Bullshit.. Fuel Cells were a Proven Reality in 1960.. with 97% Efficiency..
Don't know what you're reading, but talking about bull pellets...
Consider the EPA site, which talks vaguely about cell-fueled vehicles:
"Some FCVs can get over 300 miles on one tank of hydrogen fuel — greater than the distance from St. Louis to Chicago — and fuel economy close to 70 MPGe (miles per gasoline gallon equivalent)."
This is a mite vague, but the implication is a tank in the area of 4 gallons, a volume reflective of the inherent dangers of tootling down the highway at 70 mph with a rather unstable bomb strapped to your butt cheeks. Ever see the footage of Hindenburg going up? 4 gallons of H is a lot of violence.
Then there's the "70 MPGe". The hybrids in Europe (not available in America, of course, heaven forbid) that are diesel fueled are getting far better economy than 70 MPG. And do recall that vehicle VW designed: 240 MPG. Why did they not produce it for the market? Because it would cost $140K apiece, this going back maybe a decade - I don't quite recall at the moment, but I'm sure you can look it up. That high a tag is simply not economically viable for 99.9% of the market. Or would you support forced purchase? Didn't think so. So here we stand, same boat as before.
Battery Tech was suppressed,, until Cell Phones Laptops and other Devices Required it.
"Suppress[ion]" implies a positive will to keep something from the market. While it may be true, there are other possibilities. If there is no overt need for the tech, a company is not likely to invest countless millions (lots of money in the stone age before cell phones and laptops and other devices) on providing tech that people are not likely to buy. It would have been more costly for everyone, with no compelling need. When one can get D-cells for, say, a dime apiece or less, why am I paying $3 for a flashlight battery?
Even if rechargeable batteries would have been desirable, and I question the notion as valid in the 1960s, there are the associated cost of chargers, to produce and to purchase. One might have been able to market Lions and chargers, were the shelf lives of the components in question, say, twenty years or more. But they aren't. So if D-cells are a dime, and will last for one year on average, then $3 represents, cost-wise, 30 years worth of battery purchases. Add, say $5 for a charger (I'm thinking ca. 1960 just arbitrarily. Do register your complaint with this, if you have one). That is another 50 years worth of purchases for a total of 80 years. Now cut that by 75% just to be extra safe in our assumptions and in favor of Lions: still twenty years worth of batteries.
Personally, I'd want AT LEAST 10 years worth of good service life from rechargeable fare, considering the lost ten years of the twenty, above, as the premium I pay for convenience and for "green" (which isn't even really there, given the reality of mining lithium). I would also point out that in 1960 the tech apparently did not exist to charge a Lion battery such that it would have lasted very long... unless that, too, was suppressed., including all the digital tech we use now.
So your tone that
seems to convey a sense of conspiracy, may be misplaced, or at least over-stated.
A Fuel Cell will charge on the Fly,, and an "engineer" should KNOW that.
What do you mean by "charge on the fly"? One has to fill a tank with hydrogen to fuel such a vehicles. Now, if you are speaking of regenerative braking action, then you would have to have a water tank filled with very pure water in order to take braking energy and use is to regen hydrogen fuel, which would then have to be recompressed into liquid phase and pumped into the cell. That capability requires more mechanism and therefore provides more potential failure points in the system. Where hydrogen is concerned, one wants as few failure nodes as possible because it is nothing like gasoline or diesel. Regen energy could be sent to a battery, but then you're back to batteries and the problems associated with them from production to disposal, albeit a reduced volume of such troubles.
As for hydrogen cells in general, they are about 60% efficient, overall. That is what the people who are in the biz are saying, anyhow. I'm not in the biz, so I am constrained to take the words of those who are.
The complexities of a "hydrogen economy" appear unappreciated by the average bear. Claiming 97% efficiency without context is not even remotely credible. Consider at least 20% loss in the process of electroysis. Breaking the bonds in H2O will not happen at break-even energies, or anything even remotely close. Consider this, from an article on
physics.org:
"Water electrolysis has not yet established itself as a method for the production of hydrogen. Too much energy is lost in the process."
To be fair, researchers are improving this efficiency, but it's still not sufficient for economic viability. Then there are several other considerations to be taken into account.
Consider the losses in compressing the gas into liquid, generally around 10%. Consider the costs of storage in refrigerated facilities, not to mention the same requirement for transport. Consider costs to design, produce, maintain, and retire such facilities. ALL pressure vessels have service lives. Consider the heat losses during combustion. Consider the costs of producing cells that don't blow up. Consider the costs of maintaining such cells so they don't degrade and blow up. Consider the risks of a cell blowing up, or far worse, a transport tanker with, say even just a mere 500 gallons of liquid hydrogen. And to be clear, 500 gallons isn't a whole lot of product. Viable transport probably calls for thousands of gallons at a time. in the case of hydrogen, that is a whole lot of potential danger - FAR more than that found with gasoline.
One needs sufficient circumspection when considering the proposition of hydrogen as a prime mover, because failure there spells very serious trouble. In comparison, gasoline and diesel are as nothing in safety terms.
And finally, what's up with what seems the attempted impugning of myself as an engineer? Putting the term in quotes as you have, implies a question of veracity, or quality. I see no need for such measures, certainly not yet since we've not quite yet exhausted discussions of truth WRT the actualities of living with hydrogen-fueled vehicles.
Can we please keep this friendly?
