Toyota's First Hydrogen Car to Cost $50,000

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will_chellam

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The main problem with fossil fuels (besides pollution) is sustainability, and by that I mean the rate of production is fundamentally limited by sedimentation and geology.

The main advantage to hydrogen is that you can make it from water and electricity, and the electricity can be generated by sustainable means such as solar, wave, wind or hydro. Since it is very hard to store electricity efficiently and relatively easy to store hydrogen, all of the electrical capacity of a power network can be stored and used when needed or could even be generated locally.
 
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If mass production takes place we'll have water shortages real quick :S
 

r0x0r

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[citation][nom]TA152H[/nom]Do you remember the Hindenburg?[/citation]

>>Implying that there have been no safety improvements since 1937
 

safcmanfr

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[citation][nom]BPT747[/nom]Wow, so many misconseptions about Hydrogen, almost all of the ones I have heard in a single forum. lets just say this, Hydrogen is not ecofriendly. It is so inefficient to make, that even a 100% efficient hydrogen vehicle cannot come close to making up for it.[/citation]


You have no idea what you are talking about, do you?

H20 can be split by using electricity from a renewable energy source (solar for example) or nuclear source. You dont need to use petroleum energy source to split the H20.

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and in terms of safety:

Hydrogen is a light gas, meaning in the event of spillage/leak the hydrogen will evaporate and dissipate extremely quickly, whereas petrol fumes are heavy and hang around for a while.

Hydrogen can be more explosive if it ignites in the/an initial crash, but is safer afterwards.
 

safcmanfr

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FYI: Hindenburg was using hydrogen in a flimsy structure.

Hydrogen storage at fill stations and in cars will be reinforced containers.
 

Clintonio

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[citation][nom]joytech22[/nom]what does it mean by "Some extra cost" ?!What is fuel more expensive for it or is maintenance expensive?[/citation]
The battery perhaps?
[citation][nom]thejester420[/nom]hydrogen cars are a failed technology and a scam, the means in which to produce the fuel which was mentioned above is that fossil fuels are used to manufacture it. I thought the whole point of hydrogen fuels was to get us off gasoline? If we do end up with a viable alternative to gas, it will be electric.[/citation]

You're very uninformed. The fuel cells require electricity to separate the molecules for usage. This electricity comes from a local power station. Offloading the carbon to them enables us to focus efforts onto a smaller group.
 

brendano257

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[citation][nom]thejester420[/nom]hydrogen cars are a failed technology and a scam, the means in which to produce the fuel which was mentioned above is that fossil fuels are used to manufacture it. I thought the whole point of hydrogen fuels was to get us off gasoline? If we do end up with a viable alternative to gas, it will be electric.[/citation]

Over 50% of the power produced in the U.S. is from coal and wood plants, so electric provides the same disadvantages you say about hydrogen, unless Nuclear is used, which is only common in Europe.
 

brendano257

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[citation][nom]need4speeds[/nom]If you take hydrogen from other sources since splitting water is the hardest way to get hydrogen. You will be adding water to the planet, and still taking oxygen out of the air. Plants only take oxygen from co2, not water. So the pollution from hydrocarbons which are really dead plants is not as bad as taking oxygen out and forever trapping it with hydrogen to make water. If you thought that co2 was bad, this is even worse. At least the carbon in co2 will be used by plants eventually, and the oxygen again released, just like the fossil fuels were first made, in essence fossil fuels are trapped solar power. Whats warming the planet is the release of all this trapped solar power all at once not so much the co2. each car and coal plant and house burning natural gas for heat emits.. guess what?that's right heat. this is why cities are warmer than the surrounding countryside, this is why your car needs a rad and coolant also. Times this heat coming off your rad by millions of cars and trucks and houses, and you have a lot of heat. enough heat to melt glaciers and polar ice caps with ease. If you take all the oxygen from the air to make water we will slowly run out of oxygen. Any chemical can be pollution even water.[/citation]

This is NOT where the majority of the heat comes from. The changes in atmospheric composition due to CO2 emissions cause the atmosphere to allow more sunlight in, which caused the warming, any "heat" we produce on earth (other than something like hydrogen bombs) pales in comparison to the heat given to the Earth from the sun.
 

Silmarunya

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[citation][nom]brendano257[/nom]This is NOT where the majority of the heat comes from. The changes in atmospheric composition due to CO2 emissions cause the atmosphere to allow more sunlight in, which caused the warming, any "heat" we produce on earth (other than something like hydrogen bombs) pales in comparison to the heat given to the Earth from the sun.[/citation]

CO2 does not allow more sunlight into the atmosphere. However, a large part of the sunlight falling on earth is reflected back into outer space. Due to the increase in greenhouse gases, much of this reflected light is reflected back into earth by the thick blanket of gas.

But your point does stand. The heat generated on earth is utterly insignificant compared to the vast amount of energy the sun sends to us every second. Even a hydrogen bomb wouldn't thoroughly heat the earth up. Huge volcanic eruptions are just about the only thing on earth that can have a (short lasting) impact upon climate.
 

Silmarunya

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[citation][nom]brendano257[/nom]Over 50% of the power produced in the U.S. is from coal and wood plants, so electric provides the same disadvantages you say about hydrogen, unless Nuclear is used, which is only common in Europe.[/citation]

Indeed. But that's not a reason for you guys to keep burning fossil fuels. Here in Europe, vast investments in nuclear energy were made (where I live, 60% of all power consumed is nuclear) and it has payed off generously. Stable, clean power as opposed to the filth called coal.

How many people died in uranium mines? How many died in coal mines? How much CO2 is released by burning coal? How much is released by nuclear fission? How much land is left bare because of vast coal mines? How much land is destroyed by the relatively few uranium mines on this earth?

