New Top Gear (2011) BBC 2 8PM!

[Abraxaz1]

I don't know if you guys are interested but i was Marshalling when they filmed this in Brynffynon, the squadies did an excellent job. if you want to see the images and movies taken over the weekend here they are.
http://www.bcccimages.co.uk/

 

[Tute]

It is possible that hydrogen might at some point become a viable option, but treating it as inevitable and merely a development of existing technology shows a very basic ignorance of the subject.

Hydrogen is certainly in the stronger position, given there's a car out there that runs on it, gives ~250 miles to a tank, and doesn't take hours to refill.

At the end of the day, that's quite simply what matters to people. That and having plenty of places to refuel it, which is something that would come with mass-market adoption.

 

[Abraxaz1]

damn double post

 

[Abraxaz1]

You've picked the least of the major problems with hydrogen and decreed without any supporting evidence that it's more likely to be solved than one of a number of different approaches to battery development, as if that is a compelling argument to focus on a hugely inefficient energy carrier with much bigger problems inherent in the way atomic physics work.

There are working prototypes of batteries 5 times better than li-ion and theoretically they can be developed to 10 times better than li-ion.

There isn't even theory that hydrogen can be made anywhere near as efficient an energy carrier as a battery is, not even close, not even on paper. That's before the problem of storing it comes into play, which might or might not be solved to some extent, and the problem of transporting it.

wow for once their is someone on the forum coming out with ideas that seem to have a weight of knowledge behind it,
I like how everyones forgotten the progress of batteries in the last 20 years alone without major investment. If the same amount of money was spent on battery technology as has on engine technology then we would see a massive boom in vehicles.

At work we use both oxygen and inert shield gases and neither can be stored for long periods of time because the containers cant hold them, the Hydrogen atom is the smallest atom in the world so will slowly seep though any construction.

Hydrogen is certainly in the stronger position, given there's a car out there that runs on it, gives ~250 miles to a tank, and doesn't take hours to refill.

At the end of the day, that's quite simply what matters to people. That and having plenty of places to refuel it, which is something that would come with mass-market adoption.

Please tell me how many times do you do in excess of 250 miles in a day?
Bet its very rare and like the presenters said they didn't have fast charge unit installed (god knows why) also by the time the battery pack dies the new replacements will be more advanced and last longer.

Also the ev 1 and 2 ran on 200+ miles on old nickel hydride batteries imagine what they could do on a set of li-ions

 

[Dr Who]

Also the ev 1 and 2 ran on 200+ miles on old nickel hydride batteries imagine what they could do on a set of li-ions

THIS

It makes me wonder why lion cars are so bad now when the EV1 was NIMH.

 

[bam0]

Hydrogen is certainly in the stronger position, given there's a car out there that runs on it, gives ~250 miles to a tank, and doesn't take hours to refill.

At the end of the day, that's quite simply what matters to people. That and having plenty of places to refuel it, which is something that would come with mass-market adoption.

The thing you're ignoring is how are we going to produce the hydrogen to supply mass market adoption? It's not exactly a minor detail.

 

[Abraxaz1]

THIS

It makes me wonder why lion cars are so bad now when the EV1 was NIMH.

the main difference is the weight of the vehicles and safety aspects, the EV1 was a metal monocoque design with a fire glass out side, plus it had less upgrades and gadgets, also the only car with a lower drag coefficient at the time was the ford probe...

Newer cars have to be made with additional safety areas which increases the weight significantly, until manufacturers start using alloys and carbon fibre technology on basic models then that problem wont be solved.

i know the Isrealis are working on a system with Renault that involves hot swapping batteries, so when you run out of charge you pull into the garage and swap the battery pack other.

If you want to see the real effect then look at the electric racing that slowly arriving, isle of man tt electric pretty good they completed two laps this year and agni i believe topped the average above 100mph, not bad for a gen 2 bike.

 

[Abraxaz1]

The thing you're ignoring is how are we going to produce the hydrogen to supply mass market adoption? It's not exactly a minor detail.

I suppose he wants massive coal power station or nuclear power stations? the only possible way of producing hydrogen cleanly with out nuclear or coke/ gas power stations is through massive solar stills but then they need to be place in extreme hot areas which normally don't have a abundance of water.

 

[Morbius]

If you want to see the real effect then look at the electric racing that slowly arriving, isle of man tt electric pretty good they completed two laps this year and agni i believe topped the average above 100mph, not bad for a gen 2 bike.

Michael Rutter just missed the 100mph mark. A couple of seconds quicker and he'd have got it.

 

[Abraxaz1]

Michael Rutter just missed the 100mph mark. A couple of seconds quicker and he'd have got it.

thought it was something like that, and the nosie on the bikes i saw them when Marshalling down pembrey. they sound pretty awesome at full tilt bit like a yet

]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_JlAT_sol0 sound doesn't do it credit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6dCR5Eht5M&feature=related isle man tt last year

 

[Tute]

The thing you're ignoring is how are we going to produce the hydrogen to supply mass market adoption? It's not exactly a minor detail.

It's the same minor detail that EVs are faced with too.

 

[robj20]

Anyone see our company name on Ben Collins chest, makes me wonder why he left top gear the same time he started driving for us, we must pay better. lol

Good episode i thought though.

