Sort of electric,

Yup .. electrons traveling along a conductor path .. that would be electric

there is still a combustion reaction going on.

Recombination of oxygen and hydrogen is combustion? No fire .. just water and free electrons.

I dont see hydrogen being viable any time soon,

Neither do I, but I thought noting alternatives to the A-123 GM scenario might be on thread, as is CNG.

storage is a real pain,

Yup .. agreed. The SEER '91 car used some catalyst material in the tank to ameliorate the pressure problem, but soo darn long ago, I can't recall what is was.

you cant liquefy it without cryogenic equipment

Just motors and pumps ..

so you dont get much volume in your tank.

Well, if the carbonized chicken feather nano-particles hold up under cycling, they may be part of a viable storage solution.

The tanks are expensive high pressure devices (made more so by the need to survive a crash without exploding).

The chicken feather solution claims to address the high pressure requirements as well.

Hydrogen manufacture by electrolysis is extremely inefficient,

Who cares if it's made using solar energy ? Cryogenic distillation is very expensive, and requires huge capital investment to ferret out the lightest of elements.

couple that to a fuel cell vehicle and you end up at ~20% efficiency,

Last I read, fuel cells using micro-pore construction techniques were getting about 78% efficiency. The electrolytic cells also have a ways to go, but there is progress being made. There is a guy doing this for his home off-grid system (my interest) but he spent about $500k to build it

not helpful unless we can get fusion power working (and cheap).

Agreed, marvelous concept, but ain't gonna hold my breath on that one

Methanol/ethanol in a fuel cell is promising, some CO2 production, but a lot less and since you make it from plants the carbon is re-absorbed. Its a liquid fuel so storage and filling are easy and is safe (compared to H2 at several hundred atmospheres of pressure). The problem currently is that fuel cells are too expensive to make and dont last very long, they are also really heavy.

Well, the liquefied aluminum storage cells are pretty damn heavy too .. certainly not viable for mobile applications, even with their incredible energy density.

And thanks for your comments .. a spirited dialog and sharing information just elevates all of us to having a broader understanding of the subject at hand. Sometimes it's just too darn hard to stay perfectly on thread .. and we forgive ourselves

Originally Posted by TayNinh68

Just motors and pumps ..

Need to get it below 33K or it wont liquify, no matter how much pressure you put it under. Very energy intensive process, the prototype H2 fuelled vehicles use highly compressed gaseous H2 as keeping it a liquid is a problem. If the container gets too hot it goes back to a gas and your storage container will burst, insulation works for a while, the reason the space shuttle tank was covered in foam, but not for the time needed if you use it for car fuel.

Originally Posted by desertstalker

Need to get it below 33K or it wont liquify, no matter how much pressure you put it under. Very energy intensive process, the prototype H2 fuelled vehicles use highly compressed gaseous H2 as keeping it a liquid is a problem. If the container gets too hot it goes back to a gas and your storage container will burst, insulation works for a while, the reason the space shuttle tank was covered in foam, but not for the time needed if you use it for car fuel.

WoW .. well that explains why the guy I mentioned earlier, was storing H2 in a row of 1,000 gallon propane tanks, at a pressure that they are rated for as I recall. Certainly not liquefied. 33 Kelvin is damn cold. So even a remote pv powered H2 station would have limitations insofar as a reasonable storage capacity.

The SEER '91 vehicle used some substance in the tank that absorbed H2 at a greater density .. just too long ago to remember what is was .. but similar in concept to the chicken feather nano-carbon.

Generation .. storage .. distribution .. and user base .. many challenges. Thanks for de-simplifying the motors/pumps realities.

Looks like A123 is now a Chinese company:

http://www.delawareonline.com/articl...ext%7CHome%7Cs

Originally Posted by eaticus

Looks like A123 is now a Chinese company:

http://www.delawareonline.com/articl...ext%7CHome%7Cs

27 cents a share .. Geese Louise .. if under a dollar for 30 days, it is kicked out of the Exchange. What a shame .. overpriced and under performing .. same ole fricken mattress dance. Yeah .. I'm prejudiced .. I wrote A123 maybe 10 months ago regarding buying about 600 Ah of LiFeP04 48vdc batteries for my home system here (to replace my aging fla) and they didn't even have the courtesy to respond.

