The Glade 4.0

For starters, people use the word power wrong when talking about... well, anything. Unfortunately, it is also used correctly in a discussion about cars. So when someone says "power" in reference to a car, there is ambiguity. Are they using the incorrect layman's meaning, or the proper physical definition?

There are two main things that go on inside of an automobile engine. The first is retrieval of energy from the energy storage device. The second is the transformation of energy into mechanical work.

The transfer of energy to the wheels happens via a spinning driveshaft. In most motors, the energy retrieval mechanism is a group of pistons that move up and down. Transformation of energy into mechanical work first has to translate up and down into circular. You have to have things pushing against other things, which wastes some of the energy you want to use to make the car go zoom.

Moving electric charge generates things that naturally move in a circle. That removes several processes that have to happen in order to make your wheels turn. Rather than design moving parts that pump up and down and bang together to turn a crank, all we have to do is wrap the electrical conductor appropriately and remember the right hand rule we learned for our calc 3 professor. Doing that creates an inductor, but the RL time constant is very low, on the order of milliseconds or microseconds. Electricity can get the driveshaft (or anything else) moving much faster than combustion followed by an interchange of translational motions converting to rotational motion.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I should have said "plug in" electric cars. That's what I meant. A hydrogen fuel car may be "electric" but that wasn't what I was thinking about.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Those are simply two different methods for retrieving electrical energy, and are outside the scope of my post.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I get that hydrogen fuel cell cars are "electric". But the OP's article said they were using the hydrogen to charge the batteries in their plug in electric cars.

Which is retarded.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Jesus, guys. They didn't say people actually charged their cars with the electricity. They're simply trying to give readers a real-world measure of how much power is generated, instead of saying X watts.

Yeah, well, its still bass ackwards

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Holy shitsnacks!

No, it really isn't. It works much like a laptop that's plugged in, or a desktop that's hooked up to a UPS. The battery in a UPS doesn't just kick on when the power goes out. It's always up and running providing voltage regulation (which requires that the battery supply power from time to time). It's a standard design, because batteries provide excellent DC voltages. You can do this with a "dead" battery, because it doesn't have to have a very long lifespan. It's getting recharged constantly.

It's actually vital to the design of the engine, because if you remove the battery, the engine is being driven by the sloppy and erratic nature of the hydrogen combustion. The needle on your RPM gauge would wobble back and forth the entire time you were driving. We have other means of providing voltage regulation, but since you need a battery anyway to kickstart the hydrogen combustion... Well, I think you can see where that train of thought goes.

Electricity moves faster than combustion. The random motions of combusting molecules don't have a huge impact on a piston. The gas just expands and pushes the piston up. Now imagine if from one process to the next, the piston didn't rise to the same height every time. This piston moves six inches, the next piston moves five, the next piston five and a half, then six, then five, then seven, then six, then seven, then five, then six and a half... and so on. That would be a **** up engine.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Don't forget, on a regular combustion engine, the car battery is charged by the alternator which is powered by the engine. I'm sure that a hydrogen fuel-cell powered electric car would be similar. It wouldn't still have a big bank of heavy batteries like a "hybrid."

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The battery would probably have to be substantially larger than the one in a standard combustion engine. However, you wouldn't need a big mess of pistons, belts, and crank shafts.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Right, a hydrogen fuel cell car.

Not like a plug in electric like a Leaf. Drive car 40 miles, plug in for 6 hours. Drive car another 4o, repeat, etc.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Those automobiles are primarily for short range usage. We have several of them on campus. They probably don't travel much more than twenty miles per day, and they recharge at night. That much stop and go is hell on a combustion engine's efficiency. An electric motor doesn't really care.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Yes, that's what an electric vehicle is good for. That's why golf carts have mainly been electric for a long time.

Despite that, the new communo-green movement pushes electric cars. Now, the debate about why they want that is probably more suited for hellfire or heckfire, but I'm pretty sure we can agree that electric cars in the current vernacular are being pushed by the greenies.

Now, the current generation of electric cars do NOT meet the average American driver's needs. They potentially meet a European driver's needs, if that driver is willing to make some sacrifices. The foreseeable improvements in battery output and longevity do not appear to overcome the current limitations.

Therefore, people like me (and apparently Arafys, though I don't want to speak for him) are much more in the hydrogen fuel cell camp.

To be clear, using the current industry terms, a hydrogen fuel cell in a car powers an electric motor. Any other motor would be rather silly, as then it wouldn't really be running on the fuel cell. Therefore, adding the distinction that a hydrogen fuel cell car is technically an electric hybrid is moot, as the former inherently implies the latter. Whereas, the phrase "electric car" in auto industry vernacular, indicates a plug-in, such as the Leaf, Volt, or G-Wiz. This phrase is morphing in the last couple of years to include hybrids as well, however, and may one day soon change meanings.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I'm actually surprised that there aren't more diesel-electric hybrids.

But yes, I'm in the fuel cell camp. Plug in electrics suck mainly due to the range issues.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Well, they're coming in Europe.

In the US, however, we don't get diesels very much. Not sure why, probably because we're (generally) dumb in regards to the economics of diesel.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Yes. That and Americans don't like to pay 25k for a 2 door econovolkswagenbox. Even if it does get 70mpg.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Diesel is used in large farm equipment and big rig trucks, leading the common citizen to equate it to being dirty.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

These are also diesel and very clean (500 gallons to the ton-mile). But they also use electric motors.



It's for the same reason you cite regarding the electric car. Electric motors can apply full torque at 0 mph. This means they don't have a hard time starting at low speed. Compared to steam, they have a harder time maintaining the same horsepower at high speed, but that's easily gotten around with multiple locomotives.

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