The Future of Hydrogen/ Electric.

I wish they would consider Butane as a clean fuel. Hydrogen, is not something I would ever consider. A true hybrid that uses butane to generate on board power. That's where I would be going. But, whatawino?
 
Every City bus in my County says "Clean Natural Gas" on the side of it. But School Busses are still Diesel. I have a Cummins Diesel Engine Manual from 1966 that lists both the Diesel and CNG versions of the same engine. Now Cummins has a new 15L Hydrogen Large Truck Engine.
If it's safe to run CNG in a pressure tank what's the problem with Hydrogen. The Hindenburg was almost 90 years ago, a blimp with Hydrogen inside a non-pressurized aluminum frame with Flammable paint on the cloth skin.
We have more CNG in this country than we know what to do with. At the 2020 Paris Climate Accord, it came out that the USA was the only country that met the 10% COD reduction goal. We did it by Fracking for Natural gas and burning it instead of Coal. Do you think that made the news?
 
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scramboleer said:
How far down various rabbit holes do you all want to go on this stuff? It's what I do for a living...
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Since you work with this stuff. 8 years ago or so i was working for a company that did CNG conversions to vehicles. We either set them up as duel fuel set-ups or stand alone conversions.
The stand alone systems were a nightmare. Trying to get the vehicles to reliably start at less than 40* F was damn near impossible.
The duel fuel systems were a lot better in the cold, the biggest problem we had was fuel trim monitoring after the system switched to CNG.
Trying to incorporate the CNG fuel trim parameters into the factory ECM's was a REAL crap shoot. It either went really well, or not worth a s#!$.
One of the very last conversions i did involved a stand alone ECM, that ran the engine when burning CNG, and used the factory ECM when burning gasoline. That system worked out REALLY well in the end ! The wiring was a bit of a fuss, but it operated excellent at the point of "switch". I believe it was GM 5.3L engine in a Silverado.
So my questions for you.
Have the stand alone systems gotten any better in "cold" starting conditions ?
Has the integration of the CNG trim codes into the factory ECM's gotten better ? Are the stand alone ECM's still in the industry ?
Thanks.
 
If my memory serves, back around 1970, there was a story in Popular Mechanics of a Honda Factory built Hydrogen powered Honda Civic. It wasn't fuel cell tech. It used a small Nuclear Reactor not much larger than a car battery to Electrically Hydrolyze water in the tank and burned it in a modified Civic engine. I never have been able to find any more info since. Maybe it went China Syndrome and melted down the reactor and then had a massive Hydrogen explosion :confused:
 
Natural gas is also a base material for some synthetic oils. And can be chemically changed into propane and even butane. Propane and Butane have an advantage of being liquid (more BTU"s with much less volume) at MUCH lower pressures.
 
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Regarding electric vehicles.....The most efficient generation is local generation. To me this says onboard generation on a vehicle is the most efficient.
But, that's just my opinion. And, whatawino?
 
rocket said:
Every City bus in my County says "Clean Natural Gas" on the side of it. But School Busses are still Diesel. I have a Cummins Diesel Engine Manual from 1966 that lists both the Diesel and CNG versions of the same engine. Now Cummins has a new 15L Hydrogen Large Truck Engine.
If it's safe to run CNG in a pressure tank what's the problem with Hydrogen. The Hindenburg was almost 90 years ago, a blimp with Hydrogen inside a non-pressurized aluminum frame with Flammable paint on the cloth skin.
We have more CNG in this country than we know what to do with. At the 2020 Paris Climate Accord, it came out that the USA was the only country that met the 10% COD reduction goal. We did it by Fracking for Natural gas and burning it instead of Coal. Do you think that made the news?
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That wouldn't serve their cause Rodney. C'mon Man........................!
 
My Son is the Vehicle Maintenance Supervisor for Nevada County Irrigation District and they have been mandated by the State of Komyfornia to start buying electric trucks by next year. He went to a truck show in Fresno, Ca. yesterday. He got to drive several of the new electric trucks.
His favorite by far was the new Nikola Semi. Loaded to 70,000 lbs he said it accelerated from a stop like nothing he had ever driven and braking was amazing. The Nikola is available in Electric and Hydrogen. They had the New Electric Peterbilt and Kenworth Semis along with Ford E-Vans and UPS style E-Trucks. The Future is Here!
www.nikolamotor.com

Nikola Corporation - Pioneering Solutions for a Zero-Emission World

Class-8 hydrogen-electric and battery-electric zero-emission trucks with energy infrastructure solutions.
www.nikolamotor.com www.nikolamotor.com
 
Here is the particulars on the Zero emission Truck Show. (I still say it's Remote Emission) Power comes from somewhere!!
zeroemissiontrucks.org

Zero-Emission Truck Showcase + Ride & Drive

<p>Want to learn more about transitioning to electric vehicles for your business? Want to see what’s available? Want to actually drive some electric vehicles that you can purchase right now? The California Air Resources Board (CARB) and CALSTART are hosting a Zero-Emission Truck and Off-Road...
zeroemissiontrucks.org zeroemissiontrucks.org
 
Propane is stored as a liquid so it has a very high energy density. Hydrogen is stored under pressure so needs very serious tanks to stand the what I think is 15,000PSI storage pressure.
 