I'll tellya what .. the vendors in China are actually trying to be in business .. Happy to give quotes, and are the largest producers of both Lipo and LifeP04 batteries on the planet. So maybe with Chinese ownership, A123 with have to stop screwin' the pooch, grow up and get real with the marketplace. I'll most likely use LiFeP04 chemistry for my upgrade, and ironically, have to buy from China either way.

I hope the A123 jobs stay in country, but everything has gone so far sideways .. who knows. I do know that while Japan's economy is generally characterized as being stagnant, we await with bated breath for Panasonic's 4,000 mAh 18560 next April .. with A123, we just wait. Tesla buys Panasonics for $3.23 per cell .. GM buys A123 for how much? Nissan is makin' their own .. smart move.

OK .. I'm Done .. Please Carry On

Originally Posted by eaticus

Looks like A123 is now a Chinese company:

http://www.delawareonline.com/articl...ext%7CHome%7Cs

our tax dollars hard at work, un-frigin-believable

I have been following this thread since day 1 and made my choice 2 days ago; it is NOT an EV.
I am now the very happy owner of a 2012 Prius C. OK, sorta EV.
It is averaging 58mpg on this first tank so far. Best yet, I can drive across the country without any hassles till I come to a big hill but I will have tennis shoes in the trunk. Haha.
I really wish I could buy an EV only but unless I roll my own it will be out of reach for me for at least another 15 years. Heck, by then I will be on SS and not able to afford it anyhow.
Oh, best part was out the door for around 23k.

Rick

Congrats Rick. Will have to see it the next time I'm over your way.

A hybrid is a much wiser purchase for your area as your climate is not exactly kind to rechargeable lithium batteries, as I'm sure you know...

Mark

As I learn how to drive this to take advantage of the hybrid technology my mpg average on this tank gets better. At 64 mpg now with around 120 miles on tank.
IMO, why $hed the buck$ for a Volt or Leaf when this works so well?

Rick
Disclaimer: I am 55, can drive like I am 80 and live in Phoenix where the largest hill in the city is a mole hill.

"Looks like A123 is now a Chinese company:"

Isn't everything????

Les

Rampman,

Congrats on getting the new Prius, I have been a Prius owner since 2010 and love it. I bought the Prius III wish I had bought the Prius IV...
The car gets great gas mileage ~60-61mpg during the summer and 59-60 in the winter. I do not depend on the instantaneous mpg on the dash I test the tanks to see how much gas I use to the miles I drive so it is good mileage numbers. BTW I live in Houston area and its flat here too.
I have a Yaris sedan that my wife drives, when I had it I was able to get 39-40mpg at times but mostly 37-38mpg, another caveat is I drive a total of 50miles daily to go and return from work. The average speeds on the route is 45mph, I drive it on cruise control at as much as possible even down to 35mph so the computer runs the engine/electic motor to best mileage. You have to pay attention to the traffic but it is possible to stay on CC in most situations. The tires are pumped up to 45lbs and the rolling resitance is almost nil, after 2 years the tires are still great and very little wear on the breaks as the electric motor dynamically breaks the car when you touch the break pedal so there is no need for brake maintenance yet. I had the car set up for synthetic oil for the engine so the oil only needs to be changed every 10000 miles. Maintenance has been very little so far, in fact the Yaris cost a lot more to keep up than the Prius has so far.
Does not cost that much in gas either, tanks last 1 1/2 weeks and I only put in ~8 gallons on fillups. The Yaris cost ~$387 a month financed, the Prius $444 financed with the differences in gas mileage I save ~$60 difference counting regular maintenance and gas compared to the Yaris so the Prius effectively costs the same as the Yaris. BTW I got 0% financing for the loan thru Toyota so overal the Prius has been a great little car albiet not a speedster but I did not buy it for its speed...

