Remember the hydrogen car?

[NeilBlanchard]

With a grand total of 12 public hydrogen filling stations in the US, this is a chicken / egg thing squared.

The Toyota Mirai costs $60K and gets ~60MPGe and has a range of ~300 miles. You can drive it <150 miles away from the nearest hydrogen filling station.

Gee, Toyota sells a car that costs $32K and that can get 60-75MPG and has a range of ~480-500 miles. You can drive it virtually anywhere you want to.

[RedDevil]

Nobody told Honda that it isn't going to get anywhere...

Honda unveils the FCV Concept - Car Body Design



But who knows, some good may come out of this.
The FCX looks quite like the 2nd gen Insight.
If the FCV shows what the 3rd gen Insight will look like, I'm in

[hamsterpower]

Just to clearify, Hydrogen's symbol is "H" not H2, two hydrogen atoms or a GM truck.

[RedDevil]

True, but it is all about hydrogen as a gas.
Hydrogen gas consists of molecules; each molecule has two hydrogen atoms.
The font on this site does not support subscript (AFAIK) so that's why the 2 was big.

The official term for hydrogen gas is dihydrogen, but if it does not say dihydrogen on the pump it does not mean you get single loose atoms.

For more clarity on hydrogen see Hydrogen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

EDIT I found how to do it! Edit, go advanced, select the number, set font size to 1! H2... good enough for now.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by RustyLugNut

My favorite is thorium powered reactors. Look up Kirk Sorensen on YouTube for a quick overview. It seems like a no-brainer but public acceptance is always going to be a quagmire when it comes to nuclear power considering the lack of effort most people put into understanding our options.

A thorium based energy economy would allow us a few hundred, if not thousands of years, to get fusion right.

With most people not understanding the difference between nuclear fission versus fusion and just labeling it as all bad the prospect of selling people on the idea of thorium fission is going to be a hard sell at best.

With at least a few hundred year supply of fuel grade uranium and plutonium in a addition to what could be a 1000 years supply of thorium we have time to figure it out.
That's not counting what could be done reblending our vast hoard of depleted uranium with recycled fuel that is enriched with plutonium and other highly fissionable isotopes.

[Lou Speed]

Why not use natural gas as it is? Or methanol? I mean that hydrogen is chemically most simple, but production and storage issues make it difficult.

[gone-ot]

FACT - it's ALL about energy DENSITY which is *why* a gallon of gasoline contains more hydrogen atoms than a gallon of compressed hydrogen gas.

And, if you think growing ethanol is energy-wasteful, consider how much energy is required to: 1) first create Hydrogen gas (H2); then (2) compress & cool it from gas to liquid; and finally (3) store it in a cryogenic pressure container(*). And, maintaining it at cryogenic temperature (-423.17ºF) AIN'T free or easy, either.


(*) hydrogen-embrittlement is known problem!

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by Lou Speed

Why not use natural gas as it is? Or methanol? I mean that hydrogen is chemically most simple, but production and storage issues make it difficult.

Natural gas can be made into methanol and quite efficiently from what I hear.
Methanol has bit of a problem being corrosive but is nothing compared to what hydrogen does.

[Lou Speed]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Methanol has bit of a problem being corrosive but is nothing compared to what hydrogen does.

Robert Zubrin thinks that the corrosivity is not that bad. Methanol wins

[gone-ot]

Notice the date on Zubrin's article, November 1, 2011...and, too bad, his table of test data results isn't visible anymore.