The future of fuel is hydrogen. How it is to be generated, stored, and transmitted is the question. But the final answer will surely be that gasoline will be totally diverted into commodity plastic uses and that only hydrogen will be burned for fuel, in planes, trains, ships, and automobiles.With only water as a by-product, it also has the side benefit of shutting up all of those doleful ecomentalists. Thank the Lord. No doubt they'll find something else to whine about, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Here is the review of the Clarity from the Daily Labourgraph.
And here is the review of the Clarity from Top Gear, with James May:
4 comments:
You can keep that monster, here's the little pocket rocket I'd prefer:
http://carscoop.blogspot.com/2006/07/electric-powered-mini-qed-concept-with.html
0-60 in 4 seconds? Lumme!
Whatever happened to this?
It's the battery thing, again. You're always lumping round great lumps of metal.
Yes, a fuel cell is a big lump too, but high energy liquid has got to be better than low energy metal.
And once they start selling these hydrogen cars in volume, if gasoline prices go way high and the cost of producing hydrogen becomes much lower (say, due to a successful use of hydrogen fusion), then storing energy inside liquid hydrogen to then later power vehicles has surely got to be the way to go.
However, that Mini does look fun! ;-)
What's the catch?
There's gotta be a catch, at least for now...
The catch? Getting the hydrogen and keeping it stored. Currently, they have to strip it off carbon backbone molecules in natural gas, which is expensive (and fairly pointless, seeing as how they're trying to replace fossil fuels).
The big leap will come when a super-cheap method of generating electricity is discovered (e.g. nuclear fusion). Then you'll be able to generate hydrogen - and oxygen - from electrolysing sea-water.
The other problem is hydrogen's ability to escape all containment. If you leave hydrogen gas inside a heavy sealed steel chamber, it will all have escaped in a few days.
Hence you have to produce it, freeze it, pressurise it, then use it, all within a short time period.
Don't worry, though. The free market will find a way, if only governments would the hell well alone.
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