Except, of course, you’re forgetting the cynicism of many consumers when it comes to cars. Tons of people believe that the carmakers and oil companies are keeping 100 MPG carbs off the market, and Ford had the minivan concept a decade before Chrysler ever built the first minivan. The folks at Ford didn’t want to build 'em, even though they had plenty of data to indicate that consumers would buy them. It was only after Lee Iacocca left Ford, with the plans for them, and the front wheel drive cars (that Ford also refused to build), that consumers began to see what they’d been asking for.
The history of the automobile is littered with good ideas that didn’t get picked up for decades (if ever) because of the shortsightedness of the auto industry execs. To flog the car from whence I take my user name, Tucker had moving headlights, four wheel independant suspension, integrated safety cage, “crumple zones,” padded interiors, streamling, seatbelts, emphasis on fuel economy, and plans for disc brakes, fuel injection, and a multifuel engine long before the other car makers had even thought of such things. That’s just scratching the surface of ideas which never made it into production.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. Are you saying fuel cell technology is already mature enough to be put into production, and the people would buy them, but the auto makers are too short-sighted to actually make them?
No, I am saying that research on any significant automotive improvements tend to only happen at the end of a gun barrel. The fuel cell was originally invented in the 1800s, but interest in them only started with the space race, automakers didn’t develop an interest in them until Federal regulations started pushing stricter environmental controls in the 1990s. The push for lower emissions had begun in the late 1960s, but the car makers fought them tooth and nail, rather than accepting them as inevitable and trying to figure out better ways of building cars.
Fuel cells actually are fairly mature, except in terms of cost. Right now, it’s simply too expensive to put them in cars, however, if the automakers had joined NASA in the 1960s in researching fuel cells, their cost might be significantly lower than what they are today.
I think this reasoning only applies to the US industry. Japanese and European manufacturers are quite serious about moving on from the internal combustion engine and I think they will do it within 10 years.
I think that scr4 is being a bit too cynical. GM and Ford have been pouring huge amounts of money into fuel cells. Both had prototypes of hydrogen-powered vehicles at the last auto show in Detroit. Everyone knows that eventually we need to come up with engines that use some other fuel source. And hybrid engines still use gasoline, albeit not as quickly as standard engines. Frankly, I think that the Toyota and Honda hybrids will be discontinued within five years, once people realize that the added cost of the vehicles is far beyond the point of diminishing returns. At best, they’ll be relegated to a small niche for hard-core environmentalists.
The 10-year time frame for fuel cells sounds about right to me.
Come on, Johnny L.A., you know better. GM pulled all the EV-1s back because they had reached the end of their design lives and battery replacements were going to be necessary soon on most of the fleet. Since the program was operated at a huge loss for GM to test the technology and test cycle was over, corporate subsidy for the program was not going to continue. The high owner costs of operating the cars past the limited design life would likely have hurt GM’s reputation more than did removing them from service at the end of the lease terms.
I’m just waiting for the screams from people that buy used Insights and Priuses when those vehicles fall out of warranty and those monster NiMH battery banks need replacing. TANSTAAFL
I did some quick googling, and supposedly the battery for the Honda Insight is warrantied for 8 years or 80,000 miles. After that, you’ve got to shell out $5000 (yes, five thousand dollars) to replace it. :eek:
If you own a Honda Insight, you might as well run it into the ground, because its resale value is going to be measured in cents.
I wonder how much money is “huge amounts”? Prototypes can be pretty cheap.
