Hydrogen-powered car makes debut
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Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images
A new hydrogen-powered RiverSimple urban car is pictured outside Somerset House in central London on 16 June 2009. A new lightweight hydrogen-powered car, capable of speeds up to 50mph, was launched in London on Tuesday. Able to travel 240 miles without refuelling, and weighing just 772lb (350kg), the two-seater Riversimple Urban Car could be put into production as soon as 2013
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A new lightweight hydrogen-powered car, capable of speeds up to 50mph, was shown off in London today.
Able to travel 240 miles without refuelling, and weighing just 772lb (350kg), the two-seater Riversimple Urban Car could be put into production as soon as 2013.
Before that the project leaders plan to raise funds to build 10 prototypes and try out vehicles in UK cities.
Supported by the great-grandson of car pioneer Ferdinand Porsche, the Riversimple car does the petrol equivalent of 300 miles to the gallon.
The design of the car will be placed online so that production versions can be developed to suit local requirements in urban areas.
The cars will be leased to users rather than sold, with owners getting a maintenance, support and fuel package. The vehicles are expected to have a life span of around 20 years.
The car has four electric motors attached to each wheel and these double as brakes and generate electricity which is stored in a bank of ultracapacitors.
The car is powered by a fuel cell of just six kilowatts compared with the 100kW in some hydrogen prototypes.
The car has been developed over the last three years in a co-operative research programme involving the River Simple development team founded by engineer Hugo Spowers and Oxford University, Cranfield University in Bedfordshire and Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies.
The research has been financed through initial support from industrial gas company BOC, Government grants and the private support of the Piech family including Sebastian Piech, a great-grandson of Ferdinand Porsche.
Mr Piech said: "The Riversimple Urban Car represents a major step towards practical 21st century personal transport and towards the fulfilment of my great-grandfather's ambitions for accessible personal transport, but this time combining his other passions: light weight and high efficiency.
"Now that we have the basic vehicle in place with practical technology the challenge is to begin the development of a fuelling infrastructure to accompany it, to encourage the adoption of the sale of mobility service and encourage broad participation in the open source design to make the already practical technology into a broadly adaptable customer proposition."
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Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTbdnNgq
But all that aside, this seems quite an exciting development and the particularly interesting part being the "open source" aspect which I assume as in software means no copyright ownership but freedom to build further innovations on top of this platform and ad-infinitum .
As much as the basic machine, that aspect will be very interesting to watch in a patent heavy world.
The second problem is that hydrogen, transported as an extremely cold liquid, does funny things to metal. Pipes, tanks and other equipment are not easy to make or maintain, either in the vehicle or in the supply infrastructure.
The third fly in this expensive ointment is that experimental hydrogen based power cells are really old hat. They have been developing them for years. Full of promise, not one of them has actually proved economically useful.
Other than that, what a wonderful idea. Will it still be around in two years, doubt it very much. Put it on the list of other good ideas that have sunk without trace.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTbdnNgq
2. Energy consumption of Hydrogen production?
3. Carbon footprint of car+maintenance+disposal?
3. Why oh why oh why?
Tram build and operating/maintenance costs are about one tenth those of light rail.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTbdnNgq
With battery electric drive even with coal fired power stations it is still half the pollution and CO2 than a petrol engined car.
And where is all the platinum to come from for the fuel cells, it is very rare, we would need to go and mine other planets.
Hydrogen was a solution when only lead acid batteries existed, but with the invention of Lithium ones
it has been left behind. The latest is a Lithium air unit that has a very high power density.
So Hydrogen which seems to make so much sense on face value just does not make sense when all the sums are added up.
Or could be abandoned by 2013.
Hydrogen cars have been an elsive 5 years away since 1962 and never qute get there for very important reasons. There is no economically viable source of hydrogen and hydrogen extraordinarily difficult to store.
However, stories like this play an important roles in keeping the proles misinformed and believing in car culture, even when it has no future.