James May of Top Gear recently traveled from the UK to LA, California to test out the Honda FCX Clarity in their latest episode. In case you have not heard of the FCX Clarity, it is an electric powered car with no batteries. Instead, the FCX generates it’s own electricity from hydrogen fuel cells.
I think that hydrogen fuel cell cars are a very good alternative to regular gasoline cars however I still believe fully electric vehicles are the way to go. If we can improve the charging time on the batteries it would be a much better route to go. With the price of hydrogen roughly the same as petrol, the powers at be would prefer to have us still heading to the pumps to fill up. This means we will still be at the whim of the Exxon’s of the world, jacking up prices as they please. Personally I’d rather wait for my fully electric car to charge up, for a fraction of the price.
This is why I was a little annoyed with May’s bashing of the electric powered car while so blindly promoting the hydrogen powered car. “When the clarity runs out of juice, you just pull into a hydrogen filling station.” Ah, what hydrogen filling station? I understand this infrastructure could be put in place if the industry took, but so could rapid electric charging stations.
“In America, hydrogen costs roughly the same as petrol, but unlike petrol it will never run out, because it is the most abundant element in the universe.” Ok, this one really got to me. First off, he contradicts himself by saying “hydrogen is usually stuck onto something else” and “is actually quite difficult to scrape off“. If it is stuck to something else and is difficult to separate then that means we are going to be using a lot of energy to create it and transport it; unlike electricity.
Let’s not forget how explosive hydrogen is as well. I would not want to be in an accident in a hydrogen fueled vehicle. You can check out the full video on the Honda FCX Clarity here and draw your own conclusion.
March 9th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
How about the energy required to mine, refine, transport, build and later dispose the batteries used in electric cars? Not too mention the mining, refining and transportation of the fossil fuels and nuclear products used to generate your electricity if we are going to go down to the bare bones about it.
From a 2007 article by Top Gear on the Clarity:
“Hydrogen can be made anywhere there’s a water and electricity supply, so you don’t need to drill for or transport anything. Using hydrogen, you can store and quickly refill a large amount of fuel energy in a relatively small space, which you still can’t with batteries.”
This car will give more reason for better research into hydrogen production, which is currently produced from the refining of fossil fuels. The point is that hydrogen production is not source limited in fossil fuels as it is the most basic element in existence and part of the chemical make-up of close to everything. Honda are also working on a home production kit as well.
From the same article:
“Honda thinks it has the answer to this: the Home Energy Station. This is a box that lives in your garage, hooked up to the electricity, and water supply, that makes hydrogen to fuel the car. It can even be powered by solar electricity, via a kit that Honda makes and sells, but – and it’s a big but – none of it will be available for several years yet.”
As it says, yet again, still a few years away but if they can get these units to run efficiently on solar energy the only cost will be your water rates and you will still have the luxury of refilling at home.
And as for your whinge about being at the whim of the Exxon’s of the world due to the fact you have to refill your car… Toughen up princess. I can’t see how the same would not happen with your rapid charge electric stations. All that will promote is heavily inflated parking garage fees (whether you have an electric car or not) and those battery swap stations would cost a fortune to maintain and, due to the precise nature of swapping out an entire battery pack, a logistical nightmare having to make sure that a fully charged battery pack was availiable for every car that would use the place. The powers that be always have a way to make sure they recieve maximum return for things they offer the consumer. The issue here is not the cost to our hip-pocket but the cost to the earth.
December 14th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
I have a tendency of driving 20-30 hours at one time. Electric cars would not serve this purpose because I would have to stop and charge up 8 hours to drive again. At least Fuel Cell cars I could charge up in 4 minutes and be back on the road.
Already Honda has made leaps in the industry for the Fuel Cells. You could also expect bigger leaps in another 5 years. Even BMW is coming out with a Fuel Cell car.
How about the cost of the energy to charge? Have to build a lot of power plants to handle all these cars being charged up. At least the Fuel Cell will off load some of that expense.
December 29th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
And how about toxic waste( which is what batteries become after they expire). Something else to consider. Very hard to dispose later on.
Cheers!