 

[Abraxaz1]

It's the same minor detail that EVs are faced with too.

yeah cos we cant use the national grid to supply power to peoples houses, that would jsut be impossible think of all that wiring that need to be put in place..... oh wait its already their.

Tbh the amount of hydrogen that need to be supplied would need to be pressurized, this is not a good thing to have near houses people or the above one idiot trying to steal or crash into it could create a massive explosion.

Also the size of the pipe work is gonna be massive, do you fancy a 2 m circumference pipe in your garden?

 

[Vonhelmet]

yeah cos we cant use the national grid to supply power to peoples houses, that would jsut be impossible think of all that wiring that need to be put in place..... oh wait its already their.

Tbh the amount of hydrogen that need to be supplied would need to be pressurized, this is not a good thing to have near houses people or the above one idiot trying to steal or crash into it could create a massive explosion.

Also the size of the pipe work is gonna be massive, do you fancy a 2 m circumference pipe in your garden?

You apparently like sarcasm, so try this one:

Yeah, cos we can't just use the road network to transport hydrogen to fuel stations where they already store large amounts of highly flammable and explosive fuel.

 

[wez130]

Anyone see our company name on Ben Collins chest, makes me wonder why he left top gear the same time he started driving for us, we must pay better. lol

Good episode i thought though.

and your company is?.....

 

[bam0]

It's the same minor detail that EVs are faced with too.

Not the same. You take the electricity from the power station, send it through the grid to your car batteries which then drive the motor.
Alternatively you take the electricity from the power station, use it crack water to produce hydrogen, package up the hydrogen into a transportable form, put it into your car which passes the hydrogen through a power cell to produce electricity which then drives the motor.
There are so many more steps each of which cost energy and have conversion inefficiencies that when you scale it up to the idea of replacing our current vehicles it doesn't make sense from an energy efficiency point of view to go with hydrogen.

 

[bam0]

You apparently like sarcasm, so try this one:

Yeah, cos we can't just use the road network to transport hydrogen to fuel stations where they already store large amounts of highly flammable and explosive fuel.

Petrol in a tank (in your car or underground) isn't actually explosive, it's also not pressurised like hydrogen would have to be.

 

[Vonhelmet]

Not the same. You take the electricity from the power station, send it through the grid to your car batteries which then drive the motor.
Alternatively you take the electricity from the power station, use it crack water to produce hydrogen, package up the hydrogen into a transportable form, put it into your car which passes the hydrogen through a power cell to produce electricity which then drives the motor.
There are so many more steps each of which cost energy and have conversion inefficiencies that when you scale it up to the idea of replacing our current vehicles it doesn't make sense from an energy efficiency point of view to go with hydrogen.

Efficiency may point towards batteries, but energy density, weight and range all point towards hydrogen.

Neither is ready for mass use, mind.

Petrol in a tank (in your car or underground) isn't actually explosive, it's also not pressurised like hydrogen would have to be.

I did wonder about whether it could be said to technically be explosive. Either way, my point was more that it's ludicrous to dismiss hydrogen on the basis of needing to pump it to people's houses or whatever other nonsense was being suggested. Bit of a straw man, really...

 

[Abraxaz1]

Petrol in a tank (in your car or underground) isn't actually explosive, it's also not pressurised like hydrogen would have to be.

ding, ding we have a winner. Petrol has to be turned to a vapor then compressed to become explosive hence the suck squeeze bang blow of a internal combustion engine. in its normal state it is just flammable unless compressed or contained in a structure that can withstand the pressure till it ruptures.

Gas on the other hand needs to be compressed to be viable stored and used. If the gas was the same pressure as the atmosphere around it then the flow rate would be poor to say the least and completely unusable.

In work we deal with BOS/Cog And blast furnace gases which are all pressurized to 40mbar- 60m bar before the booster units, after that the pressure can be as high as 200mbar. the pipe circumference for 200 mbar is over 2 meters wide and every 50 meters a water seal has to be installed to cut ff hte line to prevent leakages.
The installation of a system like this on a country wide system is unfeasible unless people want massive pipe work installed everywhere.

If the gas was moved by truck then the roads would most likely have to be shut off and trucks escorted by police with intrinsically save vehicles, which wont happen.

Also no one has pointed out that it requires 2 to 3 times the amount of energy to create hydrogen than is actually given out by the energy source. this makes the hydrogen cost you not only for the hydrogen atoms but the power used to create the hydrogen, which wil result in other resources such as cole and nuclear being used instead.

 

[Tute]

Not the same. You take the electricity from the power station, send it through the grid to your car batteries which then drive the motor.
Alternatively you take the electricity from the power station, use it crack water to produce hydrogen, package up the hydrogen into a transportable form, put it into your car which passes the hydrogen through a power cell to produce electricity which then drives the motor.
There are so many more steps each of which cost energy and have conversion inefficiencies that when you scale it up to the idea of replacing our current vehicles it doesn't make sense from an energy efficiency point of view to go with hydrogen.

So if everyone bought an EV tomorrow the national grid would be able to cope with the extra load no problem?

Not a stab at you, just a genuine question.