Give us a Freedom Car

[zeemike]

I have a dream…no it’s more like a vision of how it could be…Of something wonderful that a few good people with a lot of money (remember that Jesus said that all things are possible) could solve or energy problems and put us in a state of freedom from the want of Mid East oil, and make some more money too.

Say, Bill Gates, Opera Winfrey, And others of like kind, bought one of the GM assembly plants and began building the Freedom Car.

The Freedom Car would have these things
1) A hydrogen fuel cell
The source of electrical energy to drive the car
2) a storage battery
To act as a reserve electrical storage tank and as a device for the energy recapture system
3) Wheel motors in all 4 wheels
Making it a 4x4 and eliminating the need for a drive train and trans axle

Now none of the above requires any new technology and all of them are in use right now and require no new inventions or breakthroughs to be made.
But that is not all there is to the Freedom Car. When you buy the Freedom car it comes with a trailer on it’s bumper that you tow home, and this trailer is a kit that when it is put together is a carport for your Freedom Car and a fuel station. On the roof of the carport are solar cells that provide the electricity to separate the hydrogen from water and the equipment to store the hydrogen and fuel the car.
And once again the trailer would need no new inventions or breakthroughs to be made today, only a few engineers willing to design it.

And I would love it too if when the assembly plant started turning out the Freedom Car it would first be made available to poor and low income people at a monthly payment rate that would be less than what they now pay to run there gas car to work every day. And then as the poor that needed them had the cars, then be made available to the upper income people as well, and to the developing world for sure.

Now this is not some sci fi idea, all of these things are within the capability of even mediocre engineering and could and should be done now. So why not? And what would we have to do to convince a few good rich people to do it, or elect a government that would do it if they were unwilling?
If there is anything not understood about the Freedom Car I world be glad to explain the details of how it worked.

[Gabi Hayes]

1. what are you, a communist?

why do you hate amerika?



http://rwor.org/a/v23/1100-99/1106/cheney_energy.htm

[zeemike]

3. My god what an ugly mug

If that is a capitalist please let me be a commie

[Drifter]

57. Yeah, why do hate hydrogen

Cheers
Drifter

[zeemike]

62. Because it pissed me off once

And I have never forgotten it

[lonestarnot]

74. ewww now there is a nightmare!

[mikelewis]

108. That's so Sciencey- Can't we make a car that runs on prayer?

Then only Christians can drive.

[nankerphelge]

2. When are we taking it public?

Let's start lining up the venture capitalists.

[zeemike]

5. I think I have 100 bucks to spare

[stlsaxman]

75. Write to Micheal Moore with this idea- "The Flint Freedom Car".

Surely HE would get behind this idea.... it's in his home town and right up his alley.


Plus- he is sooooooo pissed at GMC right now- time to strike while the "iron is hot"!

[zeemike]

84. That's a good idea

He probably does not have enough money himself but he might be listened to.

[Coloradan4Truth]

4. Great, Wonderfully Creative Idea!

The individual or group that did this would also go down in history for being one of the forces that put America and maybe even the World back on the right path.

The Freedom Car is the Perfect name for it.

Come On all you billionaires - get on it!!!

[zeemike]

6. Thanks

I know I would practically worship at there feet.

[rzemanfl]

7. And the tires for the trailer are the spare tire and a spare for the

spare, rotating six tires you could go a long way before you needed a new set.

It would need air-conditioning where I live. I have long wondered why auto air conditioning didn't run off of an inverter with an a/c unit that you could pull out and replace if it went bad. Air conditioner repairs on current cars are obscenely expensive. Room size air conditioners for homes are under $200.00.

[zeemike]

10. Great idea I had not of thought of that

There are ways of having AC work on the DC voltage of a fuel cell.Just a small engineering task

[upi402]

8. only big oil and */cheney didn't have to swear-in before congress

even big tobacco executives had to get sworn-in prior to testifying before congress.
i doubt that big oil would allow their government to permit that.:eyes:


seriously, i think you have a great idea!

[zeemike]

11. I know

But this is about outflanking the enemy

[upi402]

49. perfect!

I see the goofs still with the W stickers and wonder why I still haven't found a way to not have to work so hard.
Case in point, the day after thanksgiving -shoppers. I should be smarter than cattle, yet they're driving new Escalades, Volvos, and Mercedes -and I have an Echo.

[Mythsaje]

9. Nominated...

I think this needs more exposure.

[zeemike]

12. Thanks

[dcfirefighter]

13. Past a certain population density, cars are inefficient

An transport costs are much reduced in relatively dense walkable multi-use communities.

A much easier solution would be to raise taxes on land values, while reducing them on building values, sales taxes, and wages. This would reduce cost of housing and places of business, encourage denser development, and recoup the costs of building transit systems.

Converting existing cities to surface trams could allow large contiguous sections of urban area to be essentially car-free.

[zeemike]

14. Actually I agree with you

Mass transit is in the future and could be a much better way to go.
But this is a step forward with no step back that seems to be the only way to go forward.
In 1969 I saw a proposal for a mass transit system that would blow your mind in National Geographic but i dare not suggest it when we are fighting for something simple like a fuel cell car gets no attention.

[LWolf]

15. Please don't raise my taxes.

I love my ancient, dilapidated little rural trailer way out here where I have to go many miles to find an actual street light.

I agree that urban areas need efficient transit systems. Just please, don't make me live there. Quality of life for me means silence, solitude, and pitch dark where the stars in the sky are brilliant.

[Hope springs eternal]

17. That's cool...

But that's why you should support this. More people in cities means more room in the wilderness. Everybody is happy.

[LWolf]

41. True.

And I would be happy with a little "freedom car," if it can handle ice, snow, and dirt roads.

[dcfirefighter]

37. You'd like it then

Dense development would drastically reduce sprawl, leaving the hinterlands to those who would live there. Of course most of the jobs and whatnot would be in the cities and towns.

If your state switched all of it's revenue to land value taxes: 1) your land would probably lose value, and be taxed very little, because it is so far from most public infrastructure and 2) any income you get from wages or selling stuff would be taxed less, if at all.

[LWolf]

39. That would work for me.

Most of the jobs around here already are in cities and towns; I'm in the middle of family farms, ranches, and public land. Still, those farmers and ranchers have kids that need a school with teachers, so I'm happy.
Smarter planning, less sprawl, and denser living makes sense, as long as those who thrive on wide open spaces still have that choice.

[dweller]

16. 4 independent motors on 4 wheels

is a great idea, i've thought this over for awhile now. Just software needed to bring them all in tandem. Back to Bill Gates.

dp

[zeemike]

20. It is much easier than that

No software required
Diesel locomotives have been using electric motors to pull trains for many years now with simple devices.