The only problem with your remote concept is these yutes are thinking they will derive power from a new source, delivered on a new grid.

So to answer your thread question, it's all gonna be moot points when we get to fission.

Then we will have immeasurable energy.

Then we solve the problem of delivering that energy to wheels (or drone blades, or magnetic lifters on trains).

Which means the real question for me here is can we eliminate the computerization and get back to simple driver inputs?

The amount of software on these cool new tractor trailers will corrupt and fail long before the electric power source problems arrive.

AI is going to invent something mechanical? No way. It will force more tech because it is tech. What creature de-evolves intentionally? None I tell ya.

The computerization is the real double edge here. And it is gonna cut us in two or whatever the worst AI created curve indicates is the most pieces we can be cut into.

Nobody invented the wheel. We just used it. Worked good for millennia. Snatch blocks were a nice offshoot.

But who, really, will maintain the orphaned tech on these trucks in a few years?
 
Our son and his girlfriend are currently driving across North Dakota in her Tesla en route from Chicago to Seattle. (She’s moving.) Stopping in Bismarck tonight, shooting for Bozeman tomorrow, where it’s supposed to be 4 degrees F. This is their second day on the road. So far so good, but they’re taking it in fairly small bites, in part because they have two cats in the car with them.

I’ll be interested to hear how things went with the heater running. Our daughter said using the heater in her car really shortens the distances she can drive, though the seat heaters don’t seem as power hungry.
 
Lookout Ranch said:
Our son and his girlfriend are currently driving across North Dakota in her Tesla en route from Chicago to Seattle. (She’s moving.) Stopping in Bismarck tonight, shooting for Bozeman tomorrow, where it’s supposed to be 4 degrees F. This is their second day on the road. So far so good, but they’re taking it in fairly small bites, in part because they have two cats in the car with them.

I’ll be interested to hear how things went with the heater running. Our daughter said using the heater in her car really shortens the distances she can drive, though the seat heaters don’t seem as power hungry.
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Yes, they are right. Seat/steering wheel heaters are much more efficient at warming up us humans than warming up the air. That was one conclusion of an electric transit bus test a few years ago on the East Coast (think NYC winter). The company's bus who had seat and pole heaters was much preferred over the other company's bus that just warmed up the air (which was then promptly let out at the next stop when the doors opened).
 
rocket said:
If my memory serves, back around 1970, there was a story in Popular Mechanics of a Honda Factory built Hydrogen powered Honda Civic. It wasn't fuel cell tech. It used a small Nuclear Reactor not much larger than a car battery to Electrically Hydrolyze water in the tank and burned it in a modified Civic engine. I never have been able to find any more info since. Maybe it went China Syndrome and melted down the reactor and then had a massive Hydrogen explosion :confused:
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My bro-in-law tried to convert his Toyota PU to hydrogen, some Rube Goldberg contraption he
found online. He never got it to work, but left the works installed while he kept tinkering with it.
His wife and her friend were pulling a camper trailer, high winds put them in the ditch, PU on its
side. The engine compartment erupted in flame. Just saying,,,,,,
Both and a dog barely escaped, melted the soles of her friend's shoes against the floorboard before
she made it out. That's a mighty quick and hot fire if you ask me.
edit,,,
I should add, that other motorists assisted with a fire extinguisher and held back the flames enough to
extricate them.
I don't mean to say the gas/hydrogen alterations were defiantly complicit but the instantaneous
ignition seems suspect. Not pro or con on hydrogen, just an observation.
 
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An internal combustion engine powered by hydrogen is a tough one as hydrogen is the Harry Houdini of the periodic table. It’s the smallest atom and hence always trying to escape. If keeping oil from leaking out of a Willys is tough, imagine trying to keep hydrogen contained.
 
ndnile said:
In the news today that Hertz is removing 1/3 (20,000) electric cars from its fleet due to high repair costs.
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An even bigger impact is the residual problem. Car rental companies make a ton of money off of resale of rental cars at the end of their rental car life. Hertz bought Teslas at a certain price which had a corresponding residual $ value on paper.

Fast forward two years. Tesla has a lot of flexibility on price and adjusts at will to increase sales. When Tesla dropped its sales prices two years later, the corresponding market residuals dropped accordingly. Thus the portfolio value of their Tesla cars dropped. This was especially brutal as rental car companies got used to residuals increasing during the pandemic as the prices of used cars shot up.

Car rental places aren’t used to residuals yo-yo ing like that. The repairs on Teslas are also more expensive. Last, Hertz did a questionable job of educating its customers on EVs, leading to worse customer sat. A trifecta.

It might be a Tesla thing, not an EV thing. A major European car rental company had similar plans as Hertz. They bought a ton of Teslas and had similar experience. Now they are reducing the amount of Teslas they are buying but increasing the amount of other EVs they are buying.
 
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