It's no better to have an unreliable source of hydrogen, unless hydrogen is only optional.

But one could easily go to a gas station and fill up, if his/her supply of hydrogen did not meet demand. People would certainly need alternate supplies. I'm sure there will still be plenty of stations willing to fill the demand, when, and if, that time comes.

I don't know the equipment requirements but I'm guessing the production and storage of hydrogen at home won't be cheap and will be highly regulated to prevent people from blowing up their neighborhood.

Put simply, the main trouble with electric vehicles is the fact that batteries have far less energy-density by weight than liquid fuel, so much so that to get a 300 mile range in all batteries would require adding a substantial amount of weight, which would significantly impact performance, not to mention price.

However, they have a huge advantage in that electricity charged from the grid is very efficient compared to burning a fuel such as gasoline, since about 2/3rds of the energy of gasoline is wasted between exhaust, and radatior heat. A lot of efficiency is also lost inherently in gasoline engines as they need to be able to operate at widely varying levels of load. A diesel based powerplant can spin a turbine enegine at an optimum RPM, and recapture most of the waste heat as steam power.

Also, by charging at night when there is excess generation capacity, trickle-charged grid electricity is cheap, probobably on the order of 10 times cheaper per mile than burning gasoline.

This is why the plug-in hybrid system is a nice blend. Add just enough batteries to handle most of your shorter trips, without loading on too much weight (still gets most of the cost savings associated with all electric) while using the high-energy-density liquid fuel only when needed for extra power, for longer range, or for when it is inconvenient to charge (road trips, etc).

Here is a link to the history of electric vehicles....too bad humankind didn't get the message....wonder where we would be now with EV technology?? But our addiction to oil undermined the whole process......


Enjoy...
http://inventors.about.com/library/w...selectrica.htm

Thanks for the history. From the article:
"...causing most travel to be local commuting, a perfect situation for electric vehicles, since their range was limited."
Things haven't changed in all of those years!

Most discussions around stored electricity for cars assume that the car and driver have to wait for recharging.

Will it not become possible to exchange the discharged battery at the re-charging station for one that is already charged ?

Will it not become possible to have multiple batteries in a car to facilitate recharging ?

In the future couldn't we upgrade our EV or hybrid vehicle to newer battery technology, maybe add/remove batteries depending on how far we need to drive ?

I believe this should all become doable in the near future.

Best Tank = 54.2 mpg (Sep. 9'06)
Best Trip = 61.9 mpg

That's exactly what I was thinking. If you can get the battery's capacity up and size down to say the size of a briefcase, the end user could grab one out of the charger in the morning.

Going on a long trip and run low on charge? Stop by the Battery Station and swap. Of course, then you have to standard the battery size across manufacturers, but it's doable.

Until someone comes up with an EV that can be recharged quickly on a trip, they're going to be relegated to commuter-car status in two-car households.

Hydrogen isn't going to be cheap. Electrolysis is only 65% efficient, and then the fuel cell ends up being 50% efficient (aka, 32.5% efficient)... so 2/3 of your energy is wasted in the Hydrogen Economy. That isn't much better than a gasoline engine which is about 25% efficient.

One of the problems I have seen in most of the discussions from the hydrogen advocates is that they compare the supposed efficiency of a system that will be out in 10-20 years, with the average internal combustion engine today. I bet that by the time hydrogen is available, internal combustion engine efficiecny will probably have improved substantially, as I don't see fuel prices declining a whole lot long-term. That should create plenty of incentive for engineers to make more efficient engines. There are lots of things that can be done in 20 years in the way of heat capture, or more efficient engine cycles, to bring the efficiency of typical gasoline and diesel vehicles up. By then, once the fuel cells finally become avaialble, there will be much stiffer competition from the latest ICE/electric hybrids as far as efficiency is concerned.

I do however think there is potential in capturing the best of both worlds by having a plug-in hybrid with a large enough motor to run the vehicle alone, in a parallel setup with a small gasoline engine for longer-range travel (this could be unclutched most of the time for short-distance travel). Then only enough batteries woudl be needed for say ~15-20 miles one-way. That right there could eliminate about 60% in fuel/energy cost for most drivers, without sacrificing driving range, convenience, or performance due to weighing down the car with batteries for a full 200mile+ range.