Hydrogen and the Honda "Clarity"

[Admiral Valdemar]

Ugh, the Hydrogen 7 is something of a running joke for alternative fuelled cars after the Prius and its not-so-ecological manufacturing. It's ballsy to go and develop a car that uses hydrogen in the good ol' burning method, defying those going the fuel-cell route, but it doesn't really add practicality other than a tuned up engine that can run normal liquid fuels through it too.

If hydrogen is to be used, I'd rather it was in fuel-cells and with metallic storage media, rather than cryo-hydrogen tanks under pressure.

[Sikon]

Ugh, the Hydrogen 7 is something of a running joke for alternative fuelled cars after the Prius and its not-so-ecological manufacturing. It's ballsy to go and develop a car that uses hydrogen in the good ol' burning method, defying those going the fuel-cell route, but it doesn't really add practicality other than a tuned up engine that can run normal liquid fuels through it too.

Here's the difference:

The latest BMW hydrogen car is the 745h, which uses a 4.4-litre V-8. The only major modifications to make the big BMW's engine run on hydrogen involve the intake ports, which have additional injector valves for hydrogen. The engines come off the same production line as other BMW powerplants and are installed in the vehicle using the same assembly techniques.

... corresponds to relatively comparable cost to the engines of regular gasoline vehicles of today.

But fuel cell costs such as this example from the Honda Clarity article linked in the opening post of this thread are vastly different:

It costs $500,000 to make each one

From here

Saving hundreds of thousands of dollars by not having a fuel cell is the added practicality now and up until such a time (if ever) that fuel cells become vastly less expensive than today.

[Darth Wong]

Which is precisely why I suggest ammonia instead. The sourcing and storing of this material is a piece of piss next to hydrogen, even if the end result is a fuel-cell utilising the same electro-chemistry.

And it will keep everyone's sinuses clear!

[FireNexus]

Of course, to get that benefit we have to smell ammonia all the time. I'd rather have clogged sinuses.

[Stile]

Which is precisely why I suggest ammonia instead. The sourcing and storing of this material is a piece of piss next to hydrogen, even if the end result is a fuel-cell utilising the same electro-chemistry.

Also ammonia is a major byproduct of animal farming. We could use the byproducts and offset fossil fuel dependency.