http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/ Engadget Comments for Honda shows off conceptual, solar-powered station to refill your conceptual, hydrogen-powered car (video) http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 10:47AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
Dude, does your life suck so bad you just piss all over everything? Holy crap lol.]]>Jul 7th 2010 11:12AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 11:12AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
My current unmodified V-6 Accord is much faster than the BMW 740i it replaced. In reality, on paper, and on the track or straight line.

And that's not even a sports car.

Honda is thinking long term. Toyota isn't. GM is a gimmick. Nissan is pretty amazing too, I grant.

Hydrogen is the future. It's what cars are evolving towards for good reason. When the world is full of small businesses with their small planes, robots helping you at home, and hydrogen cars, Honda will probably be the largest manufacturer in the world.

It will probably be a generation until then, but the writing is on the wall.]]>Jul 7th 2010 2:38PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 5:48PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 6:11PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Maybe you should look at home. Ford cars get better gas mileage with a diesel or unleaded engine and last longer. All the energy you need to use to make hydrogen, most of it comes from burning *shock* fossil fuels. With current technology solar isn't tenable. But you don't consider that, perhaps you should just move to japan and save your bullsh!t for people who care.]]>Jul 29th 2010 12:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 10:48AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/I thought that was insane too.]]>Jul 7th 2010 11:59AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 12:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 10:49AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 10:50AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 10:51AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 1:25PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 10:49AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
But regardless, everything has to start somewhere. If this is a good idea, the market will adopt it and prices will go down (and hopefully we'll get all those magical solar cells all these start ups make a lot of press hype about, and then we never hear about it again).]]>Jul 7th 2010 10:51AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
The future is EVs (and extended-range EVs), not hydrogen for automotive applications.
Putting research into hybrogen is a waste of money when battery technology is much farther along.]]>Jul 7th 2010 10:53AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 10:57AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Further along doesn't make it marketable or desirable.
Case in point: http://i543.photobucket.com/albums/gg471/ariefwiryanto1/g-wiz.jpg]]>Jul 7th 2010 11:01AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 11:09AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
You clearly have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

First and foremost, it takes MORE energy to create hydrogen than the hydrogen fuel actually has. How is that efficient?

Second of all, the mileage range is awful. You didn't even watch the video above because the lady states that it took 8 HOURS to fuel the car to go just 30 miles. Even when not using this type of solar-based refueling station, the overall range for past hydrogen cars was only around 100.

And lastly the costs for this technology is through the roof. While this is a 1-off prototype so it is going to be expensive no matter what type of engine it has, the reality is that hydrogen for automotive applications is no where near production-ready.

And the fact remains that hydrogen cars are essentially electric vehicles that use a fuel cell instead of batteries. Well why the heck wouldn't you just forgo the expense of the fuelcell and just use batteries since their technology is so much farther along... and batteries are already at the point where they are reasonably priced with a reasonable driving range. There is clearly more work that needs to be done with batteries, but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that EVs are the future and any research into hydrogen cars is wasted money.

Hydrogen will be used for other things, but automotive applications is not one of them.]]>Jul 7th 2010 11:11AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
Counterpoint:
http://frogandprincess.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/2007teslaroadster-full.jpg

or

http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2009/05/18/461546.1-lg.jpg


How about you get with the times and realize that EVs don't have to look like glorified go-carts.]]>Jul 7th 2010 11:15AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 11:17AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
Where are you getting "potentially cheap" when it comes to hydrogen tech for car applications?? Quite the opposite is true actually.
And Hydrogen might be common, but to put it into a practical form to be used, it takes MORE energy than it actually produces.

Hydrogen is not a practical solution, so you can either continue to live in your la-la dream world, or actually learn about the technology you are talking about.

Getting cars off of fossil fuels isn't going to happen by just wishing it away - research has to be done in VIABLE technologies, and battery-powered EVs is easily the best solution out there.

(and to be clear, I have nothing against Hydrogen for other industrial/commercial uses, but in the small, mobile and cost-conscious confines of a car, it's absolutely impractical)]]>Jul 7th 2010 11:21AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/The Tesla is hardly a consumer car. To be fair, you'll have to cite an example that costs about the same as an fcx clarity, not a celebrity's toy.]]>Jul 7th 2010 11:37AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
I am talking about the real world here, not some magical place where hydrogen is viable and fusion is commercial available.

