AFVI Show: Ride & Drive Photos
Ride and Drives with alternative fuel cars can be a strange thing. Take the case of BMW's Hydrogen 7 in Anaheim yesterday. It's a smooth drive, no doubt. But the whole point of having one of these at the AFVI Conference is that it can run on hydrogen, right? What you might not know is that the nearest hydrogen station to the Anaheim Convention Center, according to the BMW rep who rode shotgun while I took one of these for a spin yesterday, is 90 miles away. Thankfully, the Hydrogen 7 is also a Gasoline 7 (thanks to a dual-fuel system), and so the BMW team drove two 7s down to the AFVI show on regular old gas and then let the Ride & Drive participants cruise the streets on H2.
It's easy to change the fuel source at any time by pushing a button. You'll notice in the two photos of the driver display in the Hydrogen 7 gallery below a little window that either reads H2 (when you're running on the liquid hydrogen) or the time and date (when you're burning dinosaurs). You'll also notice that the hydrogen tank was pretty close to empty when I was behind the wheel yesterday. I wonder what'll happen between now and Tuesday, when the second AFVI Ride & Drive is scheduled.
For now, enjoy these photos of three of the cars that were available today. I'll have my comments on riding in the Phoenix SUT later.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Howard Lee Harkness 9:25AM (4/02/2007)
"Thankfully, the Hydrogen 7 is also a Gasoline 7..."
Which means that most drivers who get sucked into buying this will never, ever, use hydrogen in it.
The ones with any sense at all will give this vehicle a pass, thereby avoiding the dead weight of the hydrogen system.
Reply
pkuhl 2:27PM (4/02/2007)
As I often post, the problems with hydrogen are efficiency related. You get much better efficiency with an electric car running on Lithium Ion batteries. Here's a big fuel cell scientist that agrees:
http://www.efcf.com/e/reports/E11.pdf
http://www.efcf.com/e/reports/E17.pdf
http://www.efcf.com/e/reports/
Reply
Chris M 12:35AM (4/04/2007)
Not suprising the BMW Hydrogen 7 was low on H2. That huge 30 gallon liquid H2 tank will only take it 120 miles (yep, 4 MPG on liquid H2). Also, it is slowly leaking H2 as the liquid H2 evaporates.
Running a H2 fuel cell is bad enough, but running an IC engine on H2 is a really really bad idea.
Reply