Top Clown returns Sunday 2nd November 2008 **SPOILERS**

Angilion said:
Hydrogen fuel cell cars are EVs. It's not as though they have an ICE burning hydrogen. They're EVs. They're just using hydrogen as an energy carrier instead of batteries.
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Does that mean that a diesel-electric locomotive is also an EV? They're just using diesel as an energy carrier instead of batteries or overhead wires.
 
csmager said:
A hybrid, as it still has an internal combustion engine.
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Well the whole point of diesel-electric is that the ICE does not drive the wheels, it provides power to batteries and/or and electric motor, allowing you to run the ICE at it's most efficient RPM. I thought to be called a hybrid you had both the ICE and the electric motors able to drive the car.

When you extract the energy from hydrogen, are you not burning it to form water, ie. combustion?

Remember that one of the reasons Mazda have been keeping the rotary engine around is it's a pretty good design for a hydrogen burning car. [source]
 
Lum said:
Well the whole point of diesel-electric is that the ICE does not drive the wheels, it provides power to batteries and/or and electric motor, allowing you to run the ICE at it's most efficient RPM. I thought to be called a hybrid you had both the ICE and the electric motors able to drive the car.
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I think you could be right actually - I have to confess I hadn't looked that hard as to whether the Hybrid (e.g. Prius) drives the wheels with both the engine and the electric motors, or whether the engine just exists to charge the batteries.

Although Wiki seems to think those trains are still Hybrids, as it defines Hybrids as running from two distinct power sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vehicle
 
The prius can drive the engine directly from the ICE, the batteries are just there to help out a bit and get charged when the engine would otherwise be running at a less efficient load.

On a related note, and probably quite appropriate given this is a Top Gear thread, I think they should stop making silly household appliances with that spare V8 they have and do something more fun like swap it into a Prius (binning all the electric bits while they're at it) and then drive it around London without paying the Con. Charge and revving it at environmentalists.
 
Currently it takes ages to charge a battery. Thats because it is running off a 13amp plug!

Get a proper power supply in place and there is no reason you won't be able to fully charge a car in 5 to 10minutes in the future.

It's a bit early to say what will win over batteries Vs hydrogen. However the short term future is definately downsized engines and hybrids.

Check out this on Hydrogen (report from my old uni) - it is discussing the use of hydrogen in an ICE though, but has some interesting points.

http://www.herts.ac.uk/fms/document...RI/40-Fueling_the_Future-Hydrogen_powered.pdf

"The cheapest and most available storage technology is
as a compressed gas, whilst the energy content of H2 is
120 MJ/kg around 2.6 times that of gasoline; its density at
atmospheric conditions is 8311 times less! At just 90
grams per cubic metre, to overcome this significant
difference; the gas must be stored in higher containment
vessel volumes and very high pressure."

"Whilst the tailpipe emissions consist almost entirely of
water vapour, the source of electrical energy which powers
the electrolyser may be from a carbon intensive process,
as is 74% of the UK’s electricity supply, the net result
therefore are higher carbon emissions per mile than a
hydrocarbon equivalent vehicle."
 
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rypt said:
If politicians had a bit more of a backbone we would already have the infastructure for hydrogen fuel delivery and production in this country (and in USA). They need to start taking fewer bribes/kickbacks from the oil companies, stop worrying aobut the reduced revenue due to no fuel duty / oil tax ... and stop listening to the green brigade regarding nuclear power stations being evil.
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Do you live in Utopia?
 
Lum said:
Does that mean that a diesel-electric locomotive is also an EV? They're just using diesel as an energy carrier instead of batteries or overhead wires.
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They're hybrids, as they have two different forms of engine.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/diesel-locomotive.htm

I didn't know about those trains and I didn't see the point to begin with, but that article explains it neatly.

It's not feasible for a car to carry it's own large-scale generator with it, though.

On the same basis, you could classify these cars as hybrids rather than EVs, but then you could classify battery-driven EVs as hybrids for the same reason (by viewing the batteries as chemical engines).

