New source for economical hydrogen?

[ARKNT]

Just like figuring out electric vehicle quirks and problems there would be some stuff to work out with hydrogen.
I would not want to be in a major accident while in a H2 vehicle. Too many ways to break open whatever the gas is contained in and more likely than gasoline to ignite violently. Maybe could be done if we try hard enough.

Arknt

 

[Coyote Chris]

Just like figuring out electric vehicle quirks and problems there would be some stuff to work out with hydrogen.
I would not want to be in a major accident while in a H2 vehicle. Too many ways to break open whatever the gas is contained in and more likely than gasoline to ignite violently. Maybe could be done if we try hard enough.

Arknt

 

[karl]

A 71 Pinto runabout, second hand was the first car I took out a loan to buy. Had a 64 Mustang that had a cardboard divider between the fuel tank and the back of the back seat. Some cars are better than and others worse than their reputations.

 

[Randall-in-Mpls]

The Pinto was no more dangerous than its contemporaries, per statistics. It was just the target of sensationalist journalism.
Regarding high pressure hydrogen, I suspect this is the reason LP and LNG never caught on as a vehicle fuel, beyond some limited fleet uses.

 

[DirtFlier]

Ford could have easily solved the fire problem for less than $5 per vehicle but chose to ignore it. I recall reading a report that the addition of a simple steel shield added during manufacture would have prevented an adjacent bolt head from puncturing the tank in a rear end collision. When the class action suit got to court, the plaintiffs having a copy of that Ford internal report was pretty damning.

Yes, it was sensationalized by the media but it was Ford's fault regardless.

 

[karl]

The small town I live in has a Tenneco pipeline running through it, we get no service from it. Fiber optic hubs run along highway jus miles from my door they will not connect to me in my lifetime, cost is the rational given. I run synthetic oil in one of my gas cars made from natural gas. The source of most commercial hydrogen we use today. Blows my mind that this is the country that built a Navy going into WWII.
The house I live in had a 60 amp service panel back when it was built in the 40's it has been upgrade over the years and is currently at 200 amps with a 100amp sub in my garage. I can see making the electric grid work better a lot sooner than coming up with an entirely new infrastructure to distribute hydrogen. Prior to becoming a gentleman of leisure I worked in a plant that had three separate 13,800 v service feeds. The lights never got turned off. The one day each year there was no "production" maint crews were working. We can do this.

 

[Randall-in-Mpls]

Ford could have easily solved the fire problem for less than $5 per vehicle but chose to ignore it. I recall reading a report that the addition of a simple steel shield added during manufacture would have prevented an adjacent bolt head from puncturing the tank in a rear end collision. When the class action suit got to court, the plaintiffs having a copy of that Ford internal report was pretty damning.

Yes, it was sensationalized by the media but it was Ford's fault regardless.

Watch all the way to the end.

 

[mikesim]

A good piece! I had a 72 Pinto and it was a great little car. It got a bum rap.

Mike

 

[Coyote Chris]

How do you envision the hydrogen getting used? I find strapping myself into something with a cryogenic fuel tank somewhat repellant.

Evidently, a whole lot of people are working on Hydrogen, both as fuel cell energy sourse and as a fuel by itself in aviation. Once you take out the transportation issue and make it on site, its a whole new ball game. Make it at Spokane international, maybe using the fleet of new mini nuclear reactors WA is building, fuel up the commuter planes that go everywhere from here and back, just like buses....I looked up some of these links in the pic and this is not just a state of WA idea.....people are putting serious money into these ideas. Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) by 2030 is a pipe dream for now....and aviation is the fastest growing sourse of greenhouse gases, ...but I am all for research...try things....maybe they turn out to be windfarms, destined to be the 8 track tapes of the 2020s..but maybe someone comes up with another idea...like the next gen solar cell and energy density battery...and the world changes.....as Frosty says, there is no free lunch..
but there may be a cheeper lunch out there....(I am keeping my personal politics out of what really should happen as it wont)

 

[Coyote Chris]

A good piece! I had a 72 Pinto and it was a great little car. It got a bum rap.

