Further to my earlier post on my concern for the independent trade I Googled a little more about hydrogen powered internal combustion engines and found this: "The differences between a hydrogen ICE and a traditional gasoline engine include hardened valves and valve seats, stronger connecting rods, non-platinum tipped spark plugs, a higher voltage ignition coil, fuel injectors designed for a gas instead of a liquid, larger crankshaft damper, stronger head gasket material, modified (for supercharger) intake manifold, positive pressure supercharger, and a high temperature engine oil. All modifications would amount to about one point five times (1.5) the current cost of a gasoline engine.[11] These hydrogen engines burn fuel in the same manner that gasoline engines do."
Surely this tells us it is possible to mass produce ICE that are hydrogen powered, and would still be a lot less to buy than electric and hopefully a lot more fun to drive! The best part is that once a hydrogen economy is in place we can convert our existing engines albeit initially expensive but given the current revival in classic cars this could become an option for independents. The issues of storing and pumping hydrogen have been solved with a number of hydrogen stations in place - therefore should be straightforward to plan for a full roll out.
Added to this, while the government sleeps it would be easy to set up farms to produce and sell hydrogen as currently there is no legislation to prevent you from making it and solar farms would get a better return by producing and selling hydrogen than pushing electricity into the grid.
What am I missing here? Have car manufacturers done the sums and discovered more profit for them if they go electric? If this is the case then this is wrong and we should be lobbying government to do the right thing and move this forward if viable. BTW - heard on radio 4 this week that they are already asking electric car users to charge off peak - remember those dark days!!
Hydrogen fuel
Moderators:davidr, BigCatXJS, dhdove
Re: Hydrogen fuel
I'm not quite sure what problem you are looking to solve. Power can be obtained from many sources, electric, bio-ethanol, lpg, cng, diesel, petrol, hydrogen etc. etc.
Governments over the years have concentrated on various things to reduce, CO, CO2, NOx, particulates, etc while all the time concentrating on newly built vehicle emissions, totally avoiding the energy used (with associated polutants) of the manufacture and disposal of vehicles, mileage covered, poor traffic flow and commercial delivery systems.
There is not enough power generation capacity for a large scale uptake of electric vehicles. Many people seem to think you can plug them into a 13Amp socket, they need a dedicated high amperage supply. A power station would be needed at every motorway service station to enable everyone to re-charge. The infrastructure needed would be immense and who pays? Battery life is poor enough to require a battery hire contract which adds vast cost to the running costs.
I was involved in the smart meter rollout and it was very obvious that half-hour billing was all about future smoothing of electric supply by making it very expensive at peak times. It is being sold on the promise that bills will be reduced, this became clear when I found elderly people turning off their heating and sitting in the cold and dark whilst looking at their energy display reminding them how much they had spent that day. I resigned my position as I could'nt support what was happening.
Back on subject, in the very early 90's I had a small involvement in developing vehicles to run on CNG (Compressed Natural Gas). Some buses were converted with success and a major benefit was the ability to slow-fill your car tank overnight at home. It worked well in spark ignition engines. The whole idea was stamped on heavily because the government had no way at the time of imposing fuel duty or VAT at the correct rate.
This brings the problem full circle, the aspiration is to make it look like we are all all being 'green' while maximising tax income and without upsetting to many people.
Governments over the years have concentrated on various things to reduce, CO, CO2, NOx, particulates, etc while all the time concentrating on newly built vehicle emissions, totally avoiding the energy used (with associated polutants) of the manufacture and disposal of vehicles, mileage covered, poor traffic flow and commercial delivery systems.
There is not enough power generation capacity for a large scale uptake of electric vehicles. Many people seem to think you can plug them into a 13Amp socket, they need a dedicated high amperage supply. A power station would be needed at every motorway service station to enable everyone to re-charge. The infrastructure needed would be immense and who pays? Battery life is poor enough to require a battery hire contract which adds vast cost to the running costs.
I was involved in the smart meter rollout and it was very obvious that half-hour billing was all about future smoothing of electric supply by making it very expensive at peak times. It is being sold on the promise that bills will be reduced, this became clear when I found elderly people turning off their heating and sitting in the cold and dark whilst looking at their energy display reminding them how much they had spent that day. I resigned my position as I could'nt support what was happening.
Back on subject, in the very early 90's I had a small involvement in developing vehicles to run on CNG (Compressed Natural Gas). Some buses were converted with success and a major benefit was the ability to slow-fill your car tank overnight at home. It worked well in spark ignition engines. The whole idea was stamped on heavily because the government had no way at the time of imposing fuel duty or VAT at the correct rate.
This brings the problem full circle, the aspiration is to make it look like we are all all being 'green' while maximising tax income and without upsetting to many people.
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