When it comes right down to it, EVs and Hydrogen cars are essentially the SAME. So why go through the whole extra step to convert energy into a Hydrogen fuel that then gets converted to electricity to power an electric motor?? A battery does all that without that extra step.
And without the loss of energy that creating Hydrogen causes.
And on top of all that, batteries today are almost cheap enough to be used in cars and already give you almost a long enough driving range. Just look at the Leaf which is going to be about $25k and give you a range of 100 miles. That's pretty amazing for a 1st gen product. No hydrogen car can even touch that for less than $1 million, and still probably offer you less range.

Hydrogen is an order of magnitude more expensive technology than EVs... and the whole distribution of the fuel would be a nightmare. Every home in the US already has multiple electrical outlets, yet how many of them have hydrogen refueling stations? EVs are a much more practical solution.]]>Jul 7th 2010 11:39AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
Hydrogen fuel cells can be fully filled up in minutes (a real life-saver if you need to call AAA when you run out of juice), are quite lightweight compared to batteries, and have a much higher energy output than any viable battery.

Unfortunately, both technologies require a lot of infrastructure investment to even be reasonable. The upside to Hydrogen is that it takes nearly no time at all to fill up - expect queues at the hydrogen station to be about what they are now. Expect queues at an electric filling station to several hours long.

And forget about long road trips. Anything over several hundred miles long requires a several hour long break just to get back on the road. Something like the FCX Clarity has a range of ~240miles and takes 3-4 minutes to refuel and get back up and running.

But who's right or wrong is irrelevant. Nobody knows what the market will decide for some time (car makers have to get off their asses and get SOME alternative to the mass market for that to happen)]]>Jul 7th 2010 11:41AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
"you'll have to cite an example that costs about the same as an fcx clarity"

You do know that the Honda Clarity is a million-dollar engineering testbed and has absolutely nothing to do with a true production car, right??

The Tesla is at least a car that is being produced and sold, low quantities for sure, but it is actually being built.

You want an EV that will eventually be put into true mass production? Then wait a couple of more months for the Nissan Leaf. And while not a true EV (it's an extended-range EV), there is also the Chevy Volt which will be out by the end of the year.

]]>Jul 7th 2010 11:46AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
"Just look at the Leaf which is going to be about $25k and give you a range of 100 miles. That's pretty amazing for a 1st gen product. No hydrogen car can even touch that for less than $1 million, and still probably offer you less range. "
FCX Clarity - 240 mile range.

"Every home in the US already has multiple electrical outlets, yet how many of them have hydrogen refueling stations?"
I don't many people with a 240v 70A outlet installed in their home. High infrastructure costs exist for both technologies.]]>Jul 7th 2010 11:46AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/FCX Clarity is being leased to real people in SoCal, and production costs are down to around $120k (last I read)]]>Jul 7th 2010 11:47AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
First off, I would rather have an EV. Then they should have a station on the side of the road that pulls in solar energy that I could hook up to the car. Second, the Chevy Volt looks hotter.

Also, so much misinformation for not watching the video and paying attention, so lets get it straight....

- It takes 5 minutes to refuel the car (Good)
- It takes the PUMP SYSTEM 8 hours to generate the hydrogen to refuel the car (Bad)]]>Jul 7th 2010 11:53AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
Batteries are almost 100% recyclable.
And while it is true that current battery tech takes a while to recharge, in the video above, using that type of refueling station for the Hydrogen-based Clarity took 8 hrs to get only a 30 mile range. Not good... and actually much worse than any EV.

And you comment that they have a much higher energy output when you consider that the Clarity only has a range of 30 miles. And you are not accounting for the fact that it took more energy to make the Hydrogen than you'll get out of it... that's a pretty big waste.

Also battery technology is expanding rather rapidly. Seems that every week there is a new battery discovery. While current batteries might only give you a range of a hundred or so miles, that is with 1st generation EVs. There are many promising technologies out there that might easily double or triple that number. And in the mean time, there are extended-range EVs like the Volt. That is why Chevy went with that technology first because they feel that a pure EV is just not ready yet.

You mention, also, hydrogen refueling stations, but here's the problem... there are none. While every house in America has the ability to recharge an EV by simply plugging it in. The infrastructure is already there now.

