[BengalTiger]

There's hydrogen everywhere. Everywhere.

But it's either in space or in chemical compounds, and I'm pretty sure you need to invest energy to get it.

[General Battuta]

There's hydrogen everywhere. Everywhere.

But it's either in space or in chemical compounds, and I'm pretty sure you need to invest energy to get it.

okay now that i think about it you are totally correct

[iamzack]

...hydrogen...

And where will you get the hydrogen from?

Its only the most abundant element in the universe. :|

[General Battuta]

...hydrogen...

And where will you get the hydrogen from?

Its only the most abundant element in the universe. :|

Yeah but he's right, getting to molecular hydrogen on Earth isn't very energy-efficient.

[iamzack]

We'll tear it off the water molecules with our teeth.

[Scotty]

Sodium + water?  Not sure of the efficiency of that though.

[Mika]

Hydrogen separation is a very expensive process in terms of used energy. Not a lot of people know this, and the question goes why?

When thinking about fossilized fuels and their replacements in the cars, the oil is, at the moment, still the most efficient way to deliver energy from the engineering point of view. Replacing gasoline with ethanol is an interesting question, since the amount of energy within the the fuel is greater in gasoline, and in order to do the same amount of work, more ethanol has to be burned, negating the effect. Should the motors be optimized for ethanol, I'm not sure what would happen. In principle, the energy density is less which should dictate unless the combustion efficiency can be radically improved when using ethanol.

I actually don't think that electrical cars will make a breakthrough, unless the car is needed for transportation inside the city. Elsewhere it is not feasible with the current battery technology.

Hydrogen cells might work best, but the problem is the volatility of the hydrogen, and for that reason they need to be tied to some other material that adds considerably in the weight. I think that the future will likely be in the direction of hydrogen, once the separation issues and safety has been solved at some level.

[666maslo666]

Hydrogen is actually more safe than gas if the storage tank is accidentally ingnited for example during vehicle collision. The problem is that pure hydrogen is a very small molecule that leaks thru almost any material over time, especially when compressed to make storage efficient in terms of density.

[Mefustae]

Not to mention the overriding fact that there are no great hydrogen traps beneath Alaska or the Mid-East.

[Drogoth]

Tidal power is another promising route, assuming we can find an efficient way to harvest it.

Tides in the Bay of Fundy reach heights of 50 feet in some places, and they are theorized to have enough energy to power all of North America for a year if harnessed for a day. Question being how.

Oil is efficient yes, but it's only efficient because a lot of engineering work has been put into making products optimized for it. Given enough work, we can get clean, sustainable energy from elsewhere.

But there might be fewer gold yachts. Or rather they'll belong to green power execs, and the oil execs cant let OTHER people have yachts,  so they lobby hard against it

[watsisname]

Hydrogen is expensive to make?  What!  I made hydrogen myself with a 9V battery and some salt water! :X

* watsisname looks into the numbers

[General Battuta]

Hydrogen is expensive to make?  What!  I made hydrogen myself with a 9V battery and some salt water! :X

* watsisname looks into the numbers

Energy in vs energy out is where it breaks down, I believe.

Also you can just type

* General Battuta gonna school you on the use of me (quote for schooling)

[watsisname]

NUMBERS

2 H2O(l) –> O2 (g) + 4 H+ (aq) + 4 electrons
2 H+ (aq) + 2 electrons –> H2 (g)

2 Faradays or ~193000 coulombs of electrons used per 1 mole of H2 produced.  Yeah, that's not too great. :X


Edit: 

* watsisname fails to understand how he was schooled when you used the same tag as he did.

[redsniper]

What really grinds my gears is how oil companies fight alternative energy sources tooth and nail rather than try to adapt to changing demand. If your company can't adapt to the times then it deserves to fail and die by the free market you so dearly love. Do any auto companies weep for the stagecoach builders and saddle makers they put out of business?

[Mika]

Oil is efficient yes, but it's only efficient because a lot of engineering work has been put into making products optimized for it. Given enough work, we can get clean, sustainable energy from elsewhere.

I mentioned oil because I think a lot of environmentally aware people somehow consider it "old tech" or stupid, but from engineering perspective neither of that is true. It is still the most reasonable way to transport energy on location if electrical wires fail, or to provide means of transportation, discounting naval nuclear reactors. This graph shows some pre-selected materials and their energy densities. So it is not only the engineering work, but the energy density fossilized fuels have is a huge advantage that is very difficult to catch up.

There are some interesting engineering ideas of replacing helicopters with zeppelins in order to reduce the amount of fuel burned, but it is hard to see a source of energy that could replace fossilized fuel in cars and trucks that travel longer distances. Although, a zeppelin could carry the equivalent load of a truck with comparable speeds to the location. The question is, how much does zeppelin require energy to move from place A to B and what sort of fuel did it use? Gasoline burning passenger airliners are much more difficult to replace.

And as if replacing fuel itself wasn't difficult due to energy densities involved, there also has to be a sustainable method of producing that energy for large markets. Hydrogen is a byproduct of certain step in aluminum industry, though I'm not sure of the capacities, and likely the hydrogen released there is already being used.

