This hydrogen-powered supercar can drive 1,000 miles on a single tank

I posted a proposal by the Russian inventor Yurkevich in 1917. He proposed a hydrogen and oxygen engine with which "you could cover 26,000 kilometers with one kilogram of fuel." It turns out that his project was not an absolute fantasy.
 
Their maths doesnt really add up. I kg of hydrogen is 40kw/h of power, probably less when its actually converted. To make 1KG takes 55KW/h, so your taking 55KW/h and producing 30-35...Thats not very efficient.

40kw/h isnt going to move that car 1000 miles, unless its made from paper, and travels at 20mph....

Cars, really looking like batteries, currently li-ion. Trucks, maybe hydrogen, maybe solid state batteries, and supercapacitors....
 
Their maths doesnt really add up. I kg of hydrogen is 40kw/h of power, probably less when its actually converted. To make 1KG takes 55KW/h, so your taking 55KW/h and producing 30-35...Thats not very efficient.

40kw/h isnt going to move that car 1000 miles, unless its made from paper, and travels at 20mph....

Cars, really looking like batteries, currently li-ion. Trucks, maybe hydrogen, maybe solid state batteries, and supercapacitors....

I feel like you skipped a bit in the math. We don't know how much hydrogen they have on board or what the consumption rate is.

We do know the car is fairly light, just a hair over one metric ton. And it has more onboard hydrogen than the Mirai, so more than 5 kilograms; probably a lot more. Plus a small battery for leveling and regen braking recovery. The quoted range is for mixed city and highway driving. There's really no way of knowing whether the math adds up without a bunch more variables filled in.
 
I may have taken one tank, as 1kg, but even so, the conversion rate is lousy, you lose on every conversion, and your converting twice. Madness I say, it will never catch on!!
 
Low-rate research into hydrogen as a vehicle has been going on for 40 years now: in the 1980s Mercedes showed hydrogen-powered cars already.

The big disadvantage of hydrogen is the conversion efficiency, which is lower than that of a battery system (and this is a fundamental limit, not something that can be solved by development). It may still take off if we get to a situation where we have abundant renewable energy sources - hydrogen would be a way to store excess generated energy.
 
It does however have the advantage that, unlike batteries, you will be able to stop at a filling station, once the infrastructure is built, and top up in no time flat just like filling your tank with petrol.

They have yet to build a car battery that will allow me to make my 280 mile journey to see family, with a stop of less than 20 mins, and at motorway speeds at all times of the year.

There is apparently a hydrogen trial running in the UK. Some journo wrote about the experience a year or two back, driving from John O' Groats to London with only a couple of fill ups.
 
The Tesla company can already produce a "million mile battery." More electric vehicle start-ups have been announced. Elon Musk will reveal more on Battery Day, September 22.

 

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