I’m still finding it hard to imagine this “hydrogen economy” taking off. Consider:
[ul]
[li]Hydrogen is a gas, and one of the more difficult to store. Energy density is low, unless it’s in the form of molecules which are liquid at room temperature.[/li][li]Lack of hydrogen refueling stations is a Catch-22: until there are enough hydrogen cars on the road, there won’t be very many refueling stations, and vice versa.[/li][li]Currently, most hyrogen is produced from natural gas, i.e. a fossil fuel. Converting from oil to hydrogen doesn’t eliminate CO2 emission.[/li][li]There are other alternative fuels available that don’t have the above problems. For example, biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel) can be used in conventional internal combustion engines, stored in conventional tanks, and do not add to atmospheric CO2. [/li][/ul]
And in addition, there’s no strong reason to believe gas prices will rise enough in the next 10 years to make hydrogen cars attractive.
Now, that’s only for hydrogen fuel cells. I believe many companies are actually working on alcohol-powered fuel cells, which may be a practical alternative.
The problem comes from the production of biofuels…the fuel required to GROW the biomass and the fuel consumed to refine it to a useable state reportedy makes the use of alcohols rather cost prohibitive.
That’s the thing about petroleum (and nuclear energy), you’re getting the benefit of energy storage that’s occurred over BILLIONS of years.
This is NOT an easy problem to solve, anyone that says it is, is selling something. (Tornado, anyone? )
IIRC, GMs spending around a billion on fuel cell cars. That’s the same amount of money GM spends to get a new model into production.
Well, the oil companies have all said that they’ll start selling hydrogen once the car makers produce a car that can run on it. Given that I’ve seen tanker trucks hauling hydrogen on the interstates, getting it into gas stations shouldn’t be too difficult. The US has large reserves of natural gas, so using it in a fuel cell car will reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
I dunno, the war in Iraq isn’t exactly going smoothly at this point, and there’s some evidence that we’re pissing everyone off in that neighborhood enough to the point that they’re willing to take up arms against us. King Fahd’s not doing well at the moment, and depending upon the health of his immediate heir (who’s in his seventies), who knows which way power could transfer (and there’s always the possibility of civil war breaking out)? So while I don’t expect gas prices to shoot up dramatically in the next 10 years, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.
I’ve not heard of alcohol powered fuel cells, but I’ve heard of methane, gasolene, and LNG fuel cells, so it’s possible.
Unintentionally Blank, IIRC Una has crunched the numbers and found that biodiesel isn’t the energy loss that people think.
Hmm… It appears that although Toyota and Daimler experimented with methanol (actually an onboard reformer that generates hydrogen from methanol), both have given up on this approach. So maybe I’m wrong.
But that many companies are working on alcohol-powered fuel cells for portable electronics. I don’t know if that’s a different technology.
It may be the same, but no one might be thinking about applying it to cars (Ah, the age of specialization where no one knows WTF anyone else is talking about.). For the life of me, I can’t see why this technolody can’t be applied to making electric cars. Granted, a pacemaker battery is considerably smaller than a car battery, but sure it ought to be possible to scale it up for automotive applications. After all, an electric car has about 1,500 lbs of batteries, and even if you had to have more than that it battery weight, it’d be worth it, seeing as how you wouldn’t have to recharge the car, but once every couple of years or so. (BTW, a pacemaker’s battery is about 1 Amp hour. I’ll let someone who knows what they’re doing crunch the numbers to see if it’s practical.)
Mark my words, some day, McDonalds will expand into biodiesel and have pumps next to the drive thru. After all, they’re just throwing it away now. Suposedly 3 billion gallons of used vegetable oil are produced each year in the US. Its a drop in the bucket compared to annual US fuel consumption, but it’s practically free.
Before you laugh consider: Kaiser Steel–>Kaiser shipbuilding works (WWII Liberty ships)–>Kaiser employee health care–>Kaiser Permanente, Health Insurance Colossus
But are those designs tamper-proof as well? A lump of radioactive material with enough energy to drive a car is potentially dangerous. There’ll be enough material in each car to make a fairly nasty “dirty bomb”, and it will be overlooked by roadside radiation monitors.
Suposedly 3 billion gallons of used vegetable oil are produced each year in the US. Its a drop in the bucket compared to annual US fuel consumption, but it’s practically free.