Once battery technology allows an EV to get around a 300 mile range, then forget about Hydrogen - it will be dead technology. At about that magic number, it will give almost everyone WAY more than a day's typical driving range and ease people that might be afraid of getting stranded. They are not there yet, but EVs are sooo much closer to being viable than hydrogen-based cars.]]>Jul 7th 2010 12:00PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Surely the infrastructure currently in place (fuel stations, storage tanks etc.) are more easily altered to allow them to store hydrogen. The station could easily be fitted with green energy generating technologies as well as storage brought in compressed hydrogen gas (compressed to a liquid). Refueling would be very similar to current models - with a different pump plus, the fuel stations would be able to generator their own hydrogen on site so reducing the amount of fuel needed to be transported around the country. The electric battery power vehicle is a complete dead end technology it only works for short journeys and requires far too long to "refuel" the car, any new technology that doesn't at least mimic the current model is doomed ]]>Jul 7th 2010 12:05PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Hydrogen stations have nothing to do with gasoline stations. This is a common misconception. Hydrogen needs completely new tanks and a compressor in order to work because it is not a liquid fuel. A new hydrogen station costs $3-4 million dollars. Adding one hydrogen pump will cost over $1 million even with delivered hydrogen. Having a reformer or electrolyzer at the station will cost even more.

]]>Jul 7th 2010 1:25PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 1:28PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Stop trying to promote hydrogen, Hazdaz is 100% right.

Making hydrogen takes enormous amounts of energy, if you were to scale it up, it would never be economically viable, unless they find another method (more efficient) method to produce hydrogen. Even then it's still crap vs EV, since it has to be converted back into electricity (at low efficiency, again), or it has to be ignited (like ordinary fossil fuels, again, at low efficiency).

Compare this to EV, which already have a lot of known tech (electrical motors, electronics etc.) and it also has a great efficiency ,70-90%, depending on the quality of the components.

The only component that needs tweaking is the batteries. They will probably end up being some sort of super capacitors that you can charge within minutes. That's it, while hydrogen will require a lot of research to be ever commercially viable. Besides, the infrastructure for EV is there, I'm not saying it would work today, but most of the infrastructure is there, all it needs is expanding.

Let's face it, hydrogen, is not a commercially viable way forward, EV (even now) is.]]>Jul 7th 2010 1:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
EV technology is not dead end. There are ways to relatively quick charge batteries, recycle batteries, potential to increase drive time per charge with supplemental energy such as solar. Battery technology is still being improved.]]>Jul 7th 2010 1:41PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/You are looking at BEVs in the conventional station-based kind of thinking. A BEV is not ideally used at stations, as many people like to think of them. Instead, it is best suited to garage charging. There are millions of households that can use an BEV right now with no infrastructural changes (esp two car households). A typical 30-40A home charger only costs $2k with installation. The 70A Tesla charger costs $2k retail.

The problem with hydrogen is it is constantly stuck in concept/demonstration stage. It is useless if automakers don't bother to ever really sell a vehicle. A Tesla may sell for $110k, but it is still a sale. $600 leases to a very limited audience are not sales. This is like in the 90s where automakers had BEVs for lease in California. But once they got CARB to cut back on the ZEV program, they crushed all of them.

And another thing is this solar array is wasting 3-4x the energy trying to fuel the hydrogen car. Over 8 hours, this 6kW solar array will generate about 48kWh at peak. Take ~80% charging efficiency and you have ~35kWh of battery energy, which is good for ~100 miles in an BEV, rather than only 30 miles in a hydrogen car. Hydrogen may be able to match or exceed BEV efficiency with reformation, but with electrolysis, it has been consistently shown to use 3-4x the energy.

And I've about had it with the battery FUD. Lithium ion batteries are not hazardous/toxic (they are land fill safe). They are also recyclable (and automotive batteries are guaranteed to be recycled, unlike the consumer batteries that no-one seems to care about recycling). Also, let's not forget hydrogen cars need buffer batteries too (the same type of lithium ion battery), and also the truly toxic lead acid battery that everyone has in their car today (which is also recycled, with about 90+% recycling rate).]]>Jul 7th 2010 1:48PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/do yourself a favor and watch this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AUurBnLbJw

production of battery with lithium or other material causes pollutions and there is a limited amount of them. Hydrogen IS the most abundant resource in the world.

