Canada has a proposal to create a hydrogen extraction facility big enough to provide enough energy for all the vehicular traffic in the U.S. The power source: 174 CANDU nuclear reactors.
The power has to come from somewhere.
… and the power in the battery came from where? A hydrogen cell? Which got it’s power from where? A battery? You have to have an input somewhere.
Now if you have a solar farm out in the deserts splitting water into H and O, charging up H cells which you ship to where people are for them to power factories, houses and cars, you have a system. Whether it’s energy efficient enough, who knows, as you’re spending a lot of energy to ship water and H cells. But the energy is essentially free apart from the initial capital cost (rather like nuclear in that sense) so maybe that doesn’t matter.
So, let’s assume you could round up eight jillion 9V batteries (better start hitting local Wal-Marts)…
Well, I didn’t say it was free (I am familiar with the laws of conservation of energy and matter). I said it was CLEAN and EASY. Why not just pump it to where it’s needed via pipelines (i.e. natural gas)? And yes: nuclear, hydro, wind and even solar (there’s lots of sun in Destin, Fla.) would work great.
I guess we all missed mentioning one big, obvious advantage of the plug-in electric over individual internal combustion engines – we don’t need gasoline, at least on the same scale. Imagine that when your car is empty, you have the choice of filling it with uranium, gasoline, coal, fuel oil, natural gas, Niagara Falls, whatever. A pure electric system allows you to do that.
As per nuclear plants, I think the US Govt. still funds hot fusion research. Didn’t a university recently (in the last couple of years) finally start a reaction that spawned more energy than it consumed?
I think I’d also read (in the last couple of years) about a meltdown-proof nuclear plant design that uses fuel in round pellets, or maybe it was graphite in round pellets instead of rods. Not being a nuclear physicist myself, the articles made really good sense.
There’s a company (Japanese?) that’s trying to field complete, self-contained nuclear fission power stations. They have a life-span of 10 years (maybe 20?), and can be put just about anywhere. I think they wanted to install one in a remote town in Alaska (seems to ring a bell). They’re quite small considering their output, and the entire plant can be carried in by helicoptor or brought in on a truck.
Jane Fonda destroyed the Vietnam war for a lot of veterans, and likewise destroyed the nuclear power industry for the United States. Well, maybe Three Mile Island had something to do with that, too.
I think the nuclear regulatory people are renewing plant licenses beyond the original commission, i.e., I think the existing plants are here to stay. It takes a couple of months to refuel plants, and I think a lot of this has to do with modern upgrades that go along with it. So a twenty-year-old plant isn’t necessarily using twenty-year-old technology.
Well, sure, you could do that. But that, of course, leads right back to your OP: if everyone had hydrogen cars, and you made hydrogen with electrolysis, then where would the energy come from? Fossil fuel electrical plants is where, so don’t you still wind up with pollution, and create inefficiencies by adding in the extra step of converting fossil fuels into electricity and then into hydrogen?
Actually, I’m teasing a little, because hydrogen-based power is interesting enough to take a serious look at. There’s a number of infrastructure issues, though, a couple of which are highlighted in your post. 1) As I recall, creating hydrogen with electrolysis really isn’t all that efficient; the current best-efficiency process (again, IIRC) is to crack hydrogen out of natural gas or methanol. So again the primary source is fossil fuel. 2) Piping hydrogen cross-country isn’t really a no-brainer. Hydrogen molecules are light and small, and seep out of seals and transfer points easily. I recall reading an estimate that transfer losses in a hydrogen infrastructure (including pipelines, trucks, filling nozzles, etc) would be around 10% (!).
Yes, I think that is the biggest point that was missing. Why does the OP assume that the reason for electric cars is strictly environmental? Sure, environment is part of it, but in the US, an equally compelling reason is simply to use less OIL, not less energy. The US has loads of energy, just not loads of easily transportable energy.
Want to stop wars for oil? Then stop using oil. But the US is not going to just stop using energy, you have to give them an alternative : electric cars. But given how cheap oil is in the grand scheme of things (given that the true cost of oil to the US economy is hidden through various tax breaks and externalities that are ignored), electric cars will never take off until their performance equals IC engine performance.
After thinking about it, I realized the real reason that electric cars are being held back. It’s Hollwood. Once electric cars become the main form of transportation, how will car chases end in movies? Where would the dramatic explosion be? No, electric cars would be a killer for the action movie genre.
Why do you think Hollywood is pushing for hydrogen vehicles? Exactly. More impressive explosions. DRBOB is obviously a shill for the James Bond franchise.
I dunno. I expect an electric car would give out lots of cool lightning bolts and arcs and that Jacob’s ladder effect, after a Hollywood crash. As for futuristic movies featuring (probably) electric vehicles, there was a high-speed scene in Minority Report where Tom Cruise jumped from vehicle to vehicle, ending by him crashing (though not exploding) through an apartment window.