to overheat. The wacky Pivo2 has a drive-by-wire system that enables the cabin to spin around and wheels that angle at 90 degrees, meaning the car can park sideways. Daft.

Mitsubishi i MiEV Sport Mitsubishi aims to sell electric vehicles in Britain by 2009. Its latest concept uses three electric motors producing 117hp together. There’s a motor in each front wheel and one driving the rear wheels. A plug-in lithium-ion battery pack is fitted beneath the floor and allows a 124-mile range between charges.

In the 1970s, prompted by the oil crisis, Melbourne University promoted research into alternative fuels for cars - the birth of the Hydrogen Car project. Nowadays, the hydrogen car is more promising for the its cleaner operation. In petrol engines, incomplete combustion produces harmful hydrocarbons, which are released into the air thorugh exhaust fumes. Pure hydrogen, on the other hand, burns cleanly, combining with oxygen to produce water.

But using pure hydrogen for fuel is problematic. It burns so readily that ingenious modifications must be made to prevent the engine from firing in an uncontrolled manner. Backfires were common in early prototypes of the hydrogen engine.

The Hydrogen Car: Quieter energy

The trouble with today's cars is that they still put out a lot of pollution,

and use up fossil fuels. One day, we have to run out of fossil fuels. People

have been talking about running cars on water for ages. Unfortunately, most

of the time, these people are crackpots. But there is a certain amount of

truth in what they say.

Now I know that trying to predict the future is hard, but I reckon that

an electric car, powered by a fuel cell running on hydrogen, could be a

goer! If you remember back to your chemistry classes at school, water is

H₂O. In other words, a molecule of water is made up of two atoms

of hydrogen, and one atom of oxygen. If you use energy, and pass electricity

through water, you can split water into hydrogen and oxygen. And you can

run this reaction backwards, and combine hydrogen and oxygen to give you

water and energy. (In fact, the word, "hydrogen", means "maker of water"

in the original Greek language.)

There are two main ways that you can burn hydrogen with oxygen, to give

you water, and energy.

The first way is that you can burn hydrogen in a modified car engine. Two

companies, BMW and Mazda, are working on this. The engine works fine, but

with about 20% less power - which is pretty reasonable, considering that

we have been working on the petrol engine for a century or so. When you

burn hydrogen in an engine, you get mostly water coming out of the tailpipe.

You also get small amounts of oxides of nitrogen (from the nitrogen in the

air), and even smaller amount of hydrocarbons (from traces of the lubricants

in the combustion chambers of the engine). Even so, a hydrogen-powered car

is much less polluting than a petrol-powered car. Of course, you use a normal

gearbox and diff.

The second way to use hydrogen to run your car is in an electric car. Mercedes-Benz

have been using a strange device called a fuel cell, which has been around

since 1839.

A fuel cell is very similar to a battery. Both a fuel cell and a battery

turn a chemical reaction into electrical energy. But a battery is sealed,

and when the "goodness" in the chemicals is used up, the battery is flat.

A fuel cell is like a battery, but with one important different difference

- you can pump in the chemicals indefinitely. Fuel cells take in hydrogen

and oxygen, and give off pure drinking water, and electricity. You use the

electricity to run electric motors.

Fuel cells are up to 80% efficient. They will get two or three times more

energy out of hydrogen, than will a modified car engine. This is because

the internal combustion engine has a stage where you generate a lot of heat

- and this is where a lot of energy is wasted, and where the efficiency

goes right down.

The real problem with today's electric cars is that our battery technology

is pathetic. The battery pack in today's best electric car, the EV-1, gives

great acceleration, but a range of less than 100 kilometres. But if you

use a fuel cell instead of a battery, you suddenly get an electric car with

very low pollution, and good range and performance.

There are two main ways to store hydrogen in your car-of-the-future. First,

you can squash it and turn it into a liquid - but the container has to be

very strong and heavy, and you have to insulate it to keep it at a temperature

of about 260oC below zero.

The second way is to shove the gas into a metal, such as magnesium, and

it will squash into the spaces between the magnesium atoms. It sounds unbelievable,

but you can actually store more hydrogen inside a metal, than you can as

a liquid. Nelly Rodriguez and her fellow scientists at Northeastern University

in Boston claim that they can do even better. They used incredibly thin

sheets of graphite only one third of a billionth of a metre apart, and they

reckon that they can store 30 litres of hydrogen on a single gram of graphite,

which works out to an amazing 8,000 kilometres per tank, with your hydrogen-powered

car.

Either way, you can fill your tank in under three minutes - which is not

much different from filling up with petrol.

One problem with hydrogen is the bad public relations angle - most of us

have heard of hydrogen bombs, and seen the dramatic footage of the hydrogen-filled

Hindenberg airship exploding in 1937. But hydrogen can be stored safely

- in a series of tests on a tank of liquid hydrogen, BMW played flames at

900oC on it for 70 minutes, punched holes into it, and even squashed it

until it broke. Sometimes the hydrogen leaked out, and sometimes it caught

alight, but it never exploded.

At the moment, in the USA alone, there's about $200 billion invested in

shifting and storing petrol, and it would take an enormous effort to start

dealing with hydrogen.

It's a darn shame, but we probably won't get a hydrogen energy economy

in the near future - but we might further down the line, as we begin to

run out of fossil fuels.

The Hydrogen Car: Quieter energy

Going Green with Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Cars

Welcome to Hydrogen Powered Car info. Hydrogen powered car info was created to provide you with the latset information on the hydrgen fuel cell powered car industry. Hydrogen powered car info contains our main article which extends over four 4 pages, and we are also adding new articles on hydrogen powered cars as they become available.

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Hydrogen Powered Car Table of Contents

Hydrogen car - Introduction and home page of Going green with hydrogen fuel cell powered cars. Page 1 of this article will introduce you to the environmental toll fossil fules are putting on our environment.

Hydrogen Powered Car - Page two of Going green with hydrogen fuel cell powered cars gives you a basic introduction to the alternatives available to fossil fuels.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car - Page three of Going green with hydrogen fuel cell powered cars gets to a great possible solution to our environmental issues caused by fossil fuels, and to weather hydrogen fuel cell powered cars are efficient and clean.

Hydrogen Fuel Car - Page four of Going green with hydrogen fuel cell powered cars provides you with some basic technical information to how this energy works, and also includes our conclusion to this article.

Going Green with Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Cars - Home Page

Fossil fuels vs. renewable energy.

It's a greatly publicised fact that we are destroying this planet we live on. The food we eat, the buildings we live in, and the consumable luxuries we use are having a detrimental affect on the very planet we rely so heavily on. Many heated debates, both public and behind closed doors, rage about the most progressive steps we can take to improve this situation because without vast improvements it is a fact that we will eventually be without the fossil fuels we burn on a daily basis.

Governments across the world have finally been forced to investigate what they can do to improve the situation. Heavy funding is being thrown into renewable energy sources like solar energy and wind farms but questions still remain. Are these efforts enough? Will the answers come quickly enough?

Quite frankly, nobody really knows for certain whether they will. More and more developing countries are relying heavily on the use of oil, but oil as a resource is dwindling. Even the hiked oil prices of around $50 a barrel weren't enough to dissuade people from buying.

All we know for certain is that unless we can move away from the current dependency on fossil fuels, we will eventually have none left to be dependant on. We must look for alternative energy sources.

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