Ballard Throws In The Towel on The Hydrogen Car
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 11. 6.07
They have been the great H2 hope for years, the Ballard fuel cell. They are in Hondas, Mercedes and Mitsubishis. Yet as the hydrogen hype grows, this industry leader's stock has declined from $210 in 2000 to around $5 today. Now they are in talks with part owners Daimler and Ford to dump the automotive fuel cell business. Analyst John Hykawy says "The problem has always been, can you do it for a cost that matters to anybody and the jury is still out on that one, and the other side is that once you have it in the car, can you actually make hydrogen at a reasonable price and supply it in an infrastructure and the answer to that at this point seems to be no."
Tyler Hamilton at Clean Break thinks that the "momentum is on the side of battery technology and the infrastructure to support it needs to be extended and upgraded, instead of created from scratch" and "millions of "smart" electric cars plugged into the grid can offer an extremely valuable way of managing electricity supply and demand and smoothing out peaks." Good points at ::Clean Break
i never thought the answer was in electric cars. between energy transfer losses between generation and consumption, hauling around batteries, and of course the fact that the majority of power generated is hardly green, doesn't this not solve any problems?
although i suppose we'd at least be causing problems in only one area, namely the areas around power plants, but still it seems like we're just delaying a change that desperately needs to be made. fossil fuels are fossil fuels regardless of where they're being used.
perhaps once more sustainable power becomes available at the plants then electric cars will make more sense to me.
that technology is probably much further along than hydrogen though.
Hurray! Science and logic win over hype and shortsighted/misguided politicians and investors.
Maybe it is just that fuel cell making requires a different company than car making does.
We ought to remember that Hyundai, Honda, Daimler and GM are committed to FC vehicles, while world hybrid car leader Toyota is about to make a major fuel cell announcement on nov. 14.
Just like the Joe Cell . . ie "running a car on water" aka lightning power, was never proven, Hydrogen for the masses is a farse! Impossible to implement USA hydrogen infrastructure, let alone worldwide. Within even 40 years, will never make economic sense.
Fuel TODAY that will greatly improve oil crisis is CNG (compressed natural gas) . . Come On, USA, get on board!! Bio-methane facilities should immediately be constructed and cng public refueling sites added by municipalities (ie NOT Clean Energy Fuels - - monopoly already gone bad). US automakers need FORCED to sell cng vehicles in USA!! GM, Ford, Toyota, Dodge & VW all should re-introduce cng vehicles in USA by 2008 . . if not, Boycott them all !
Hooray for Utah with $0.64 per gallon for cng !!
cng_across_usa@yahoo.com
hydrogen as a fuel was never the answer. it's a dud just like cold fussion. it takes equal amounts of green house gases to manufacture hydrogen & to distribute it. so where's the savings.
liquid coal & oil shale may be in our future. non based silicon cheap printable solar panels may also not be as cheap as thought, thanks to corporate greed. looks like we are going backwards not foward.
what ever happened to the garage reformer that would strip hydrogen from natural gas making your home a filling station?