Rather than wasting money on utterly futile things (over 50% of the world's defense budget is spent by a tiny portion of the worlds population, go figure), spend it on useful things like nuclear reactors or solar power. Or maybe do something about rampaging deficit and enormous amount of poverty compared to the rest of the western world...
 

jellico

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Holy crap, there is a lot of misunderstood science out there. I don't even know where to begin...

Ok, let's start with fuel cell technology: fuel cells don't USE electricity, they generate electricity by allowing for a reaction between a fuel and an oxidizer. Think of it as a battery, but with an external supply of reactants so it can continuously produce power so long as there is a supply of the reactants. The technology dates back to the mid 1800s, but it has never been widely used because it is very expensive (the anode catalyst must be platinum, which currently sells for over $1700 per ounce!). It is a vital technology in the space program since they need a way to produce power for computer, instruments, heating (a big one which solar power is totally inadequate for), and so forth. Additionally, the by product of the fuel cell reaction between hydrogen and oxygen is water, which means that they only need to carry hydrogen and oxygen in reactant tanks, and not a separate supply of water.

Speaking of water... it is NOT 66% hydrogen. Hydrogen has an atomic weight of 1.00794, whereas oxygen has an atomic weight of 15.9994. There are two hydrogens to one oxygen in a water molecule (probably where the misapprehension of 66% comes from), so the ratio is 2.01588:15.9994, or 12.5% hydrogen by weight.

With regard to petroleum... we are running out, but we are still a LONG way off. It is interesting to note that "experts" have been predicting that the world "only has a few years of oil left" since the late 1800s. Probably the best example of this is President Jimmy Carter's speech on April 18th, 1977 where he said the following, "World consumption of oil is still going up. If it were possible to keep it rising during the 1970s and 1980s by 5 percent a year as it has in the past, we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade." WRONG! "World oil production can probably keep going up for another six or eight years. But some time in the 1980s it can't go up much more." WRONG AGAIN! I could keep going; his speech is full of dire predictions, all of which proved to be wrong. Even today, people are crying about the dwindling supplies of oil. This is simply not true. We still have many decades of easy-to-obtain light, sweet crude (the good stuff). That's really what is running out. But after that is gone, we have massive reserves of oil that takes a little more work to get, such as oil shale and the bitumen or "oil sands" deposits of which there are huge reserves in Canada and Venezuela. It is estimated that 2/3 of the world's petroleum is in the form of oil sands, which means, we haven't even used up the 1/3 that's easy to get at. Suffice it to say, we have probably a couple of centuries worth of oil left, but certainly we have at least 100 years.

That gives us 100 years to come up with some revolutionary, new energy production technology. And that's what is really required here. Wind and solar are a bust! They don't produce enough power, cost far too much per KWH, and are a logistical nightmare (trying to ties miles of windmills and/or panels into the grid, not to mention dealing with the fact that their energy production is sporatic and the grid MUST have stable, steady sources of power to operate correctly). Nuclear power is our best bet to carry us through until something new is invented. However, for nuclear power to really shine, we would need to build new plants... not a few here and there, but hundreds! That's the only way we can replace all of the coal-fired plants, and that will make electric cars actually make sense.

 

p00dl3_h3r0

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Again, as it stands right NOW, hydrogen production is very much primarily driven by petroleum, coal, or methane. Be it the electricity generated, or H2 generated from refinement of Methane, this is the case as it stands right now in the US. I 100% agree that nuclear in this country is a dying resource, seeing as how the government has that policy of not reprocessing our nuclear waste (which would actually increase the energy available by 25% and vastly decrease the time of high radioactivity) due to the evil "p" word plutonium which is a by product. In my opinion, until nuclear or some other HIGH YIELD clean/renewable energy, which wind and solar most certainly are not seeing as how it takes tons more land and cost to generate such vastly less energy, then Hydrogen cars will forever be a pipe dream. Also, if the range of the soon-to-be-released all electric cars are about the same (around 200 miles), why should we pay up our noses to invest in a new hydrogen infrastructure? This car, while clean by itself, will have tons of intermediary costs and many many years of change for such a marginal improvement in energy consumption.
 

sliem

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WTF??? A brand new car is 20-30k and 10k difference sure isn't going to pay itself off for many years. Hell no. Make it $20-30k then they'll sell.
 

Tonkyboy

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TA152H :

Do you remember the Hindenburg?





>>Implying that there have been no safety improvements since 1937




That doesn't really imply that does it. It just states the fact that Hydrogen is EXTREMELY dangerous and does actually burn. The original comment stated that the hydrogen would dissipate too quickly to burn. Tell that to the victims of the HIndenburg, and I think they would dispute that fact.
 

aeronaut

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Currently, we get hydrogen by 1) extracting it from natural gas, where it is a trace byproduct, and 2) making it by breaking down natural gas. As such, it isn't super green, but is still more green than burning natural gas in a car for fuel.

It is theoretically possible to extract hydrogen from water, but we're not doing it cheaply enough yet. Why not? Because there isn't enough demand. Kind of a chicken and egg problem.

The other issue is that the energy density isn't as high as gasoline (per unit mass,) and the containment needed for pressurized hydrogen weighs a lot, more than current lithium ion cells. My expectation is that the electric car will win out over the hydrogen fuel cell powered car, or perhaps a combination of the two, making a totally green hybrid.

Regards,
aeronaut
 

mlopinto2k1

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Evvvvvveryone is suddenly a science troll. You can thank Google for that. Or whatever search engine you are using. 50,000 for a car is too much. Period. Electric is the future. It will NOT be the future if oil companies have anything to say about it. So, while everyone keeps purchasing gasoline/petro you are supporting the efforts to halt electric vehicle production. Waaaaah! I want my Hemi! Go ahead! Keep crying!
 
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