BEVs will run on electricity you can make on your rooftop or back yard. Try that with an ICEV or FCV. It can be done (veggie van anyone?), but the cost and complexity can be daunting and it's not for the average guy.
The big energy companies like the idea of FCVs because it preserves their effective monopoly (polyopoly?) on supplying motive energy well into the future, even as petroleum production declines. Remember, hydrogen is not really a fuel. You can't pump it out of the ground. You have to make it from some other fuel. Most often that's natural gas (and IIRC the process produces more CO2 than getting an equivalent amount of energy by directly burning the gas). If it's made by electrolysis, the energy still has to come from somewhere. Even if it's a renewable energy source, electrolysis + a fuel cell makes for a painfully inefficient battery. Don't forget that you have to transport the H2 from the production facility to the filling station. The notion that an ICEV's exhaust can be "cleaner than its intake" is ludicrous on its face. Some ICEVs have managed to reduce EPA-regulated compounds in the exhaust admirably. However, there are many unregulated pollutants in ICEV exhaust. I remember when Detroit hung the first catalytic converters on cars in 1974. There were reported cases in which women wearing nylon stockings and standing behind big idling gas hogs later found holes in their stockings. The EPA didn't set a limit on sulfuric acid vapor. David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA EVDL Administrator = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = EVDL Information: http://www.evdl.org/help/ = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Note: mail sent to "evpost" and "etpost" addresses will not reach me. To send a private message, please obtain my email address from the webpage http://www.evdl.org/help/ . = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