[dweller]

23. locomotives run on rails

automobiles would have to be engineered differently, esp turning radius, etc.

i've saved a file on a motor that might be worth looking into, let me see if i can find it.

dp

[zeemike]

26. I would be happy to see it

No big deal on the engineering
The largest dump trucks in the world, you know the ones that have 15 feet tall wheels, use wheel motors to drive them.
It is a must for them because could you imagine the size of the transmission and drive train on something that big?

[dweller]

30. here ya go

http://www.rexresearch.com/minato/minato.htm

now, just work with one on each wheel. They would have to be working together tho, thus the program. I suppose eventually the steering wheel could be replaced with a joystick. :)

dp

[zeemike]

34. very interesting

But I need more time to digest all of that.

Have you ever heard of how a Diesel locomotive controls the motor? It is pretty simple and can produce great tourque...enough to pull 100 car train.
I say it is only a mediocre engineering task.

[jmowreader]

44. A diesel locomotive has one feature...

that makes its designers' task much simpler.

Look at the wheels on a locomotive, specifically how they're designed. The wheel can slide up and down on the track, and because both wheels are attached to a solid shaft, in a turn the outside wheel (in a left turn, the right-hand wheels are outside and the left-hand wheels are outside in a right turn) drags on the track. This design feature lets them put one motor on each of the two trucks on the locomotive and have it drive four wheels.

On a car you couldn't do this for a LOT of reasons--among them being the fact that you'd scrub all the rubber off the outside wheels.

A wheel-motor design requires the ability to independently adjust the speed of each wheel.

I know this is doable, but it's not easy.

[zeemike]

53. It is not hat complicated

Just look to how they do it on the Large earth moving equipment which use the 4 wheel hub motors.

[jmowreader]

63. I got a better idea. Forget this four-wheel-drive thing.

Make the car a three-wheeler (two in the front, one in the rear) and drive only the back wheel. This eliminates the need to emulate a differential in software, it eliminates three motors, and it cuts down your tire bill by a third. Drive the rear wheel with a 60-horse pancake motor bolted to the back wheel.

Next, use a tube frame with a fiberglass shell over it. Very light and very strong.

Use the front end out of a Volkswagen Beetle. The guys who race Bugs in the desert have developed the VW front end to a point where it's perfect, and they're available brand-new right off the shelf, made out of 4340 chromoly tubing for long life and light weight. Use brakes off a Chevrolet--it's easy to get replacement parts for them, and every aftermarket wheel manufacturer in the world designs wheels for Chevrolets.

Use a modified motorcycle swingarm as your rear suspension. The modification comes from cutting the pivot in half. This gets you two things: enough width to put the tire and the motor in there, and the ability to change the tire without having to pull the motor out the back of the car.

Put your hydrogen tank in the front of the car, pipe it to the back where your fuel cells are mounted on one side of the wheel, and mount your three-phase inverter and variable-frequency drive on the other side of the wheel. And because you're smart, you'll put some batteries and a regenerative braking system in there too. You could get really cute and stick a couple of magnets on your fans and put a coil of wire around them so they generated electricity when they were running. Don't waste anything.

So what we're basically looking at is a 900-to-1000-pound three-wheeled car that's got 60 horses and a whole shitload of torque; this thing will move, man. (And with all the heat the fuel cells are putting out, you won't need a separate heater in it; the car will be nice and toasty warm with no energy expenditure. Also, you should be able to recover some of that heat and turn it into electricity. Put a few thermionic devices in the ventilation system, and you have an AC unit.)

If you build it as a three-wheel car, the vehicle itself is almost a trivial exercise. Your main task in its design is to make a car people will like--if the car sucks, no one's gonna care whether it runs for free. The problem is the electrolyzer, and I think you realized this when you started the thread. I did some searching for information on electrolyzers; apparently alkaline electrolyzers are the way to go right now. You create a 25-percent potassium hydroxide solution, shoot some juice through it, and you get a nice efficient flow of hydrogen coming out of it. They've been doing this in Norway since the 1920s--not for energy use, but to make ammonia and fertilizers. So far so good. But you need to shoot a LOT of juice through the tank of Liquid Plumber (don't laugh, that's what we're really talking about--25 percent KOH in H2O will definitely unclog your pipes) to cause electrolysis, and solar cells in quantities an urban dweller could feasibly install won't get you where you need to go. I could reroof my home with them (assuming they were inexpensive enough to allow this), but what does an apartment dweller do?

People are working on "photoelectrolysis"--using the solar cell itself to split the H2O into its component parts--and that seems promising. It still means I get to reroof my house, though.

[zeemike]

65. obviously you have thought this before

But my idea was first to make it look just like any other car and don;t get so hung up on efficiency that you have something that looks strange.
You know when the gas engine was invented they did not wait until it was efficient to begin to use it.
And that is the same for all inventions except it seems for the fuel cell

and there are advantages to 4wd that outweigh the cost of the motors
And the KISS principle (Keep it simple stupid) is very much at work here
The motors would run off DC current just as well and the speed of the motor is variable by increasing or decreasing the voltage, the same way a Locomotive varies the speed of the wheels from a crawl to full speed.
But again I am not an engineer and some or all of what you say might be necessary in the final product. But the point is that it must be done if we are to stop the consumption of fossil fuels.
Oh and the energy capture system is merely turning those wheel motor into generators. And this is simple because the only difference in a motor and a generator is the electrical connection So when you stepped on the break a solenoid would make and change the motors to generators and put some of the energy back into the battery.

[jmowreader]

69. I've thought about making a three-wheeler

Except that instead of all the electric stuff on your car, I'd just build a tube-frame car and drive it with the engine and swingarm out of a motorcycle.

To answer your DC comment: no, they don't. A three-phase AC motor is more efficient than a single-phase AC motor, which is more efficient than a DC motor. Raymond uses a three-phase AC motor on its forklifts, and they've found that the extended runtime you get from converting the electricity in the battery from DC to three-phase AC offsets the added cost of installing the inverter and the VFD enough to justify doing it.

How you adjust the voltage in a DC system is by inserting a rheostat--a variable resistor--into the circuit. This device works by converting some of the input power into heat. We don't want that; we have a limited amount of power on the vehicle as it is, and the less of it we turn into heat, the better. A locomotive throws away its excess power by dumping it into a load bank.

Personally, I'd like to quit considering locomotives and dump trucks as examples for electric cars. Both of them use electric drive motors to make the designer's job easier; remember, most locomotives and all dump trucks have a huge diesel engine turning an alternator as the heart of their power system.

Fuel cells ARE in use. (Check out http://www.fuelcells.org/info/databasefront.html for a list of stationary fuel cell installations; http://www.fuelcells.org/db/project.php?id=255 is a neat one--Ford is running it off emissions from the paint shop in their Dearborn, Michigan, plant.) Here's your problem: until they get the efficiency up, a fuel cell that will generate enough electricity to push a car is going to be about as large as one.