Both as EVs or both as hybrids...but why would you class one as an EV and the other as a hybrid? A battery and a fuel cell both generate electricity from chemical reactions.
 
I actually thought last nights episode was one of the best I've seen - had something for everyone. Let's face it - in the current economic climate it would be a bit stupid for them to carry on focusing purely on supercars that even fewer people can afford nowadays. *shrug*

I thought the features on the Tesla and FCX were fascinating - James May was the perfect choice to inject a dose of sensibility to talking about the cars we're going to end up driving in the future.
 
Angilion said:
...It's not feasible for a car to carry it's own large-scale generator with it, though.
...
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Not entirely true.
GM have developed the 'Volt' - this is a car with a 150bhp electric motor, some batteries and a conventional ICE. The car runs solely on the electric motor and batteries. The batteries by themselves have a small range of 40 miles. The engine kicks in to charge the batteries when needed, but ideally the batteries are charged from a powerpoint.
If GM survive, the Volt is scheduled to go on sale in the USA in 2010.

http://www.chevrolet.co.uk/conceptcars/conceptcars-volt.html
 
Angilion said:
Advantages of batteries over hydrogen:

Greater efficiency. Making and distributing electricity to charge a battery is much more efficient than making and distributing electricity to split water to make hydrogen to distribute to fuel a hydrogen fuel cell to make electricity.

Ease of getting the "fuel" to the car - the national grid works very well.

Hydrogen fuel cell cars are EVs. It's not as though they have an ICE burning hydrogen. They're EVs. They're just using hydrogen as an energy carrier instead of batteries.
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There are hudrogen burning engines, just look at the Mazda hydrogen rotary.

And why should it be any different to distribute hydrogen, all you need is electricity and a water pipe, and hey presto the fuel station can generate hydrogen themselves.
 
Nikumba said:
I think it was moved so it didnt clash with Sports Personality of the Year, as the type of person who would watch it would also watch Top Gear, so by bumping Top Gear by an hour, meant they could keep both audiences

Kimbie
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Yup that was the reason... and if you watched SPOTY to the very end then you missed half of the BTCC feature. Well played BBC.

Good episode though, shame (in a way) that the Tesla got slated,although that was only ever intended as a showcase for the technology and used to dispell the myths around electric vehicles.
 
amigafan2003 said:
No it doesn't - get a 9volt battery - connect a peice of wire to the +ve term and a peice of wire to the -ve term - put both bits of wire into some water - voila - reasonable amounts of Hydrogen and Oxygen for very little energy.

Producing enough Hydrogen to run a car for 200 miles certainly requires less energy than drilling for oil the refining it into petrol.



What? Where it will combine with Oxygen and form water? Like happens entirely naturally everyday?
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There's a good thread I was reading elsewhere that mentioned it might deplete ozone, similar to CFC's....it was largey dismissed as a possibility by the forum though as most of it would would react lower to ground level before reaching upper atmosphere, also it doesn't react in the same way as CFC's producing free radicals that causes a chain of reactions. They couldn't entirely rule it out though, a station every twenty miles would be a lot of Hydrogen.

Wow, this Top Gear has sparked more interest from me than I thought.
 
amigafan2003 said:
No it doesn't - get a 9volt battery - connect a peice of wire to the +ve term and a peice of wire to the -ve term - put both bits of wire into some water - voila - reasonable amounts of Hydrogen and Oxygen for very little energy.

Producing enough Hydrogen to run a car for 200 miles certainly requires less energy than drilling for oil the refining it into petrol.
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amigafan2003, you're talking absolute rubbish. :rolleyes:

That hydrogen package yesterday was disgracefully bad. May ended with:

In fact the only problem with it is producing the hydrogen because it is the most abundant thing in the universe but it's always stuck onto something else and it's actually quite difficult to scrape it off and get it to the filling station. But actually it isn't really any more difficult than drilling oil from underneath the sea and we did that okay.
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Frankly anyone who thinks getting hydrogen to a filling station isn't really any more difficult than drilling offshore oil is an idiot. The former consumes two or three units of energy for every one delivered where the latter delivers 20 to 30 for every one consumed.
 
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