Hybrid vehicles versus hydrogen vehicles
What is the future of the automobile?
Gas and energy prices are rising higher. Evidence of global warming continues to escalate, painting a very ugly picture of the future, and auto executives throughout the world realize serious change will ultimately be required.
Advanced gasoline engines, clean diesel engines, hybrid powertrains, hydrogen engines and fuel cells have all been promoted as the future of the automobile. Ultimately, however, the discussion always seems to end up as hybrid vehicles versus hydrogen vehicles. Somehow this discussion pits current hybrid technology versus some future technology. Yet a hybrid powertrain has the ability to incorporate advanced gasoline engines, diesel engines, hydrogen engines, and fuel cells into its powertrain.
More important, Toyota sees its current hybrid powertrain as about 75% of the required technology for its fuel cell-powered cars. Thus, the adaptability of hybrid cars creates enormous potential. For example, hybrid battery packs, like laptop computer batteries, will increase their efficiency, and as this happens, hybrids will become even more fuel efficient.
While other technologies might emerge that are as good, or better than hybrids, those that continue to summarily dismiss hybrids have dismissed objective thinking. Dismissing hybrids is dismissing Toyota.
With billions in profit to spend, dismissing Toyota is just plain silly.
More on hybrid vehicles.
Gas and energy prices are rising higher. Evidence of global warming continues to escalate, painting a very ugly picture of the future, and auto executives throughout the world realize serious change will ultimately be required.
Advanced gasoline engines, clean diesel engines, hybrid powertrains, hydrogen engines and fuel cells have all been promoted as the future of the automobile. Ultimately, however, the discussion always seems to end up as hybrid vehicles versus hydrogen vehicles. Somehow this discussion pits current hybrid technology versus some future technology. Yet a hybrid powertrain has the ability to incorporate advanced gasoline engines, diesel engines, hydrogen engines, and fuel cells into its powertrain.
More important, Toyota sees its current hybrid powertrain as about 75% of the required technology for its fuel cell-powered cars. Thus, the adaptability of hybrid cars creates enormous potential. For example, hybrid battery packs, like laptop computer batteries, will increase their efficiency, and as this happens, hybrids will become even more fuel efficient.
While other technologies might emerge that are as good, or better than hybrids, those that continue to summarily dismiss hybrids have dismissed objective thinking. Dismissing hybrids is dismissing Toyota.
With billions in profit to spend, dismissing Toyota is just plain silly.
More on hybrid vehicles.
Labels: clean diesel, fuel cells, fuel efficiency, global warming, Hybrid Vehicles, toyota
posted by Dahcredyns at
9:01 AM
2 Comments:
The “Hydrogen Economy” Mirage
The emerging "Hydrogen Economy" has been a topic of much recent discussion in the media. Politicians of every stripe and some auto manufacturers talk about the emerging "Hydrogen Economy" as a solution to our future energy and environmental problems. There are several significant barriers to the emergence of a hydrogen economy.
Many believe that the only significant barrier is the lack of a distribution infrastructure - inexpensive ways to store and distribute hydrogen. The reality is that the problems with hydrogen are more fundamental than storage and distribution. It goes to the very source of hydrogen itself. Water (H2O), is rightfully claimed as a vast and inexhaustible source of hydrogen – after all we have oceans of water. What is lost in the hype is that extracting hydrogen from this abundant source is a very energy intensive process.
Electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen is probably the most expensive way to produce hydrogen and is not economically viable, especially at current prices of electricity. Ironically the cheapest conventional source of hydrogen is fossil fuels - or a combination of fossil fuels and water. A carbon source such as coal or natural gas is reacted with oxygen and water (as steam) over a catalyst to produce “synthesis gas” or syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The hydrogen can be separated from this mixture. Nevertheless carbon dioxide is a byproduct of this process. The good news is that the carbon dioxide can be captured and sequestered at this stage.
Alternatively, the synthesis gas is itself used as a fuel as is the case in advanced “Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle” power plants which gasify coal prior to burning the syngas to produce electricity. Developing technology for the economical production of hydrogen is really the biggest barrier to a future hydrogen economy. It will be quite some time before we see significant numbers of hydrogen powered vehicles on the road. The hydrogen economy is not around the corner – far from it.
The hybrids of today, represent a critical step is the transition to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels. Their increased efficiency is a welcome development, and one can only hope that economies of scale coupled with improvements in hybrid technology will make them the dominant automotive technology on the road in the next one or two decades.
Excellent points.
The War on Terror and the Wars in Iraq demand that the U.S. make foreign oil dependency one of the most important issues. Putting tax payer money into funding the hydrogen economy simply isn't justified right now.
Hybrid software and battery improvements could make hybrids efficient enough to end foreign oil dependency much sooner than waiting for fuel cells.
Plus, alternative ideas like plug-in hybrids and biodiesel hybrids demonstrate that solutions exist with today's technology.
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