Let's play with a few numbers. One horsepower equals 750 watts. A one-horse motor that consumed exactly 750 watts would run ice cold. Obviously that doesn't happen--every electric motor I've ever seen heats up when you run it. Just for S&G let's say you built a motor that needs 850 watts per horsepower. The car we're building has a 60-horse motor. 60 horses times 850 watts per horse...is 51 kilowatts. We can't run a car with only a motor, and obviously no one is going to buy a car that doesn't have windshield wipers, lights, a fan for the heater...so let's say for the hell of it that we need 60kW to run this car. There are 60kW fuel cells in vehicles today, but the vehicles are 30-foot-long city buses.

The alternatives? Make the motor smaller so you can run it off a smaller fuel cell (which means the car drives slower; very few people are going to buy a car and think "I'm saving the planet with my 25-second 0-to-60 time"); fill up the car's storage space with hydrogen tanks and fuel cell equipment (which means the car has all of the storage space of a motorcycle...and once again, very few people are going to want to save the planet with a car you can't take to the supermarket) or make the fuel cell more efficient so you can have a decent car with it in there. Remember, one of our goals is to make a car people like, so they'll buy it.

[zeemike]

71. You ask the tough questions

And that is good...that is what is needed.

The first thing I would say is don't get hung up on efficiency. Can you imagine Henry Ford being told that he should wait until the Gas engine became more efficient before attempting the model T?
So what if the AC motor is more efficient than the AC motor I say the advantages in design simplicity, for the motor as well as the car, far outweighs the eficientcy factor.
I will give an example of this in my own life dealing with solar.
A friend of mine had a solar panel the heated hot water and the small circulating pump was run from a photo voltaic panel and went bad. The motor had a PC board to drive the AC motor and it was bad. A new board was not available and a new motor was $278 Now if I could by a the same size DC motor for $10 and it would have lasted for years and rears. And if some wear part like the brushes go bad it is repairable,
And all of this was to save a very small amount of energy that was free to begin with.
I sometimes feel that we are being pointed to the nay of this just to keep us busy looking to save the little bit so that we do not progress and continue to by the gas burner and support the energy industry.

No you do not need a resistor to very the speed of a motor. Like they do it on a Locomotive, they simply apply voltage from the windings of the generator in steps. In the car it would come from a single cell in the battery in 1.5 volt steps (using a 12 volt system) 1.5V would make it crawl and 12 fly with a step really with six contacts so that if you pressed on the accelerator pedal a little one or two contacts would be made, if you stepped on it all of them would.

Simplicity is the reason Locomotives and Big trucks use this. They are just too big for a drive train and transmission.
Thjat is not right about the size of the fuel cells. On that link you gave me of the space suttle fuel cell it apears to be 3 or 4 feet long and 2 dw=eet tall (you get that scale if you look at the control pannel)
And with 4WD and a battery to provide the surge current nessesary you could win a drag race with a lot of the gas cars today.

[jmowreader]

91. We should get "hung up" on efficiency

There's a couple of reasons for it.

The most important is that the more efficient your car is, the less hydrogen you're going to need to drive it.

Now, if we are REALLY looking for some efficiency, let's turn the motor at twice the RPMs we need to move the car and use a 2:1 reduction gear to drive the wheel. This effectively doubles the horsepower available at the wheel hub. You lose a bit through parasitic loss, but we're dealing with one gear mesh so it's not too bad. Which means your hydrogen tank is smaller for the same range or the same size but you go farther, your fuel cell is now a 30kW unit instead of a 60kW unit, and your electrolyzer--and the solar array you're running it from--can be smaller. OR...you can use the electrolyzer for your 60kW car to fuel two 30kW cars, which makes this really appealing...or you can sell your extra hydrogen to your neighbor.

Second, variable-frequency drives give you the most delightful pinpoint control over your motor speed--and, more importantly, they provide constant torque over almost the car's full speed range. So what? You ever try starting from a dead stop on a steep hill in a no-power car? They got no get-up-and-go, and what gets you up is torque--lots of it. If you go to http://www.oneway.on.ca you can see the Oneway 2436 wood lathe, which is controlled by a VFD. Not only can you adjust the speed of your lathe to your exact liking just by turning a knob, you get a lot of torque from 40rpm to 100rpm and full torque from about 100rpm all the way out to the lathe's maximum RPM. Most of the maniacs who own this lathe turn whole stumps, so they appreciate the evenness of the torque it delivers.

But the most important "efficiency" VFD offers, and the real reason I'm pushing it, is efficiency in vehicle design. Variable-frequency drives are available off-the-shelf. They're programmable. You can call a VFD builder and tell him how much the car weighs and how big your motor is, and they will take out the proper VFD, program it for your application--a VFD is a computer and can be programmed like any other computer--and send it to you. Three-phase inverters are off-the-shelf systems. Three-phase pancake motors likewise--even ones with reduction gearing. Drive one wheel with this system, and you're not going to spend a brazillion dollars trying to get the drivetrain to move the car or spend half a brazillion dollars attempting to emulate a differential. The drivetrain will come out of the box ready to use, which will save you from showing up at the press conference with your car and explaining to Rich Bedard of Car and Driver that you spent all of your R&D money on the drivetrain which is why the driver has to sit on a milk crate.

We could release an "unrefined" version of the Freedom Car and promise to pretty it up later. We could also go out of business. When Honda dropped the Civic on the world, they could get away with it--the car was fairly rudimentary when it first shipped. If Honda tried it now they'd be out of the car business inside of a week; no one would buy a Civic in 2005 if it looked like it did when it was released. Same deal with this: it's going to have to reflect the best modern design if you want to sell any.

[zeemike]

96. You are right

The Freedom car should look and drive just like any other car today.
And I would leave it up to the engineers to design the motor and such to a point. But the KiSS principle must apply. Just like the model T Ford did not wait until he had everything perfect to start producing it. And I am sure he made many changes in his original designer as he learned by actually putting one together.
But my idea would be to first sell this car to the people who would benefit most from it, the poor. And I would make it easy for them, giving them very low payments according to there income and taking care of all maintenance during that time. The poor would be the beta testers and would benefit by reducing the amount of money they spend on transportation.
But again I point out that a DC motor can produce a lot of torque like the starter otor on your car. look at the size of it and understand how easily ti turns over the big gas engine. Or the locomotive and large dump truck that hauls many tones of ore out of a strip mine up a steep grade. Hi teck is wonderful but it does not have to be used where it is not necessary just because it is cool.

[Mairead]

112. Actually, it maybe shouldn't look "like any other car today"

Early-adopters enjoy the prestige that comes with having seen the future before other people. Making the first line look like some cherished vehicle from the past--e.g., a 3-wheel Morgan, an MG TD or TF --perhaps even the Model T itself--should appeal strongly.

