BMW CleanEnergy popped the hood on their “bi-fueled” (hydrogen and gasoline) V12 internal combustion engine.
They offered the test drivers water bottles that marketing had relabeled simply as “Exhaust”… but I would not want to drink actual tailpipe water from this one (unlike hydrogen fuel cells or electric cars, this engine is not zero emissions).
I just read about this car yesterday in a book review in Technology Review of this book. Not too positive….
If carmakers used half of the money being dumped into hydrogen to subsidize small-engined cars and pocketed the other half, they’d be richer, we’d be richer, cities would be cleaner, energy consumption would be reduced, and we’d be just as close to hydrogen going mainstream.
Yeah…. I’m not sold on hydrogen as a solution to our transit issues. We need massive infrastructure and production to make it happen.
Electric is where my bets are going. I’m really curious to see what comes of the work A123 Systems are doing on the GM Volt.
Why make something like this and not a fuel cell car? This 7 series just seems like a cop-out from a car maker that generally makes cars that aren’t particularly clean.
Hydrogen is public relations.
In addition to the general goal of making people feel good about them, carmakers are playing a long game with the state of California. California wants to wave a magic wand and make gasoline disappear. The wand is wielded by the California Air Resources Board. From time to time the legislature and/or CARB makes rules requiring transition to a new type of engine. X% of vehicles must have zero emissions by year Y, fuel economy must be Z miles per gallon by date T, etc. Some of these rules are impossible to meet. If there is a visible attempt to comply the deadline may be moved. Otherwise there’s a risk that the state will enforce its rules and ban certain companies from selling cars. So companies invest a billion dollars to avoid an all-or-nothing confrontation with one of their biggest markets.
(The fuel economy rule is in the guise of CO2 emissions limits. It may exceed the scope of California’s exemption to federal motor vehicle standards.)
BMW’s strength is internal combustion engine design. They’ve got the tooling, the know-how and the parts and managed to get a hydrogen-powered production vehicle out there first. They realise it’s a token gesture and are aware of the ironies. i.e. a 6-litre V12 limo that occasionally runs on hydrogen when the chauffeur is lucky enough to find an H2 filling station is hardly ‘Clean Energy’. Yes, the infrastructure will require a massive investment and there are still lots of barriers. However, converting the existing global petrol distribution network to hydrogen is entirely possible. If parralel investment is put into renewable energy, then extraction of hydrogen (the most abundant element in the universe) can be clean too.
BMW had to use a big car so that the massive space taken up by the dual-fuel tanks isn’t immediately apparent to the politicians, celebs and royalty that are currently test-driving the car. Obviously when hydrogen filling stations are more abundant, two tanks won’t be necessary and then maybe we’ll be able to buy a Hydrogen 3 or one 1.
It’s a stepping stone, a showpiece to prove that the technology is feasible and progress is being made. You’ve got to commend them for creating such a huge buzz (just check out how many photos of the Hydrogen 7 are on Flickr as an example).
Electric cars have their own problems. Unlike hydrogen extraction, there needs to be a constant supply of renewable energy (difficult with wind turbines etc.) to power the cars. Most will be charged overnight when the driver gets home from work – coinciding with usage of all those electrical appliances we use to cook dinner, heat the home etc. So that’s a massive load on the grid, plus the loss of power as it travels from what are too often coal-fired power-stations to the point of use. Then there’s the issue of battery disposal etc.
Some argue that the holy grail is micro-hydrogen generation plants which reduce the problem of long-distance distribution…. or perhaps it’s simply comfortable wet-weather gear and decent cycle-lanes. It all comes down to us as consumers being honest with ourselves about what kind of vehicle we need. There are some brilliant EVs out there, but they’re mostly city runabouts that can’t carry much more than a tandem bicycle with a couple of panniers. This is the biggest Beemer
there is, yet it’ll still get Madonna and her bodyguards to the concert on time on one (or two) tanks of fuels.
Anyways, please consider joining our group: Revolve towards zero emissions.
Since hydrogen is not common in its pure form, one still has to produce the electrical energy needed to extract it from water through electrolysis. The result is that in practice, hydrogen works like just another kind of battery. Its advantage is that cars can be fueled with it quicker than charged with electricity. However, it’s much easier to transport electricity through the power lines than hydrogen into the fueling stations. The whole process is probably more efficient in the case of electrical batteries, when one considers the amount of energy wich needs to be generated to drive the same distance. And more so in the case of hydrogen combustion engines, wich are much less efficient than fuel cells driving electric motors…
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