10 Responses to “Honda’s FCX Emits Water Vapor”

1. Taellosse Posted: Jun 16th, 2008 at 2:06 pm

   1 My science jitsu is only moderate, but from all I’ve read up on the technology, hydrogen fuel cells are never going to replace gasoline. There’s too many fundamental problems with the technology: not only is it expensive to produce the fuel (and requires as much or more fossil fuels to do so as it would for an equivalent amount of gasoline)–which, as you say, is a technical problem that could be fixed with time and money, most likely–but it is difficult to store and transport. MUCH more difficult than gasoline–hydrogen is extremely unstable at non-freezing temperatures, and hydrogen has to be COLD to freeze. That’s chemistry, not poor technology, so no matter how cheap it is to produce, it still is going to cost too much to move it around, never mind storing it safely in the tank of a car. And can you imagine how much more expensive it would be if the gas stored in filling stations had to be refrigerated constantly? Alternative fuels are a must–we absolutely have to replace oil with something else. But I really, really doubt it’s ever going to be hydrogen fuel cells.

2. Kevin Bahrt Posted: Jun 16th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

   2 Blast I made a typo. I would have to see more data as to quantity produced to know how to weight each part. If you’re worried

3. Kevin Bahrt Posted: Jun 16th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

   3 And I like the way the car looks.

4. The disenfranchised youth Posted: Jun 16th, 2008 at 7:20 pm

   4 The focus has been put way way way tooo much on hydrogen fuel cell technology by the car companies. I asked my chem teacher about the future of hydrogen fuel cells, and he said, “not much”. The problems are pretty much what Taellosse said they were, and the reality is, we have to look to alternative power. Hydrogen fuel cells simply arent the future. In fact, they are an ancient technology, that was used back in the days when rocket flights were common (remember those days?), as fuel, but we simply shrank the technology, and the economics just dont work. The future for carbon-free transport is still in alternative fuels, making the car design more efficient. Thinkin in terms of way in the future is all well and good, but we have to step back and look to our immediate future. When people start tossing words around like “hydrogen economy” it shows their lack of understanding for the implications. Remember, nowadays we have the technology to retrofit every house to make them carbon neutral. We can aim for that, shouldering some of the responsibilty for it, while allowing the developing countries to catch up industrially before we start forcing our “carbon limiting policies on them”

5. Kevin Bahrt Posted: Jun 16th, 2008 at 8:21 pm

   5 And it’s not even about trying to improve the efficiency of the cars them selves. It’s mostly the batteries that need improving. The only batteries that can hold the charge and be drained and refilled for prolonged periods of time and cycles are Lithium Ion batteries and even those only last a few years. Compare the cost of a laptop battery (a hundred or so dollars) to the amount of juice you’d need to power a car for 500 or so miles and you start to see where the problems come in. Nobody will buy a car that needs a five thousand dollar battery replacement every year or two on top of the normal cost of electricity to charge ‘em up. The most common way of “improving” efficiency is to ditch weight. If you look very few SUVs have a real bumper anymore, just a piece of plastic molded into shape. And then it’s marketed as having better mileage at a higher price and the manufacturers pocket the difference between a steel bumper and a plastic one. It isn’t like making lightweight cars is new either. A regular engineering contest is to make a car that gets more than a hundred miles to the gallon and there are scores of people that do it. The only problem is that it isn’t so much a car as it is a plastic go cart. So as long as you don’t mind having one seat, no cargo room, no AC/heat, no safety features, and a speed limit of 30-40 mph, a cost effective vehicle is within our grasp. What everyone wants is a car that seats 4 (+) adults in relative comfort and safety +cargo, can break eighty (be honest you want at least a hunert), can go more than 200 miles to the charge, and is affordable, not to mention all of the electronic goodies.

6. jim Posted: Jun 17th, 2008 at 12:19 am

   6 An internal combustion engine combines octane (C8H18 x2) with atmospheric oxygen (O2 x25) to make carbon dioxide (CO2 x16) and water vapor (H2O x18); as you can see cars are spewing out plenty of water as it is. But if we assume that a fuel cell gets as much work out of braking a covalent bond as an engine does the fuel cell needs to combine hydrogen (H2 x50) with oxygen (O2 x25) to make water vapor (H2O x50) or nearly three times as much. What the Greens don’t want you to know is that water vapor is also a green house gas. So I am very skeptical that a so-called “Hydrogen Economy” is the way to solve global warming.

7. Dan Posted: Jun 17th, 2008 at 2:36 am

   7 There are two forms of refueling possibilities with hydrogen powered engines (I don’t know what one was chosen in the end, however both are overly costly to implement). Also there is a significant loss in horsepower, as we saw when Mazda attempted to produce a hydrogen powered RX-8 (they made 1, literally 1 car, no one was interested). Well, at least they are trying. Might as well make a few failed attempts now while we still have some oil left to rely on.

8. Hamstadini Posted: Jun 17th, 2008 at 2:39 am

   8 Well, considering all the comments placed here, there’s one way I can see to stop emitting greenhouse gases (not entirely though): Walk.

9. Wayne Posted: Jun 17th, 2008 at 8:55 am

   9 The lease-only fact isn’t new. Years ago, Chevy came out with a plug-in electric car called the EV, IIRC. It was a lease-only because no one knew how long the batteries would last, but they knew they wouldn’t have a tremendous life. In the case of this Honda, that $600/month lease also includes some insurance. It might be collision only, but that mitigates the cost a bit. Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest are among the first people who are going to get these. http://green.yahoo.com/news/ap/20080616/ap_on_bi_ge/japan_honda.html

10. GarthFT Posted: Jun 17th, 2008 at 5:59 pm

    10 It is one of the sad misconceptions about fuel cells that they are some sort of new power source, when in reality they’re merely a battery. Until we can start mining pure Hydrogen from the atmosphere of Jupiter or something, we’re going to have to break Hydrogen away from some other existing element. Hydrogen being the number one element has the habit of not liking to be by itself and so bonds with everything and anything. Except them snooty noble gasses. So we’re left with drawing Hydrogen out of something. The two easiest and most direct methods currently are to break down complex hydrocarbons (fossil fuels) or to break water down. Considering we then plan to recombine oxygen and hydrogen to form water, it seems to make sense to start with water to begin with. Unfortunately it takes a fair bit of electrical current to do this. I don’t know the numbers, so I can’t say whether it would or would not be effective. Personally, I’m much more inclined to back pure electric vehicles, and convert gas stations into charging stations. Leaving the actual electrical power to be generated however we can (hopefully through nuclear power, the cleanest of the powers). The big stumbling block here, is of course battery technology. Battery technology has lagged far behind any other technology you care to name. The batteries we use today are hardly more advanced than the ones we used a decade or more ago. Until some crazy Tesla man dabbles one too many times in the realm of super-science and makes some amazing super-man style leap in the field of battery technology, gasoline will probably continue to be the cheapest and most efficient portable power source. It all boils down to when we decide that cheep and efficient isn’t good enough.