AutoblogGreen

So what happened between, oh right the Republican congress in bed with Detroit.

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Umm the house didn't go Republican for another 16 Years

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Actually, I think it was this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H47x9q5-C2k

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Actually, the big problem with the Hindenburg is that the skin was painted with rocket fuel. Also, it was designed for helium, but the only source was the US, and it was considered a strategic resource and couldn't be sold to the Nazis.

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"Actually, the big problem with the Hindenburg is that the skin was painted with rocket fuel"

Actually, no, it wasn't:

http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zf/LZ129fire2005jan12.pdf
http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zf/LZ129fire.pdf

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"at a quarter to half the price"? Hardly. Solar cells were even more expensive back then, so the amortized cost of solar electricity was much higher, then the electrolysis and H2 compression lost half of that expensive electricity. The resulting H2 fuel would have had to compete against petrol at a price nearly 10x greater.

Metal hydride storage was mentioned, but that was before Ovshinsky developed cheaper metal alloys.
They were probably thinking of palladium, which can absorb 800 times it's volume in H2, but is extravagantly expensive with a price only slightly less than platinum. Even the latest metal hydride alloys aren't quite cost competitive for H2 storage.

But the main reason why this was quietly shelved is the extremely short driving range on a tank of H2 fuel. It appears they had filled the trunk with standard steel gas storage tanks. Considering that the "H2 Prius" conversion, using higher pressure tanks and a much more efficient engine only got 80 miles per fillup, I estimate the range was somewhere between 20 to 30 miles per fillup - battery electric cars of that era, with lead acid batteries, could go further.

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I would be prone to guess that Mr. Nicholson was coned probably as well as many other people who might have invested with the hope of doing something good and making a couple of dollars in the process. The villain isn’t Detroit, or the Republicans (what a cliché,) but rather the people who sold the snake oil hydrogen car. Hydrogen, today, would not yet be able to meet the requirements that they are describing. I’m guessing that 30 years from now, we’ll be watching videos of famous people who have spent millions to “offset” their carbon footprint by planting trees in Kenya or wherever, who, sadly, will look pretty silly for their trusting enthusiasm.

They mean well, and so did Jack.

Stick to the facts. 30 mpg is better than 20 mpg. Those numbers will never lie.

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I remember Gerald Shaflander who was behind this Hydrogen via solar voltaics.
He was suppressed by the government, thrown in jail and eventually died. He was backed by a number of Hollywood biggies but was beaten down by the powers that be. He actually had a government grant and ran postal trucks on Hydrogen.

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Owen, if you had half a brain you would see that the big three and Detroit are pretty much now and have been in the DNC's corner. That explains why Michigan is in such a mess. The ultimate liberal exercise of taxing people who worked and businesses that produced to death killed the state.

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@4: OK, just swap the hydrogen out for helium and get it to work with the BMW 7 and I'll be on board! Oops, you get helium by extracting it from natural gas so we'd still be in the same boat, or blimp, as the case may be! Some folks just need to learn how to laugh!

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