[zeemike]

99. check this out

on talking about that space station solar panel the las paragraph was this;

The SSU is designed to coarsely regulate the solar power collected during periods of insulation – when the arrays collect power during sun-pointing periods .... A sequence of 82 separate strings, or power lines, leads from the solar array to the SSU. Shunting, or controlling, the output of each string regulates the amount of power transferred. ...The regulated voltage set point is controlled by a computer located on the IEA and is normally set to around 140 volts. The SSU has an overvoltage protection feature to maintain the output voltage below 200 V DC maximum for all operating conditions. This power is then passed through the BMRRM to the DCSU located in the IEA. The SSU measures 32” by 20” by 12” and weighs 185 pounds.


That is what I am talking about when I say power can be varied to a motor without a resistor rheostat system.

[dkofos]

85. Add to that list

http://cycclone.com/welcome/page1.php
http://www.perendev-power.com/

and more
None of which are in the US

[awoke_in_2003]

66. Please, don't let Bill Gates write the software...

the car would never run.

[johnaries]

67. Actually, that's how the GM "by-wire" H2 prototypes work.

A single fuel cell stack that supplies power to electric motors located in all four wheels.

I read one article that was said since all components were in the chassis, you could actually have multiple body styles that would fit on the same chassis.

[zeemike]

72. Very interisting

thanks

[Gregorian]

18. Slower. Smaller. Repeat...

One percent of the military budget would solve our energy conversion problem. (That's just a top of the head statement, by me. Although it's probably not too far from the truth.)
As it stands, people are working on the solution. One problem is solar cell technology. It has made a lot of progress in the last few years, but it's not there yet. Aside from solar, our options are limited to nuclear. Am I wrong about that? I'm a bit tired. Fusion, fission.

And one problem with solar is.......night time.

Another problem with solar is that the energy required to build a solar system for everyone is quite large.

So there's ecological feasability. And energy feasability. Actually, those are the same thing. Sort of.

As for the car- that technology has existed for decades. That isn't the problem.

And I always have to add this, since it's a factor in the equation- unless we stabilize the population, the problem will become even more difficult to solve, given our present engineering knowledge.

Now that oil is becoming "difficult", I suspect we will be paying more atttention to our energy situation. Now that we are at the crisis level.

One last word of wisdom- Slower and smaller. Just something to think about. Those two words should be our mantra. As opposed to growth. As opposed to bigger and faster.

[zeemike]

21. Not there yet?

Might I remind you that Solar cells have been around a long time, and the reason they are so expensive is not the material they are made of, but that they are not mass produced.
so tell me this; how much energy falls on say a 900 sf roof in 8 hours? and how much hydrogen could be separated from watter in that time with that energy?
did you do the math or did you just assume that the oil companies were telling you the truth?

[Gregorian]

36. Yes and no.

There's close to a kilowatt of energy that hits a square meter.

I've heard that it takes 38 kilowatt hours of electricity to produce the hydrogen equivalent of a gallon of gas.

Solar cells still have very poor efficiency. I do not know the most recent developments. Nanosolar is one company that has found a way to mass produce "cells". Things are changing rapidly now. But at the going efficiency of even 25%, we are nowhere near able to match the results we get from burning petroleum.

And your question of how much hydrogen we can make, is a good question. I admit that I cannot answer that off the top of my head. And I have been actually urging myself to break away from the forums and do some looking at that. The chemical equation is given. But there's more than one way to do it. And it's very energy intensive. One way is to use a fuel cell in it's reverse configuration. And I can only suppose that the geometry of the cell would determine the efficiency of it's hydrogen production.

Rather than look at hydrogen production, we might look at overall energy demand. Those numbers are easy to find. And with even 40% efficient solar cells, we are just barely able to meet demands. But it amounts to a huge area of solar cells per capita. I've seen as small as 144 square meters. That's a third the size of a typical residential lot. And not cheap.

I'm afraid a 900 sf roof area isn't going to do much. Not yet. But we're getting there.

[zeemike]

42. No way

38 kilowatts to produce the equivalent of one gallon of gas?That cannot be right.
Have you ever looked at a car battery when it is charging? Those bubbles that you see are hydrogen gas being produced from the watter in the battery and Hydrogen has a lot of energy.
But you know efficiency is relative. If something is 25% efficient and it is 100% free it is so much better than something that is 90% efficient and cost a lot of money like gasoline.
And I don't know, but I have seen a solar panel 3x4 feet that powered a watter pump that pumped watter from 180 feet. So it is hard for me to believe that 900 sf which is 115 times bigger cannot do the job.

[Hypatia82]

47. You forgot a few things...

among them fusion research. Fuse hydrogen into helium and you get a nice output of energy. Right now it's a purely technical matter as to how to get a sustained fusion reaction going and keep it going. Of course there's the mother of all energy sources, matter anti-matter reactions. Also a technical issue at this point, how to produce enough anti-matter to make a worthwhile supply of power. Which isn't actually very much, just needs a a few ounces a day for a city, but even that is beyond us currently. And then there's superconductors. A big chunk of power produced is lost to electrical resistance in transmission wires, stepdown stations etc. With superconductors there's no resistance. Only problem is, so far no one has found a superconducting material that works at room temperature. And unlike with fusion and matter anti-matter reactions, there's not much theoretical understanding of the issue.

[zeemike]

54. I haven't forgotten them

I was just suggesting something that could be done with off the shelf technology today.

[dkofos]

86. Solar night time problem solved

check this out
http://www.shec-labs.com/products.php

and this
http://www.fuelcellmarkets.com/article_default_view.fcm?articleid=6809&subsite=1727

Other systems use sunlight to create heat and store heat energy for later use.

[baltlib]

19. well...

lets see 4 wheel independent drive has been done, and it works

you could never make enough hydrogen by using solar panels to get more than a few blocks, even in full day light after all day

fuel cells cost way to much and are too big, i read a report on the space shuttle ones, they are the size of a cloths washer and they could not drive a car over 30 mpg

so that leaves two ways to make the hydrogen at home, chemically and using electricity, the problem with electricity is why not just have a battery powered vehicle, then there are no losses from changing energy to different states and storage types

other wise it might work if the .gov paid for 75 % of the car then it might cost 5 thousand bucks, not including ins and fuel costs

[zeemike]

22. Are you aware

That in 1969 when man landed on th moon the entire power for the space craft came from a fuel cell? And I know it was not as big as a washer.
And what I am talking about is making hydrogen from electricity from a solar panel. And in fact it is perfect for that task because it produces DC current which is what is needed to separate hydrogen from watter. If you wanted to use power off the grid you would have to convert it to DC in order to do it, so why not Solar?
And again the only reason that fuel cells are expensive is that they are not mass produced, not because the material they are made of is so expensive.

