GM is working to reduce the amount of platinum in the fuel cell to about the same as what's in a catalytic converter. It should be feasible to produce the car for about $40,000 then.
I'm not sure where I stand on fuel cell cars. I think they will play an important role, similar to the Stanley Steamer, and others of the early automotive period. They didn't make it, but they were important parts of the development of the modern automobile. In the near term, much more reasonable are the plug in hybrids and pure electric cars. I'm actually thinking of putting my name in the list for the Tesla sedan.
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Power plants, even fairly dirty coal plants, are a lot lower pollution per unit of generated electricity than automobile engines. There is a significant gain even when dirtier sources of electricity are used.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote: Electric cars are considered more environmentally friendly than conventional gas-powered vehicles because they don’t have tailpipe emissions.
A number of studies have found that the cars would still be cleaner even if the electricity used to charge them came from coal-fired power plants. In Ontario, only a quarter of electricity production comes from fossil fuels, and that’s expected to drop to less than 10 per cent by 2025 under current planning forecasts.
quote:Electric cars just move the pollution to wherever the coal plant is. They're about as green as plastic bags.
Once we go full Nuclear they will be useful.
Electric motors have about 92% thermal efficiency. Athough up to 30% is often claimed, real world ICEs can operate at 15% in perfect conditions, but realistically, 8% is a more legitimate number. So cars waste 92% of the fuel they consume, while electric motors only waste 8%. You can have a pretty dirty source of electricity and you'll still come out way ahead.
As it is, I'm currently working on fuel cells for distributed power generation, and we're pretty near break even on cost right now. There are lots of other options than coal and nuclear.
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Power plants, even fairly dirty coal plants, are a lot lower pollution per unit of generated electricity than automobile engines. There is a significant gain even when dirtier sources of electricity are used.
But there's an extra couple of energy-transmission steps with associated inefficiencies. You have more energy used per gram-kilometre moved. Possibly also more pollution per gram-kilometre, but you'd have to run the numbers. This is why we need a carbon tax, to price all this stuff in automatically.
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They're lower pollution per unit of used electricity. Don't forget that there's a lot of energy used in transmitting the hydrocarbons to your car, also.
And yes, I'm a proponent of a tax (or, to my preference, a cap and trade program).
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Blayne Bradley
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hows that different then the church selling indulgences?
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In almost every way. Heck, the first-order effects are equivalent to a carbon tax (presuming they're auctioned). I think there are practical reasons cap and trade is more appropriate, though.
You may remember cap and trade from one or two of the biggest pollution reduction success stories ever -- acid rain, for instance.
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posted
You also shouldn't forget that, generally, people would power their cars at night when there is a massive amount of excess energy flying around the national grid going to waste. Using it to charge car batteries wouldn't be any extra pollution at all, but merely making use of something that's already being produced.
Besides, not everyone gets their power from coal, even if it is the majority power source.
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