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Announced in June, and one would hope you see them around on the streets by now, what is holding them back?
The second law of thermodynamics, likely...
It is a fact that it takes more energy to extract hydrogen and oxygen from water than you can get by burning that hydrogen (i.e. by re-oxidizing it -- much more energy would be available if this were a nuclear fusion engine, but one would have some problems with size, weight, cost, maintenance, and licensing regulations were that the case). And at each step in this system, energy is lost in the form of heat; note the fan and cooling vents on the 'conversion unit.' Similar heat losses will occur in the alternator which converts some of the engine's mechanical energy back to electricity to power that converter, and anything that 'gets warm' as it operates demonstrates this energy loss in the form of heat.
In short, such things cannot work as described, given the laws of physics which apply to our universe.
Now it's possible that this thing may get very good mileage, given a fully-charged battery to start out; But either a fully-charged battery or *some* additional power source must be present to make up for the heat losses inherent in the system. Thus, the vehicle might be considered an electric/hydrogen hybrid, but it won't run forever as a closed system with only water input as (apparently) claimed; no matter how much water is on-board, it still takes more energy to extract the hydrogen fuel than that fuel can produce in a combustion process.
If you are a parent, insist that your children take a course in physics. It's not guaranteed, but if they pay attention, they'll likely end up significantly more scam-proof than the average person.
Jim
You cannot burn fuel twice, water is just "burnt hydrogen". By adding chemicals and metals you can appear to generate electricity from water but when these are used up, adding further water will cease to refuel the cell. The only other possible way this could work would be by cold-fusion. If that had been perfected, I think I'd have heard about it!
To be blunt, the purpose of projects like this is to milk stupid rich people and/or generate publicity.
Kaled.
Electric Cars - we can barely sustain the power grids we have these days with all of the energy consumption going on in the US. Now, everyone wants to charge their cars?
Electric bills go up, so does energy consumption, so does the stock for all of these energy companies.
Water / Hydrogen powered cars - we barely have clean water coming out of our own taps at home. Now there will "water filters" to filter the water for your car. Water consumption goes through the roof, droughts all across the nation because everyone gets so water happy and starts driving all over the nation...
OH wait... global warming will give us enough water. That of course from all of the cars we are driving.
lets just go back to bikes and horse/carriage...
everyone just stayed at home....
just dreaming.
Have any of the global warming Nazis commented on the fact that due to the worldwide recession much less oil is being consumed worldwide? That should give us a few more milliseconds of planetary life. Strange that nobody seems to have noticed this.
Jim
Of course the weirdo Al Gore might make a documentary about roof painting; he could call it "An Inconvenient Roof".
then the energy lobbyists have a cow becuase their profits are going down... then, they say..."well, lets find a middleground here... lets paint them grey..not too cool, but not too hot"
everything is about scratching backs, and who can make more money...
im so tired of living life this way...its getting old.
"the one who dies with the most money doesnt win, he just dies."
we can barely sustain the power grids we have these days
Even in areas where the power grid is taxed during peak hours, there is plenty of capacity overnight to charge the cars.
Even in areas where the power grid is taxed during peak hours, there is plenty of capacity overnight to charge the cars.
NOPE : In the UK, power grids struggle to cope with a million kettles being switched on at half-time in a football match. To cope with ten million electric cars, massive strengthening of the grid and increased generating capacity would be needed. Indeed, new technology would also be required to regulate the current drawn by chargers so that as more cars are plugged in, charge rates are reduced. This would mean that you could not rely on a full charge being delivered overnight.
Kaled.
That was funny.
I don't see lithium batteries as providing a sensible way forward. Too expensive, too difficult to charge, too short life-expectancy, too limited supply and one of these days, a lithium battery will go bang after a car crash. That's not to say that batteries are more dangerous than petrol (gasoline) tanks but newspapers do like to exaggerate.
Kaled.
Solar roof panels for houses are likely to be the first really successful small-scale generators. These are becoming ever cheaper and will soon make economic sense (probably within five years).
Kaled.
Electric Cars - we can barely sustain the power grids we have these days with all of the energy consumption going on in the US. Now, everyone wants to charge their cars?
As already mentioned you could charge them overnight. To take that a step further one interesting idea I heard suggested was if all the cars were electric you could partly solve the problem or storing electric.
For example if you had one of these cars you could store the power overnight in the battery and use it to power your house during the day. Of course that would only apply to people not using their car that day. the incentive to do it would be cheaper rates overnight.
the incentive to do it would be cheaper rates overnight.
Unfortunately, if everyone plugs in their cars overnight, that will become peak-rate.
1HP = 750W (approx)
Imagine you wish to run your car every day for half an hour at an average of 20HP. That equates to charging at 1KW for 7.5 hours (or closer to 10 hours after allowing for inefficiencies).
A typical kettle uses about 3KW. Does anyone here think today's power grids could cope with one house in three running a kettle all night, every night? And let's not forget that many households have more than one car!
Right now, our illustrious leaders would have us believe that burning gas in power stations (45% efficient) transmitting the power over the grid (90% efficient) charging cars (95% efficient, maybe) to drive electric motors makes some sort of sense. However...
It makes far more sense to charge cars with methane, transported over existing gas networks at almost 100% efficiency and with no capacity problems. It can then be liquefied (not sure of the efficiency) stored in an insulated tank and combusted in a fuel cell with an efficiency of about 80% to drive the electric motor. (Gas transported by tanker is already liquefied.)
Of course, extrapolating, it makes sense for households to generate their own electricity from gas. In winter, waste heat from this process can be used for heating. Unfortunately, neither our leaders nor so-called environment campaigners have the intellectual capacity to figure this out, even though combined heat and power generators can be purchased today!
Kaled.