[baltlib]

51. well yes you are right we did land on the moon...

with IIRC a 24 volt 60 amp system. or about 1500 watts, which is about 2 hp if you have very little loss. i know people with electric cars, that at 55 mph they are drawing 60 amps at 126 volts dc or about 4 times the power, and on accell they draw 500 amps ( full throttle ) and this id done with 10 deep cycle batteries weighing about 30 to 40 lbs per battery. this gives them a range of about 120 miles at high way speeds.

oh and your right the fuel cells on the space shuttle are not the size of washers they are bigger

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/RT1997/5000/5420hoberecht.htm

also the space shuttle has 3 of these, and they can produce 25 lbs of water per hour, so lets say you want to drive a 4 hour round trip, like Xmas shopping can be. and your car has one of these on board it will make about 32 lbs of water, and need 32 lbs of fuel for that 4 hours. now you need to split 32 (about 4 gallons )lbs of water to h2 and o2 using solar power, i think not.

also do a search on how much is invloved in running a fuel cell, it has heaters, H2 seperators, freon systems, coolers water pumps etc.

i am not saying it wont work but it wont be easy, and it wont be cheap. using an IC engine running on H2 would be just as emmisions free and a lot cheaper to make. but an idea that might work would be to do a battery powered car with a small fuel cell on board to charge the battery when the car is parked

[zeemike]

55. Thanks for the input

I am not an engineer so I could be wrong on some of this
But that fuel cell pictured looked abut the size of a small washer if you judge the scale by the buttons and plugs on the control panel.
And in my idea there is a deep cell battery to provide the surge in current from acceleration, but to also take advantage of the energy recapture (another system that has been successfully used)
And maybe you are right it is not easy, but to me easy is only something that is possible.

[stevedeshazer]

24. Sounds like a modern Volkswagen

Where do you get the hydrogen?

[zeemike]

27. it's easy

From watter
If you put two plates in watter and pass a DC current through them it separates the hydrogen from the oxygen in watter. This is nothing new it has been done for many years. The fuel cell reverses that process by combining the O2 and Hydrogen to make Electricity.

[stevedeshazer]

33. Where do you get the DC current?

This is alchemy. You can't get something from nothing.

[zeemike]

35. From photo voltaic cells...solar panels

The sun provides the electricity and the watter the hydrogen.

[yowzayowzayowza]

25. The car portion...

is in progress: http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=article&storyid=715

Solar energy harvesting is the issue.

[zeemike]

29. AS I have said

none of this is new or needs inventing
Hub motors have been used for some time now and do work. Thanks for that link.
And the only barrier I see to using solar power to separate Hydrogen is that solar panels are expensive due to the lack of mass production.

[dweller]

31. www.nanosolar.com

bears looking into also.

dp

[rfkrfk]

28. if Europeans and Japanese are so smart, ask them n/t

[zeemike]

32. They are no different than us

They have all there investment in Oil stock and afraid of lousing there money.

[Clara T]

38. Better yet freedom from the car

consider all the energy that goes into the propping up the automobile culture, road maintenance, resource extraction etc.

we need to restructure and rethink not "try to fix" based on an unhealthy model.

[zeemike]

43. I am with you

On that.
but this is the problem of why we do not move forward even by this kind of step is because the intermittent ideas are ignored in favor of the 100% solution.
We should support anything that makes things better even if it is not perfect, and know that we will eventually get to the 100% solution if we can only keep making things better.
Right now our problem is the burning of fossil fuels and this is a device to reduce that burning by a huge amount. Not perfect for sure but will go a long way to solve the problem.

[lwbaby]

46. But how do we do this?

I can walk to work but my dh (dear husband) has to drive to work. Like it or not nowadays jobs aren't where people live nor does public transit accommodate shift workers in most locales.

[Rosco T.]

40. I can beat that, and it's already available... a car that runs on AIR

http://www.theaircar.com/

After twelve years of reserch and development, Guy Negre has developed an engine that could become one of the biggest technological advances of this century. Its application to CAT vehicles gives them significant economical and environmental advantages. With the incorporation of bi-energy (compressed air + fuel) the CAT Vehicles have increased their driving range to close to 2000 km with zero pollution in cities and considerably reduced pollution outside urban areas.

As well, the application of the MDI engine in other areas, outside the automotive sector, opens a multitude of possibilities in nautical fields, co-generation, auxiliary engines, electric generators groups, etc. Compressed air is a new viable form of power that allows the accumulation and transport of energy. MDI is very close to initiating the production of a series of engines and vehicles. The company is financed by the sale of manufacturing licences and patents all over the world.

http://www.theaircar.com/models.html

[zeemike]

45. Why is it better

To reduce consumption of fuel than to eliminate it altogether?
It would be better for the oil companies but that is all I can figure.

[Rosco T.]

70. how about ZERO pollution?

[Name removed]

48. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[zeemike]

56. I have lived in the south

And to be fair not all of them are like that, but enough of them to irritate for sure.

[upi402]

50. Hydraulic compressed oil storage tanks, flow reversal preventers,

and check valves. So when you put on the brakes oil is centrifugally (impeller?)forced into storage tanks under pressure. When the accelerator is hit again, the pressure releases via a valve that gives a power assist to get off the line.

In electric motors there is a huge inrush current during the initial start-up that uses a lot of energy and stresses the power making/delivery system.

Just a thought, hope it helps!

[zeemike]

58. Hmmm

Another idea for the energy recapture, thanks
But of course I am not the engineer and so until the decision is made to make such a car is made the final systems would be up to them to figure out.

[Raksha]

52. You're not gonna believe this...

but I was fantasizing about almost the EXACT same thing only a few hours ago, while I was preparing vegetables for our Thanksgiving dinner. Not the technical stuff, because I'm not a technical person. Of course it would be a state-of-the-art design and very fuel efficient, but I don't have the qualifications to even imagine beyond that. Still, I was very upset by the news of the GM plants closing and the layoff of 30,000 workers. I was thinking that if the American auto industry was dying, what hope is there for any other industry? So I was running a what-if scenario in my imagination about how the plants could be employee-owned, and how the engineers and managers would work for the people on the line, not the other way around. The name I gave the car was the Liberty car.

Synchronistic, huh?

[zeemike]

59. Oh I believe it

And my guess is that there are hundreds if not thousands of people that had the same ideas triggered by the same news. But for the most part they are like you and me, with no credentials, to get there ideas into play.
Only on places like this will we be heard and even then by only a few. But we must do what we can.
And the Liberty car is a great name, maybe we could have two competing for market share.

[MadHound]

60. Hydrogen is not the answer

The infrastructure isn't there, and splitting off hydrogen for use requires a great deal of electrical energy. Rather than wasting that energy cracking out hydrogen, use it rather instead to power our houses, and to power a biodiesel hybrid. One can increase the efficientcy of hybrids even further, especially if we start making the underside of cars more aerodynamic. You can also install a second battery pack in a hybrid, one that can be charged by the eletrical grid, whose electricity is produced by renewables like wind.