If I had to buy another car tomorrow I would buy another Prius. At this point in time I do not forsee getting another at least till this one is ~10 years old, I hope.

Cheers,
Eric B.

Originally Posted by rampman

As I learn how to drive this to take advantage of the hybrid technology my mpg average on this tank gets better. At 64 mpg now with around 120 miles on tank.
IMO, why $hed the buck$ for a Volt or Leaf when this works so well?

Rick
Disclaimer: I am 55, can drive like I am 80 and live in Phoenix where the largest hill in the city is a mole hill.

Congrats on your purchase down there Rick. While guilty of being an inveterate Ford guy (including Jag of course :-), I bought a brand new Toyota Corolla for just under $2,100 in '70, and put 135,000 miles on it. Given wage stagnation since '73 here in the US, I think you made a wise choice. They are made here, so your dollars are paying American wages .. Thank You.

Certainly the tone of this thread is not anti-hybrid Rick, it's just the mattress dance with A123 and GM that gets negative attenion .. both having been given some extraordinary assistance, and many of us have an interest in the competitive development of LiFeP04 chemistry here in the states.

Thanks for sharing Rick .. enjoy the ride .. everything goes faster down hill amigo, even with aircon on

Originally Posted by LesUyeda

"Looks like A123 is now a Chinese company:"

Isn't everything????

Les

Nope. If you're an older "Tool Time Guy" .. and you've got a few Craftsman power tools sitting around in the shop, then you know that if a machine tag started with a 113. .. it was made by Emerson Electric.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-0...disclosed.html

Craftsman Commercial stuff was made by Clausing .. Kalamazoo .. here in the US .. I still have and use two pieces of their stuff, and a 113. drill press and band saw. Those days are gone gone gone.

My "retirement" wood-shop is mostly Rikon and Grizzly .. there are no competitively priced products even made here anymore. And to segway back on thread, it appears that even the LiFeP04 battery chemistry that WE fostered, is as you say, gone Chinese. Hope they enjoyed their mattress dance .. we know who got screwed and not kissed.

"Nope. If you're an older "Tool Time Guy" .. and you've got a few Craftsman power tools sitting around in the shop, "

I have a garage full of Craftsman tools, both power AND hand tools. I raised three sons, and started all of them on Craftsman, BUT, have you taken a close look at Craftsman lately. They are garbage, and a LOT of metric screws in them.

Les

Just tossing another hat in the ring for Hybrids... My wife has a 08 Camery Hybrid. The cost was halfway between a stripped 4 cylinder, and a loaded 6 cylinder. The Hybrid has a lot of amenities as standard, so to us there really was no premium.
It is old by today's standards for a hybrid so we only get around 42-43 summer, 38-39 winter (much more than the EPA) calculated at fill up which is darned close to what the computer tells us. Not too shabby for a mid-sized sedan of that vintage. We live in western PA with LOTS of hills. You can't really go anywhere without a large hill somewhere in your travels. Power wise it is no speedster, but it is no slouch (I've drive more modern 6 cylinder midsized rentals that have less omph, and LOT less mileage)
All in all we have been VERY happy with the car. It now has darned near 100K miles on it and maintenance has been ZERO. Nothing other than typical PM (Oil, tires) Still has the original brakes, and it was inspected not too long ago with a clean bill of health.
We really haven't calculated our savings as we didn't really pay a premium. And since we're not in the market for a new one just yet I can't say how the new ones compare, but I can't see them being "less".

I do like diesels, (we rented a mid sized VW diesel in England/Wales a few years back, and got in the mod 40s MPG, but it was hard to calculate as the odometer is in Imperial units, and we bought fuel in metric) but with diesel more than regular here, and they have a huge premium at purchase (from what I have seen), the hybrids just seem to make sense. Not giving up anything, but gaining a lot.