[General Battuta]

* watsisname fails to understand how he was schooled when you used the same tag as he did.

Oh that's weird, the forum software autoconverts it. But you can just type

/ me (does whatever)

without the space between / and me.

[IceFire]

I actually don't think that electrical cars will make a breakthrough, unless the car is needed for transportation inside the city. Elsewhere it is not feasible with the current battery technology.

Although we're both reading into the future I have no reason to believe that we will stay at the current level of battery technology. It's fantastic that electric cars are coming on market (we now have the Volt and Leaf with the electric Focus coming soon after and a bunch of other mainstream electric vehicles in other countries as well) because it means that the technology will begin to be refined and current methods will be superceded by more sophisticated methods. We're entering a convergence zone between cars, computers, smart phones and other electric devices. All of them need better batteries and power efficiency... there are enough people out there doing the research on all of the different areas that we need to succeed here.

I'm fairly confident that someone will figure something out that works well... and I'm pretty certain that we'll have very normal and high performing cars that can drive 500km on a single charge. I'm not convinced it's impossible. Right now it is... well not quite... it's doable but with massive expense and compromises. But we're not staying in a single place right now which is encouraging. Ten years ago there was no Google, no smart phone, laptops lasted 2 hours on a charge and most cars weren't as good on fuel as they are now. Ten years from now? Fifty years from now? I think I'll live to see electric cars take over... or hydrogen/electric cars... or whatever

[Mika]

Although we're both reading into the future I have no reason to believe that we will stay at the current level of battery technology. It's fantastic that electric cars are coming on market (we now have the Volt and Leaf with the electric Focus coming soon after and a bunch of other mainstream electric vehicles in other countries as well) because it means that the technology will begin to be refined and current methods will be superceded by more sophisticated methods. We're entering a convergence zone between cars, computers, smart phones and other electric devices. All of them need better batteries and power efficiency... there are enough people out there doing the research on all of the different areas that we need to succeed here.

I'm fairly confident that someone will figure something out that works well... and I'm pretty certain that we'll have very normal and high performing cars that can drive 500km on a single charge. I'm not convinced it's impossible. Right now it is... well not quite... it's doable but with massive expense and compromises. But we're not staying in a single place right now which is encouraging. Ten years ago there was no Google, no smart phone, laptops lasted 2 hours on a charge and most cars weren't as good on fuel as they are now. Ten years from now? Fifty years from now? I think I'll live to see electric cars take over... or hydrogen/electric cars... or whatever

There has been a considerably longer time for battery industry to develop than people usually count (10 to 20 years) for some reason. There has been a quite a lot of research and engineering work done there to improve the efficiencies earlier, and to my eyes it looks like a rough road ahead. The reason simply is the poor energy density of the lithium ion battery as shown in the graph, besides the older better performing batteries (as in military submarine type batteries) tended to be rather poisonous and have been outlawed by RoHS-type regulations. I'm personally of the opinion that the fuel cell will be the more reasonable replacement for a transportation energy source.

At the moment, I don't think it would be possible to construct an electric car that could go up to 500 km @ 100 km/h without significantly reducing the usable load and abandoning RoHS. The further bad news is that 500 km is still not enough range for regions like this place. Current diesel cars go up 1000 km, gasoline cars go up to 700 km before refuelling. The other factor is the environmental condition, especially temperature, that tends to reduce the range drastically. This is a sparsely populated country, with rather non-functional public transport system at the moment, which emphasizes personal cars at the Northern parts. Also, the recharging should be a very quick operation, and batteries with that large capacities are slow to recharge. I'm not saying it is impossible, but given the energy densities and that there has been an incentive to figure out better compounds, I'm not very positive about the improvement possibilities in the batteries.

As a side note, my laptop still lasts only two hours with a single charge. And nowadays cars take more fuel than the older ones, the reason being that the new cars are heavier due to the safety features required - the engines are more efficient per burned liter yes, but they still require more fuel! Madza 323 had a rather good 5.5 l / 100 km performance, and it was done in the 1980s! This might depend on the country you were born to though. I can imagine that the situation in US was drastically different.

[IceFire]

My laptop lasts 7 hours actually doing stuff (notes, documents, light web surfing). It lasts 4-5 hours doing multimedia and about 2 hours gaming. So improvements are possible

Hydogen might be a good option but then it's hydrogen to create electricity to power the wheels. So the "electric" portion of the drivetrain surely has room for innovation and refinement.

Sorry for waxing poetic but I always feel that if we, collectively, set our minds to solve problems a bunch of people will come up with some really great ideas and a few of them will even work. We do need a bit of a game changer. I'm hoping some of the nanotech and quantum research leads us down some new avenues not possible to explore before. Go 300 years ago and few thought we could fly.... try explaining the internet or smart phones to those people We'll see what the next even 50 years brings.

[Ravenholme]

There's hydrogen everywhere. Everywhere.

But it's either in space or in chemical compounds, and I'm pretty sure you need to invest energy to get it.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-tall-sunlight-to-hydrogen-neutron-analysis.html Relevant