GM offers more insight into their view of hydrogen
Like Toyota, General Motors has offered some additional information into their viewpoint regarding hydrogen and fuel cells. As we recently reported, Toyota's Irv Miller called out The Wall Street Journal for bad reporting practices when they quoted Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe as suggesting that fuel cells were falling off the alternative fuel roadmap. GM's Bob Lutz was also quoted in that WSJ article, and it seems that he may have been misunderstood as well. According to Robert Babik, director of emissions, environment, energy and safety policy at General Motors, the General still sees hydrogen as a possible solution to our energy woes. Maybe it'll take 50 years, but it seems that both Toyota and GM are committed to the technology.
[Source: CNN Money]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Steve 10:57AM (3/10/2008)
Since hydrogen is no answer at all to climate change due to its horrific inefficiency, this isn't the story that needs to be reported here.
This is:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23552526/
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steven 2:07PM (3/10/2008)
@1: Don't hold your breath... Or then again, based on your link, maybe you should?
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Mike 2:25PM (3/10/2008)
Stories like that make me laugh(the one in the comment). There is a snow flakes chance in hell that the world will stop emitting CO2 today. If you're a shareholder in GM and/or Toyota I understand the complaining about a technology you don't believe will come to fruition.
But what good do stories like this do anyway? Raise awareness more than it is? I'm pretty sure most people are treating GW seriously. To me that study is just saying "Ok, stop making babies there's no point. In fact just go out and buy a 9mm so the Sun + Mother Earth doesn't have to bother killing you". Not very productive.
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mrbell321 2:50PM (3/10/2008)
Steve, since hydrogen isn't efficient RIGHT NOW, that means it's not a solution? I'm not holding my breath for a hydrogen economy, but it certainly has a number of very attractive features, especially when compared to petrolium... Dismissing it outright is just short sighted.
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KarenRei 3:21PM (3/10/2008)
"Steve, since hydrogen isn't efficient RIGHT NOW, that means it's not a solution? I'm not holding my breath for a hydrogen economy, but it certainly has a number of very attractive features, especially when compared to petrolium... Dismissing it outright is just short sighted."
It's simply not going to be efficient or cheap, ever. Certainly not compared to electrics. You're losing lots of energy on both production and use of it, and you can only reduce those losses so far. Find me one scientist in the field who thinks someone is going to come up with a practical H2 fuel cell with >70% efficiency, for example. And as for cost, that's just the physical properties of hydrogen; not only is it not found on Earth in nature in relevant quantities, unlike oil, but it's a complete PITA to store and transport -- very bulky, ridiculously leaky, explodes in concentrations from 4-75% and can detonate with incredible force, highly corrosive, enters other pipes and follows them to their destinations, collects under overhangs (NASA has lost a lot of building roofs this way; they recommend carefully monitored buildings whose roofs designed to be blown away cleanly). And on, and on, and on. Oh, and to top it all off, it destroys ozone. Brilliant!
On the other hand, li-ion batteries and supercapacitors are over 99% efficient, now, present-day. And the latest gen on the market is safe and long life. And in the lab right now, working toward commercialization, are dozens of other li-ion variants or similar chemistries, with 2, 3, even more times the current energy density. And it'll cost you a penny or so per mile to run your EV. And hardly takes any new infrastructure.
So, really, why hydrogen *at all*? There's just no reason.
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