Mike

I think we tend to romantizie things. All US cars back then were junk compared to say the average Japanese car of today....by 1984, Japan was building Honda Civic Wagons that would go 300,000 miles and get 40 mpg. And you didnt have to slam the door to get it closed. Vega...car of the YEAR! When I am rich, I am gonna get a Vega, put in real cylinders, and drive it around so that people can cay they have seen a Vega on the road. Now the Corvair Corsica convertable....it was Junk but it had class and it had style...

 

[RedLdr1]

All US cars back then were junk compared to say the average Japanese car of today....

All Japanese cars back then were junk compared to the average Japanese car of today as well. Of course it is very hard to compare them as very few Japanese cars from that time frame still exist...I wonder why?

 

[karl]

What killed most old cars. Rust. Corvairs were great cars. Even the swing axle models.

 

[DirtFlier]

I good pal, Robert, had a 1960-61 Corvair and he drove the snot out of that thing. Yup, it leaked oil but never any other bothers and he often took corners nearly on 2-wheels without losing control. When Nader's book, "Unsafe at Any Speed" came out I thought it was pure BS because of what I'd seen Robert do.

By 1965, the Corvair was much improved and had an IRS rear end similar to that on a Corvette and most or all of the oil leaks had been solved unfortunately the endless bad press over the years killed sales.

 

[coaster]

I good pal, Robert, had a 1960-61 Corvair and he drove the snot out of that thing. Yup, it leaked oil but never any other bothers and he often took corners nearly on 2-wheels without losing control. When Nader's book, "Unsafe at Any Speed" came out I thought it was pure BS because of what I'd seen Robert do.

By 1965, the Corvair was much improved and had an IRS rear end similar to that on a Corvette and most or all of the oil leaks had been solved unfortunately the endless bad press over the years killed sales.

The Ford Mustang is what killed the Corvair.

 

[Coyote Chris]

All Japanese cars back then were junk compared to the average Japanese car of today as well. Of course it is very hard to compare them as very few Japanese cars from that time frame still exist...I wonder why?

You would be wrong again. We had to pay a premium for a 1984 Civic Wagon at the END of the model year. People were fighting to get a well made car that lasted. Not the GM garbage where employees were paid if they could cheepen a part by one cent.

Tested: 1984 Honda Civic S Ups the Small-Car Bar, Again

From the Archive: Honda manages to squeeze even more excellence out of its latest Civic compact.

www.caranddriver.com

Ours lasted 275,000 miles and we sold it to a neighbor kid for a dollar and it went to 295,000. I still see an occasional one one the road....how many Pintos and Vegas do you see? The Corvair looked cool and it really wasnt that hard to replace the fan belts that kept failing. My dad was a GM exectutive and got me UAW jobs during college summers...the attitude of those "workers" I will not touch here but lets put it this way. I could have any GM car I wanted for life at below whole sale. I buy Japanese and have never been stranded.
If you want to learn something about manufacturing, you might study Prof. Deming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

Ford engineers could not understand the customer preference for the model with Japanese transmissions. Finally, Ford engineers decided to take apart the two different transmissions. The American-made car parts were all within specified tolerance levels. However, the Japanese car parts were virtually identical to each other, and much closer to the nominal values for the parts—e.g., if a part was supposed to be one foot long, plus or minus 1/8 of an inch (300 mm ± 3 mm)—then the Japanese parts were all within 1⁄16 of an inch (1.6 mm), less variation. This made the Japanese cars run more smoothly and customers experienced fewer problems.[5][6]

 

[Coyote Chris]

I good pal, Robert, had a 1960-61 Corvair and he drove the snot out of that thing. Yup, it leaked oil but never any other bothers and he often took corners nearly on 2-wheels without losing control. When Nader's book, "Unsafe at Any Speed" came out I thought it was pure BS because of what I'd seen Robert do.

