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from the whats-better-than-twenty-electric-eels dept.
General Motors is the latest car company to unveil plans for an emissions-free future. On Monday morning, the US' largest automaker announced that the next 18 months will see two new electric vehicles join the Bolt EV in showrooms, and 18 more are due by 2023. "GM believes in an all-electric future and a world free of automotive emissions," said Mark Reuss, GM's executive VP for product development, purchasing, and supply chain. "When the Bolt EV was announced at CES it was described as a platform, and this is the next step."
[...] Many of these cars will be built on an evolution of the Bolt's architecture using a second-generation battery pack. But they won't just be battery EVs—GM's electric future will involve hydrogen fuel cells. "We need to meet customer needs, whether that's the school run, a fun summer drive, or towing 1,000s of lbs. It can't be a one-size-fits-all approach," Reuss said.
GM and Honda have been collaborating on hydrogen fuel cell technology since 2013, and more recently the US Army has been testing a hydrogen-powered Chevrolet Colorado truck. "Now we're taking the technology to launch," said Charlie Freese, GM's executive director of fuel cell business, citing commercial and military applications as the initial goal. The fuel cells will be built at its Brownstown plant, which also makes the batteries in the Bolt and Volt.
Time to unload that gas car before it loses all trade-in value?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @04:58PM (1 child)
In the quotes from this latest statement, they don't call it "green." They speak of "a world free of automotive emissions" which is accurate. The ostensible purpose of CARB [wikipedia.org] is to reduce air pollution in California. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, in sufficient numbers, could accomplish that. There's pollution from the extraction of the methane gas, but not from the cars themselves. Direct methane fuel cells exist, but are used in stationary applications. I don't know the reason for that--perhaps they have a low power-to-weight ratio or need high temperatures to operate.
Vehicles that run on CNG, AFAIK, always use an internal combustion engine. CNG is easier to work with than hydrogen: it doesn't cause metals to become brittle. The biggest hurdle to CNG fuel cell vehicles is the methane fuel cell; working on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles doesn't bring that about.
Methane, whether it's used directly or turned into hydrogen, can be made in a renewable manner from biomass. Typically it isn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @07:53PM
"working on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles doesn't bring that about"
You have two highly compressed gases in a structure prone to high speed collision, that are both predisposed to blow the fuck up. In engineering terms I don't see many dissimilarities. We aren't just talking about the end system, but the whole system. So it isn't just about consumer use, but also distribution and sales systems.
In regards to sourcing CNG naturally, you still have to compress it to ship it. Which will never be cheaper than getting it already under pressure out of a well head. And processing it for hydrogen is just a farce, because why bother? Who cares if the CO2 emits at the combustion point, or at the well head? My expectation is that not catalyzing the CNG into Hydrogen is probably more energy efficient, even after considering the additional weight applied to the distribution system.
GM says "Whoopee Hydrogen!", and congress, knowing that GM has spent decades propagandizing the public into a sense that hydrogen is clean, kneels and starts sucking. GM leaves a few bills on the nightstand, and walks away with a big fucking heap of taxpayer loot.
But none of it matters anyway. Once the Chinese let the yuan float, the U.S. is going to see hyperinflation, and it is going to be a long time before our own manufacturing sector corrects for the vast fraud we pass off as economic power. Freight has to move cheaper if domestic manufacturing is going to be restored. The only way to do that is heavy rail. Electric cars are part of the solution, but the biggest part is rail.
So GM says "Whoopee Electric Cars!", and congress kneels and starts sucking. Of course we are all totally fucked twenty years from now if we don't fix the national right of way system, and start laying a shit-ton of track every day. And that is really all on Congress, since it is primarily a problem of interstate standardization and cooperation.
Detroit steel mills should be running three shifts right now. Anybody who can do the math knows it. GM can do the math. But instead of doing the right thing and working on integrating with a real workable long term solution, they are just cowering and perpetrating a new chicken shit scam, pretty much exactly like the last chicken shit scam.
But by all means. Whoopee! Electric cars motherfucker.