Just because it might take more energy to produce the fuel, it doesn't mean its not economical. We have plenty of ways to create energy needed.]]>Jul 7th 2010 1:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
Oh boy.
If you are taking your technical knowledge from TopGear then you've already lost. Listen, you'll be hard pressed to find someone that likes the show more than I do, but they are an ENTERTAINMENT program. Not a hardcore unbiased technically-minded review show. The fact that they don't even mention that Hydrogen takes more power to produce than it offers up as fuel speaks volumes to the fact that they aren't taking a hard analytical look at the problem.

Also another very telling issue is that in the 2 years that that show aired, there have been few advances in Hydrogen cars, and yet battery technology has new developments almost weekly. In the 2 years since that show aired, Tesla has sold over 2000 EV roadsters. Honda hasn't sold a single Hydrogen car and neither has anyone else - the closest they have come is leasing a few engineering samples in a extremely limited roll-out.

Why not take a look at what some other people above have said about Hydrogen versus EVs. Anyone that can look past the *GEE-WHIZ* idea of running your car on water, will see that the reality doesn't point to a Hydrogen future at all.

]]>Jul 7th 2010 2:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
That's the real appeal to me.]]>Jul 7th 2010 4:39PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
I think maybe you shouldn't be jumping the gun here... we are talking about 1st gen products (and in the case of Hydrogen not even that far)... so talking about some 600 mile trip is way beyond the scope of these technologies for the time being. And you mention a hydrogen refueling station, but then again... go try to actually FIND one. Not going to happen. But if this was an overnight trip and you were only going about a 100 miles a day, you could in fact recharge an EV. Again, it's not a practical solution (yet), but take a look at the early history of the automobile and you'll see that a 600 mile trip with a car ~100 years ago was considered quite extreme.

This is the whole reason for the Volt to exist... EV benefits, with an ICE backup for unlimited range. ]]>Jul 7th 2010 5:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Frankly I don't see why we can't have both.
]]>Jul 7th 2010 5:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
If gas stations were outfitted with hydrogen pumps it would be a lot nicer than a battery-powered car, you could refuel it like a normal car and go cross-country. Hydrogen is inefficient to produce today, but that's because it's only produced in very small quantities, if there was a big hydrogen industry they could use larger scale techniques, shoot some big laser into the ocean and harvest hydrogen that comes out or something, I dunno. But at the end of the day it's the most common element in the universe.]]>Jul 9th 2010 1:41PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 11:00AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 11:18AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/
Oh, for the love of god, give it up already. The "Hydrogen Economy" is a myth. Ain't going to happen. We would have to nearly *double* the current power generation capability of the U.S. in order to replace gasoline with hydrogen. That's ~930 1 megawatt reactors.

Given that we haven't built a *single* reactor in decades, you'd have to be smoking crack to think that we're going to get there in your great-great-great-great grandchildren's lifetime.

The following link provides a very sobering view of the challenges of moving to hydrogen:

http://www.tbp.org/pages/publications/bent/features/sp04uhrig.pdf
]]>Jul 7th 2010 11:25AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/That's a pretty pessimistic view you've got there.
I wonder if that article had this advance factored in:

http://inhabitat.com/2010/04/12/mit-researchers-harness-viruses-to-split-water/

They said it's a 4-fold increase in efficiency. I imagine other advances similar to this would bring what seems so mythical into reality.

We can't take this equation and act like we can solve for inventions and discoveries that have yet to be.]]>Jul 7th 2010 1:36PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/hydrogen/HydoProdFeasibilityStudyNucPwrPlantsJuly09LowRes.pdf

i guess you are right. i shouldnt go near a power plant. on the other comment i do agree that this may never happen. our government doesnt seem interested in reducing our addiction to petroleum.

Batteries take us backwards like it or not people want to use a car for 400 miles or so a tank and fill up in under lets say 5 mins. not 16 hrs to charge like batteries require.

I am simply stating there is a method for cost effective hydrogen creation and it is nuclear power plants in case anyone didnt know or was interested.

Clearly you are much smarter than i am.
]]>Jul 7th 2010 1:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/honda-shows-off-conceptual-solar-powered-station-to-refill-your/Jul 7th 2010 11:17AM