Right now we don't have the infrastructure for the hydrogen economy, and even if we did, the inefficiency of using hydrogen severly limits its uses at this point. Rather, let us use technology we have already refined, that we have the infrastructure and technology to put to good use. Otherwise, we'll just continue to piss away money and energy, something that we can no longer afford to do.

[zeemike]

61. I think you missed a point

And that is the trailer behind the freedom car which is a kit to produce your own Hydrogen in your own yard.
The carport that you park under has a roof of photo voltaic cells that provides the energy to separate the hydrogen from watter
So that every night that you came home from work or whatever, you could fuel up your car for the next day with the hydrogen made by the separator.
It is the whole point of the Freedom Car that it be totally independent from spending money on energy just to live your life.
And by the way sense it has wheel motors and no drive train making the underside of the car aerodynamic would be quite simple.

[BiggJawn]

77. How big must the solar cells be....

...to break down water into enough Hydrogen fast enough to be viable? Doesn't it take a LOT of electricity?
It's a great idea. I'm just thinking that the technology is lagging behind the concept, but that's ok for now. The technology may catch up.

Solar cells charging a battery bank that would be used to re-charge the car's battery overnight could work. We already have that technology. Maybe enough electricity could be produced to run the household, too.

[zeemike]

80. The truth is I don't know

I only know that I have seen a 3x4 panel of them used to pump watter from 180 feet, and it seems to me that something 100 times bigger should do 100 times more.
But my idea does not come from my knowledge of technology but my gut feeling that it could be made to work.

[zeemike]

82. Data

I did find this information that may help figure just how big the solar panel would have to be;

Each Solar Array Wing is the largest ever deployed in space, weighing over 2,400 pounds and using nearly 33,000 solar arrays, each measuring 8-cm square with 4,100 diodes. Each SAW is capable of generating nearly 31 Kilowatts (kW) of direct current power. There are two SAWs on the P6 module yielding a total power generation capability approaches 64 kW, enough power to meet the needs of 30 average homes – without air conditioning (based on an average 2kW of power.)

So the total Sq foot is 4370 and it can supply power to 30 homes or about 143sf per home if using the NASA grade solar panels.

[BiggJawn]

88. But remember, now...

Those are 30 AVERAGE homes, NOT 30 homes with a water-to-Hydrogen machine in the garage.

It's still a fascinating concept.

[NickB79]

93. Can you compare space-based to land-based panels?

I would think there would be significantly less energy produced by land-based solar panels, since they have to deal with atmospheric disturbances of sunlight (clouds, haze, dust, snow, rain, etc).

[zeemike]

95. I don't know

But I believe that even in space the solar panel does not capture even half of the energy that comes from the sun. But it does have all the time in the sun unlike earth.

[Greyhound]

64. Right. They're pushing H to maintain a stranglehold on the

distribution of energy so they can perpetually charge and keep us under the boot. Small diesel powered/electric hybrid is the answer. The engine can run on a huge variety of fuels.

[johnaries]

68. Actually, fuel cells can run on mulitple types of fuel, including

ethanol, methanol, and even gasoline. Fuel cell engines get about 100 miles to the gallon on gasoline.

Although it would probably take a larger solar array than is feasable to pull home in a trailer, it's a idea to consider.

Imagine selling a car that comes with it's own fuel supply. The company that could do that would become rich very quickly.

[zeemike]

73. The fuel cells I am talking about

Are the ones that make electricity by combining Hydrogen with Oxygen. It's output is water and the source of the hydrogen comes from using photo voltaic cells to separate the Hydrogen from the water.
The same system that was used when we landed a man on the moon some forty years ago.
If I had the resources I would look into just how large the solar array would have to be but i guess I just believe it could be done with no actual proof.

[johnaries]

78. I like your idea, I'm just trying to think of ways to make it practical.

Yes, you are talking about "low-temperature" fuel cells. Which can also be used with various other fuels if you run the fuel through a "reformer" first.

The size of the solar array depends, of course, of the output of hydrogen that's desired. However, if you desire a higher output than supplied by a "practically" sized solar array, you could have a secondary source to supplement the energy that the array supplies.

Perhaps we should consider fuel cells for home and office use, first. They are already here. They are "high-temperature" cells which can use several types of fuel without the need for expensive reformers, and the heat generated is currently being used as an added energy source. A home fuel cell in conjunction with reasonably sized solar arrays could conceivably provide enough economical energy to both supply your home energy needs and produce fuel for your fuel cell car. If you also sold a roof-mounted solar array for the rest of your house, your total energy costs would extremely low.

That would be an expensive package to purchase all at once, but you could sell your package with the solar array as a "supplemental" source, and then sell the home fuel cell system either separately or at a discount for the total package.

Of course, we are still stuck with the problem of the hydrogen tanks for the vehicle, since pure hydrogen has to be transported and stored under 2,000 psi of pressure.

But your idea is definitely a good start. It shows "thinking outside the box" which what we need now more than ever. I think it's something that can be built upon. :toast:

Maybe you should try contacting George Soros.

On edit: I like your thinking MUCH better than those here who keep saying "It can't be done. It's not practical". Well, if we put our minds to it like you are doing we can figure out ways to MAKE it practical!

[zeemike]

79. Thanks and I appreciate your input

And I must admit i have no qualifications at all when it comes to engineering and such but neither did Henry Ford or the Wright brothers so I don;t let that fact hold me back.
And the home based fuel cell is a great idea that I suppose would naturally flow from a car project, or any project that used a fuel cell to provide free energy for whatever the need.
But I have not the resources nor the credibility and background to talk
to talk George Sorrows or anyone like that into even considering it. It is only my hope that some one with this credibility will read this and take it seriously enough to do the math and engineering to see if it could work.
I see a technology that was invented in the sixties that has never been used for any piratical earthly use and it seems strange to me that when we need it the most it is ether slow walked or ignored.

[Greyhound]

81. Thank you for this post, I agree with you that something like this

is desperately needed. I don't know if you're old enough to remember, but Carter pushed exactly this kind alternative back in the 70's. If raygun hadn't killed all of the energy projects his first month in office, we would be driving something like what you envision today.
The real obstacle to what you propose is the corporate masters that own us. They will never lose their strangle hold on us without violence and bloodshed. It is their way.

[zeemike]

83. I well remember the 70s

and even the 60s when this was all invented for the space program.
And i just found this whil looking for the answer to how big the pannels would have to be:

I did find this information that may help figure just how big the solar panel would have to be;

Each Solar Array Wing is the largest ever deployed in space, weighing over 2,400 pounds and using nearly 33,000 solar arrays, each measuring 8-cm square with 4,100 diodes. Each SAW is capable of generating nearly 31 Kilowatts (kW) of direct current power. There are two SAWs on the P6 module yielding a total power generation capability approaches 64 kW, enough power to meet the needs of 30 average homes – without air conditioning (based on an average 2kW of power.)

