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Honda Hydrogen update

7K views 10 replies 6 participants last post by  Altazi 
LOL, yeah, seriously, so, let me get this straight, I can either get excited about a hydrogen powered car that costs $200,000 (hoping it might come down in price to a non movie star affordable price), plus requires relatively large amounts of an incredibly limited resource (platinum, which according to monex.com, only 25 cubic feet of platinum has been mined in the entire known history of the earth) Platinum is required to act as a catalyst for the hydrogen and oxygen reactions (among other industrial uses), unless there is some kind of breakthrough, there is literally no way of getting around this. The high pressure tanks needed to hold hydrogen at the hydrogen fueling stations is expensive and virtually everything involved with hydrogen is going to be more of a hassle because you can't just fill up a gas can of hydrogen and take it with you. Hydrogen doesn't even accomplish getting us off fossil fuels as it will require the use natural gas to seperate it from water, unless we invest in some astronomically expensive all new hydrogen refinery infrastructure. Besides that, oil companies will never go for it, and no one else has the profits to do it at this point. They'll fight for the dirty black stuff until we pry it from their cold dead fingers. They've proven this. They have commercials and ads about how they have been investing $1.2 trillion in alternative fuels in the last 10 years, but name once when you have heard of an oil company making even the slightest progress towards an alternative to our oil dependent situation. To top it all off, hydrogen will not only require retooling the entire world with new fueling stations, but costs as much as gas even with the government subsidies.

Or...I can get excited about a car that will definitely be here in 2 years (if not from GM, Ford, Chrysler, or Nissan as they have already announced, certainly Toyota will bring it to us) with relatively proven technology, has predacessors that were created 15 years ago (EV1) and worked beautifully, and don't require gobs of the earths most precious metals. Talk about only having enough resources to meet the demand (as was mentioned on the home page Oct 31st). Electric cars require no new refueling infrastructure. And battery technology is in its infancy and has nearly unlimited growth potential. Not only that, but I would guess you are much safer getting in an accident with a lithium battery than a tank full of combustible hydrogen. Oh yeah, it can be refueled virtually anywhere, for about 75 cents.

I'm really curious why hydrogen power is even being invested in at this point. The billions GM has blown on hydrogen R&D when electric cars were stairing them in the face will prove to be one of the biggest of their many blunders in the '00s.
 
One of the things that certain groups like about hydrogen as a vehicle fuel is the fact that you have to go somewhere to fill up. Keeps the good old familiar business model, don't you know? Drive in, fill up, get screwed while lining someones's pockets . . .

At least you can charge your EV's batteries with something of your own - wind, solar, Mr. Fusion home energy reactor :D etc.
LOL, who doesn't love waiting in line for half an hour at Costco while all the 6 SUVs in front of you fill up their 50 gallon tanks?

Hey Altazi, I see you live in Oregon? I'm in Eugene. We get our power mostly from hydroelectric dams on the Columbia river.

My family went to the Grand Cooley Dam a couple years ago (shortly after the California brown outs), the tour guides there told us they are only running at 30% (they were using 2 of their 6 turbines or something) capacity and basically told us that any electricity shortage you've ever heard was complete BS. They could crank out electricity until the cows come how if there was demand for it by basically flipping a switch.
 
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