Shell opens America's first pipelined hydrogen-fueling station in Southern California

[sudszy]

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

There was an experimental hydrogen 7-series BMW that did very well...but because of the low energy content of hydrogen it needed a v12 engine to produce the performance of a six. .

Yes, energy content of hydrogen gas per volume isnt as good as petrol vapor, that's why a bigger combustion space is needed, but it is not as you imply that hydrogen outputs are half of those of petrol engines. Direct injection using hydrogen and a combustion engine purposely built to cope with it can have the same displacement engine producing more power.
At the end of the day, the engine displacement is just academic, it justs need to be bigger than a petrol engine, it wont have to be built as heavy as a conventional petrol engine because the forces exerted on it wont be the same as for petrol.

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

Not to mention they are being sold as a "performance car"...however if you use it as such you'll drain the batteries in a very short time (as Top Gear did a while back after only 89km of heavy use).

Not to mention, but you have! So this is where you get your research, from a team of script writers working for an entertainment show whose major objective in pulling ratings is to produce a package that makes petrol heads feel good about themselves.

Would you like to give us the range of the other performance cars doing only quarter mile testing? or do you have no idea about that either.

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

Don't get me wrong...hydrogen shows promise as it allows normal internal combustion engines to be used. It's jus the gas they should be concentrating on it natural gas and LPG

Ultimately we are looking for a green and renewable source of energy. So while gas has the potential to extend fossil fuel usage for a while yet, it certainly isnt renewable nor does it solve the problem of co2 emissions, which are only about 5% less than for petrol on a well tuned conversion.

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

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The one line I notice in that article is "government funded"...once again to even make it slightly economically viable, as with ethanol and E10 here, the government must expend large amounts of taxpayers dollars to subsidise the stuff. People forget what will happen to prices when subsidies end. We are already seeing rumblings here from some politicians about the amount of subsidies paid to keep E10 artificially lower than normal unleaded. If and when the subsidies are dropped, and the true price of production is shown, E10 would be about 10 to 20 cents more expensive than ordinary unleaded.

Conspiracy theory? if governments dont fund research into alternatives, who else is going to get full scale turn arounds? oil companies.....rofl.

You are failing to see the big picture here. The idea of alternative fuels is not to provide a cheaper or more convenient to petrol(too hard, petrol is the ultimate fuel in that regard), but to have a fuel that doesnt add co2 to the atmosphere. Not all research and ideas will come to fruition, research doesnt work that way, never has, never will, but if you do nothing, one outcome is guaranteed, nothing will be achieved.

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

I am quite certain one day a low-energy method of production will be invented...the easiest way to fix it at the moment is to source the huge amounts of electricity needed to crack the hydrogen out of water is to use atomic energy (which Australia steadfastly refuses to use despite out massive uranium deposits)...but that won't happen with our gutless governments of all persuasions.
But until those new techniques and catalysts are discovered, we have to just accept that if we are going to use hydrogen, we also have to happily accept "tailpipe emission shifting"...what used to come out the car exhaust is now coming out of a power station smokestack somewhere, thus negating any "green" benefit.

Oh hangon, you are quite happy for all this to take place if we use nuclear,? all we need is a government with balls? how well do you think the balls of those fukishima workers who mopped up there are going to be functioning? or indeed all of us since the food chain is going to be absorbing fission products from Fukishima via the ocean for quite a while to come.