So the total Sq foot is 4370 and it can supply power to 30 homes or about 143sf per home if using the NASA grade solar panels.

[Greyhound]

87. See? 150 sq.ft. p/ home. What do NASA grade panels cost?

Imagine where we'd be with another 25 years of research and improvement behind this technology. Just makes me sick, especially when I meet one of those 'raygun democrats'. :grr:

[depakid]

76. Sci Fi is right

There are so many problems with this on engineering, economical and societal levels that I wouldn't know where to begin.

Prompts Star Trek theme song: http://www.eroei.com/midi/tos.mid

Americans are just going to have to learn that they've overshot their future energy inputs by leaps and bounds. Their addiction to cars and a lazy suburban lifestyle will end at some point- though like all addicts, they'll conjure up all sorts of schemes to try to keep using long after it's clear that they've no practical way to sustain themselves.

The next 25 years will certainly see interesting times....

[IDemo]

89. Just a few numbers to put this in perspective

Whether this concept happens or not depends on how efficient the process is from end to end. Is the value of the energy-out significantly higher than the cost and performance of the system as a whole? That would include solar panels, electrolyzing, storage of hydrogen, and efficiencies of fuel cell and electric motors. One thing to remember is that the hydrogen gas you electrolize from water cannot be used directly, it must be either highly compressed or liquified for storage and transport, both requiring significant energy.

Let's look at a few numbers.

A one kilowatt solar system (about 10-12 solar modules) requires about 100 square feet of installation area. If you completely cover your rooftop, let's say ~1000 square feet,you get 10kW. So on an eight hour day of strong sunlight, you get about 8 * 10kW/hrs of energy. That's at maximum insolation (incoming solar radiation).

The efficiency of hydrolysis has been widely reported between 50 and 80% or higher, but 65% seems to be a good working number. That leaves us with .65 * 80, or 52kw/hrs worth of hydrogen gas.

Now comes the hard part. In order to get the hydrogen into our vehicle, we must either highly compress it or liquify it. Read:"The laws of thermodynamics dictate the amount of energy it takes to compress a gas. The physical properties of hydrogen make it the most difficult of all gasses to compress. At 800 bars, a perfect, single stage compressor consumes energy equal to 16% of the chemical energy in the hydrogen. (This is the energy that gets instantly released in the event of a tank failure.) It is possible to use a multistage compressors with intercoolers to achieve 12%. This is an estimate extrapolated from an actual multistage compressor working at 200 bars. A multistage compressor working at 800 bars does not exist.

It is technologically challenging to compress hydrogen to 800 bars. Higher pressure would not result in much volume reduction. At these pressures, hydrogen acts less like a gas and more like a liquid.

The laws of thermodynamics also dictate that energy losses occur when hydrogen is transferred from a storage tank to a vehicle. The design of the transfer lines and the pressure fittings is critical in keeping energy losses low."

LIQUID HYDROGEN

" Liquifying the hydrogen reduces the volume to be transported but at an even higher energy cost. Firstly to transform electricity into liquified hydrogen requires energy equivalent to about half the energy in the hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen is four times the volume for the same amount of energy as petroleum. Furthermore energy must be used to keep the hydrogen at -253 degrees C. Overall energy consumed in storage is around .3% per day, i.e., to store hydrogen for the six months from summer to winter would use up energy equivalent to more than half the stored energy. Further losses would occur at filling points and through valves and joints. In addition the hydrogen tends to boil off at 3% per day, although this can be used, unless the device, e.g., car, is idle for several days at a time."

So now let's say you have obtained the necessary equipment to convert your hydrogen gas to its cryogenic (liquid) form at minus 253 degrees C (that's -423 degrees Fahrenheit), and to store it safely. At roughly 50% efficiency, you now have .50 * 52kW/hrs, or 26kW hrs of energy to work with. That sounds like a ton of driving time to me, but wait, more math (aargh!). The electric motor may be up to 90% efficient, leaving you with 23.4 kW/hrs. One horsepower equals about 746 watts. If your fuel cell vehicle uses a motor with only an 80-horse output, it uses 80 * 746, or 59.68 kw of power, or 59.68kw/hrs of energy. This leaves you with just over 23 minutes of daily drive time for one vehicle, with none left over for powering your house. All at a total cost that likely (now) exceeds your house.

And that's with 8 hours of LA quality sunshine, every day.

Best to stick with plug-in hybrids and battery electric vehicles for the time being.

[zeemike]

90. Thanks for that info

And I do not hink it would be necessary or even desirable to liquefy hydrogen.
And I think it is important to remember that all energy lost by what ever means is free to begin with and so represents no cost to the user.
But here is something I found from NASA that is interesting;

When fully deployed, the SAW extends 115 feet and spans 38 feet across. Since the second SAW is deployed in the opposite direction the total wing span is over 240 feet.

Each Solar Array Wing is the largest ever deployed in space, weighing over 2,400 pounds and using nearly 33,000 solar arrays, each measuring 8-cm square with 4,100 diodes. Each SAW is capable of generating nearly 31 Kilowatts (kW) of direct current power. There are two SAWs on the P6 module yielding a total power generation capability approaches 64 kW, enough power to meet the needs of 30 average homes – without air conditioning (based on an average 2kW of power.)

Now there is 4370SF to produce that power don/'t you think that say 1000sf is doable, and surly that is enough power and produce, and store the gas for one car?

[IDemo]

92. OK, you do not want to liquify your hydrogen gas,

but now you must compress it. A lot. The 800 bar pressure mentioned above isn't even achievable now. A more realistic 200 bars still equals almost 1-½ tons per square inch. You can't buy a compressor at Sears that will even approach that. Plus, the tank on your vehicle will need to be extremely strong to deal with containing that kind of pressure, probably a multilayered carbon fiber unit, again, very expensive.

Quote - "all energy lost by what ever means is free to begin with and so represents no cost to the user."

If by 'free' you mean we spent nothing ourselves to create the sunlight or oil, or other energy source, you would be correct. But making the energy useful is where the costs come in. Oil comes out of the ground at relatively high pressure (or used to :-( ). But even as energy-dense as oil is, it still must be extracted, transported, refined, transported again, and distributed to make it available for usage. Even at that, the EROI (Energy Returned on Invested) has been higher than 1 so far, making it a viable energy source. It's when EROI approaches 1 that it no longer makes sense to use a given energy source. You are then spending as much producing the energy as you get out of it.

The EROI of a home solar/hydrolysis/compression system is going to be very much less than 1, and probably will be for decades. Just the cost of the photovoltaic panels alone to cover a 1000 square foot roof would be prohibitive for most people. The above example I gave was for a currently available product claiming about 1 kw/100 square feet.

