Honda's hydrogen-fuel-cell FCX Clarity

"...this is a true zero-emission vehicle, yet it looks, operates and
drives like anything else on the road. There is simply no more
realistic a peek into the possibly green future of the automobile, not
the theoretical Chevrolet Volt from General Motors, nor the electric
Tesla billionaire-toy, and not even the Holy Green Grail of the plug-in
Prius..."

Wall Street Journal: http://301url.com/f43

 

The downside, of course, is that PRODUCING hydrogen in quantity is not
generally a zero-emission process (unless you have substantial hydro- or
nuclear-generated electricity available).

 

If you mean someone is burning coal upstream, I suppose so, but the
idea is that big centralized power generation is both cleaner and more
efficient than most vehicles, so if the resulting consumption is
clean, it's a net winner.

Y'know, I don't get it, if you asked anybody five years ago what would
make sense for vehicles when oil reached $100/barrel, they'd have said
all sorts of alternatives could come online at those prices. Maybe
even hydrogen.

J.

 

NET winner, perhaps (IN THEORY)... still, the point is, it's not a
"ZERO-emissions" solutions; it's a shifted-emissions setup.

Don't get me wrong, I think it would be great to see some VIABLE
alternatives to this petroleum-fueled society... it just, I dunno,
amuses me, I guess, to see people tripping over themselves to jump on
various "clean energy" pie-in-the-sky bandwagons, only to ask a dozen
years later, "What ever happened to that idea" because they didn't stop
to think about ALL the implications, requirements, disadvantages, etc.

 

Nobody rides for free.

How about horses? Or do you think a careful scientific study would
find that they have emissions, too?

/hah

 

That's my point. The original post *opened* with, "...this is a true
zero-emission vehicle".

TANSTAAFL.

Well if you could collect and distill the methane, you could use that
for powering your car...

 

Last I heard, a fuel cell car costs like $1 million. Is this more a public
R&D phase (aka "beta test") more than anything else? After the lease is
up, will they be crushed and buried with the EV1's?