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Originally Posted by jaydee
Fuel Cell cars do not need 200 lb batteries as you stated earlier. The Equinox has smaller batteries that are charged off the FC for auxiliary, it does not power the electric motor whatsoever. Also, this country does not have the electrical grid capacity right now for even 1 million plug-ins (based off the brown-outs we see in the summer already). .
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The Equinox uses a 1.8 KWh Nickel Metal Hydride battery with an output of 34 KW. It is, in fact, used to accelerate the car (i.e. provide higher levels of current than the fuel cell can deliver) and also to store regenerative breaking energy. Why would you have regenerative breaking if you were not going to use the energy to help accelerate the car?
As for the capacity of the existing "grid" to re-charge plug-in electric cars - the DOT estimates that we could re-charge 85% of the existing passenger vehicles and light trucks, during off-peak times, without adding a single wire or power plant to the grid. It will take a very long time to replace 85% of the existing cars with plug-in electric vehicles. You have to understand that recharging at night is not an issue. The brown outs you allude to had much more to do with Enron and energy manipulations and/or problems at a particular power plant and/or section of the grid than they did with an excess of demand and even then we are not talking about off-peak times.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jaydee
Overall, yes Fuel Cells have more hurdles than plug-in's but it may not be as extreme as you think. You really don't need a hydrogen station every 5 miles to start implementing this, if you just have a dozen or so in the 10 most populated cities on each coast there will be a market to sell these things and it's not a huge investment for anyone if federal/state/city gov'ts, energy companies and auto companies all chip in to get them off the ground.
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The best estimate by multiple sources is that it will take more than ten years and Billions of dollars to get enough hydrogen fuel stations in place to make fuel cell cars a viable alternative. In stark contrast - 100% of the needed infrastructure to recharge a plug-in electric vehicle and provide fuel for trips exceeding the batteries capacity is in place today at ZERO additional cost.
Oh and don't forget - it takes more energy to drive a mile on hydrogen than it does to drive a mile on a battery. The physics does not make sense. Maybe the fact that it will always be ten plus years away (and that we will continue to buy and burn oil from huge energy companies and the Middle East (without plug-in electric vehicles of course)) until we actually start widely deploying the infrastructure just might have something to do with all the "interest" in hydrogen fuel cells. Think about that for a moment....