By 1965, the Corvair was much improved and had an IRS rear end similar to that on a Corvette and most or all of the oil leaks had been solved unfortunately the endless bad press over the years killed sales.

I agree. My brother had a second gen corvair convertible. It was a fun car and the fan belts that failed were easy to replace. Sure manufacturing specs were crappy and you had to slam the doors like all American cars, but it was fun to drive.
The Nadar attitude is with us still. My Wee strom is stupposed to burst into flames if I dont get the fuel pump gasket replaced, at major cost of time and money to me for the recall. 100s of thousands of Ford pickups with this stupid electronic parking brake are now being recalled and 100s of thousands of Teslas can have their electronic steering fail.
If there really is a serious manufacturing defect, like the new Bronco Valve keepers that seem to fly away, Ford should bring me out an equivalant vehicle, take away my old one. Fix it, and return it.
End of story.

 

[RedLdr1]

You would be wrong again. We had to pay a premium for a 1984 Civic Wagon at the END of the model year. People were fighting to get a well made car that lasted. Not the GM garbage where employees were paid if they could cheepen a part by one cent.

Ah, No...not if you actually read it. Did you read what you wrote originally that I quoted? Here it is again, Quote: "All US cars back then were junk compared to say the average Japanese car of today....". No kidding, I'd never had guessed! Except you can't really compare "cars back then" with the "car of today" as you wrote. You missed the satire obviously... Now if you really want to do that comparison then my comment "All Japanese cars back then were junk compared to the average Japanese car of today as well." is very valid. Or don't you think Honda has improved at least a little in almost 40 years?

 

[Coyote Chris]

Ah, No...not if you actually read it. Did you read what you wrote originally that I quoted? Here it is again, Quote: "All US cars back then were junk compared to say the average Japanese car of today....". No kidding, I'd never had guessed! Except you can't really compare "cars back then" with the "car of today" as you wrote. You missed the satire obviously... Now if you really want to do that comparison then my comment "All Japanese cars back then were junk compared to the average Japanese car of today as well." is very valid. Or don't you think Honda has improved at least a little in almost 40 years?

Having alittle passive agressive issue, are we? Meant to say, of the day.
All American cars were junk compared to the Japanese cars of the day. Sorry that I am old and under some stress, but the salient fact is that (and of course I can not go into the political/cultural reasons for this) Japan blew the lid off of quality and value and fuel economy and that trend started in no small measure due to Deming and his views on quality and production, which GM refused to adopt and the Japanese did.
I will never forget this moment for as long as I live. I was a radio tech in a very small company in Illinois and one day circa 1980, my boss drives up in a new Japanese midsized sedan. He said,"Chris! Come over here and close this door...." So I stopped what I was doing and went and closed his car door... SLAM! Just like I had been doing for the last 30 years with American cars because you HAD to. He said a very bad couple of words in anger and then calmed down and opened the door and had me snick it shut with one finger....It was one of those OMG moments and I started to pay attention to fit and finish and function and reliablility...then and there, I stopped buying crappy American Junk , Like my chevy 6 cyl. pickup that you had to put a piece of cardboard in front of the radiator in the winter as the cooling system was so badly designed, and bought vehicles made by people who cared about what they are making. Ask dirtflyer what HE thinks about Honda's abilities to build good vehicles over the decades. And why.
We romantize the cars of the last century of our youth. My trainer wife had a American Motors Hornet....stick...well, it did its job pretty much ...but quality and long life and fit and finish it wasnt.
It took people who cared to build that kind of car.

 

[karl]

As a kid growing up where I live today the average family car had four doors a heater and a radio. Three forward speeds and a column shift, fancy ones had two speakers on the radio. The family next door getting a Honda was a big deal and a very small car.