[zeemike]

94. I must point out

That none of the equipment necessary needs to be invented
It was already invented in the 60s for the space program because they used it to go to the moon.
But there is no comparison with oil. Solar energy need not be transported or handled in any way and it is wasted on the roof of your house whether you use it or not. And if you don't use it in the summer it probably cost you money to get rid of the heat it adds to your house.
And the cost of these things necessary for the system are high because they are not mass produced. Aluminum at one time was as expensive as gold until it was mass produced.
And this is something that would make these things mass produced and much cheaper.

[IDemo]

97. The oil comparison was to make the EROI point

True, solar photovoltaic doesn't need invented, and sunlight doesn't need transported. But that doesn't get solar off the EROI hook. It still takes a great deal of energy and material to construct PV panels, and these must be factored into the equation. Unfortunately, it can take many years to recover the initial cost of a home solar installation. To further add the costs of a powerful compressor and a storage tank puts home H2 well out of reach for the foreseeable future.

If you instead use the PV electrical output directly to charge a battery bank, and then send it through an inverter (to produce AC), you can power your house, or part of it. While you're out of the house and presumably not using much energy, you may even spin your power meter backwards and earn credit from your utility.

[zeemike]

98. With all due respects

Because I know you are an intelligent and thoughtful person that is all slow walk talk.
I am not a slow walk person. I am not willing to wait until we know more, I want to use what we do know now, now.This is , i think a critical time in our history, ether we come out of this shit smelling like a rose or not, and we must be willing to take some chances and start building the dam thing even if we don't know how it will eventually turn out. That was the attitude of those in the Space program that took man to the moon in less than ten years. And if we could pull it off now it could be just as beneficial to not only to out =r country but to the world as a whole.
If the billionaires of the US would think about it it is the only way for them to achieve the immortality that they seem to want.
Just one other thing. the cost of the system is a supply and demand thing, so if we wanted to make it practical all we would need to do was increase the supply right? So if i were a small manufacture of photo voltaic cells and an auto plant wanted me to supply millions of them I bet I could produce them pretty cheep and could bet investment capital to expand to a big factory...right?

[IDemo]

102. Don't presume to know me based on this thread

I'm as in favor as anyone of gaining solutions to our coming energy crunch. But before we declare 'Project H' and lurch full speed ahead, it only makes sense to at least try to answer the big questions before we become enmeshed in unworkable and expensive solutions. Such 'solutions' may well cost us increasingly large amounts of diminishing natural resources in a time they are most needed.

[zeemike]

103. I apologize for my presumptuousness

of course I can not know you from this conversation. But based on your skill at expressing your point I think I was right abut the intelligent part anyway.
And there is a place for those that want to be cautious. they keep the air head in me from flying off into space.

[LittleClarkie]

100. Funny you should mention

a postal dude who appreciates my Dem leanings mentioned to me as I was mailing a package that a family had just come in to mail a bunch of packages to a soldier. And then they got into their Hummer and left.

Oh yeah, they support the troops, I said, while making the international sign for something sailing over someone's head (zoom).

People really don't see the connection, do they. People aren't into sacrificing anymore either, are they. How about a metal drive to armor the real humvees, hmm? How about a bit of rationing. How about acting like you're in a damn war.

I swear the first time people are asked to sacrifice ANYTHING aside from a space on their bumper for a damn ribbon is when the rest of the support for this war will evaporate.

[zeemike]

104. I do agree

but i feel it will take some real pain to make them see.

[jmowreader]

101. Let's refine this dream into something currently practical

The original plan: generate your own Hydrogen using solar energy, then use the Hydrogen to power a fuel cell that will run a car.

I've been so tied up in minutiae like what kind of drive system should be in the car that I've overlooked a few things...like "is this practical?"

Well...the answer is no. It isn't. If you're an apartment dweller you don't have anywhere to put enough solar cells to generate that much hydrogen. If you're a rural dweller who lives on some land, you've got the room...but the land that will sit under the shadow of your solar cells is land that could be used to grow food. As currently envisioned, this car is practical for someone who lives very close to their work and who owns a single-family dwelling. And no one else. Worse, the car is really only practical to drive to work and to the store.

No one is going to buy a car that can only be driven to work and to shop.

What would a currently practical Freedom Car, or CPFC, look like? Let's pontificate.

The CPFC is a four-door hatchback. For most people, this is the most practical body configuration on the market.

The CPFC carries a battery bank and two ways to charge it. The first is a multifuel engine-driven generator; the other is a multifuel cell. A multifuel engine is a compression-ignition engine that runs on anything from diesel and gasoline to alcohol and kerosene. The army has had multifuel engines since World War II ended. They work. By using reduction gearing on the drive motor, you can get away with a very small motor--20 to 30 hp--which would only kick in when the fuel cell couldn't provide enough power. Because the fuel cell is putting out sufficient power for most driving, the engine will have to be set up to run on a schedule because not running an engine for long periods of time is bad for it. The multifuel cell is like any other fuel cell except that you can put any volatile fuel through it. Most people will run either alcohol or propane. Some people will buy the equipment to run it on hydrogen. Basically, people will run this car on alcohol.

The CPFC has three wheels. The big advantage of a three-wheeled car (besides the obvious "one less tire to go flat or wear out") is that with the back wheel in the middle under the back seat, you'd get more space in the cargo area. This wheel can be dealt with in one of two ways: as a drive wheel with a pancake motor on it, or as a caster to hold up the back of the car.

[zeemike]

105. Why can't we do both?

But I wonder how many people would by a 4wheeled car?
And tough it would only benefit people with a home with a lot that a very large percent of the population
And so what if the car only goes 120 miles on a charge. How often in your life do you drive your car more than 120 miles in a day? The average mileage is 15000 a year and that divided by 52 weeks is about 300 a week. Now at 20 mpg and $2.50 a gallon that is $37.50 a week just to go to work and the store. The average person would have to work 4 hours just for transportation to work. The minimum wage person almost a whole day.
And that is why I want it made available to those that need it, not to those that could afford it as a hi priced hybrid like we have now.

[jmowreader]

106. Your post confuses me

First you say "tough it would only benefit people with a home with a lot that a very large percent of the population."

Then you say you want it made available to those that need it.

The people who "need" this car (which I translate as "the working poor") are not homeowners. They live in the projects--apartments owned by a metropolitan housing authority. The metropolitan housing authority doesn't let you erect 1200sf carports.

Let's throw out a few "so what" situations. My parents live in St. Maries, Idaho. The hospital in St. Maries is about two steps up from a battalion aid station--and the description is valid; there are six doctors in St. Maries and one of them wasn't in the Army. (The one non-veteran did rural medicine in Alaska.) If you need anything really major done, you go to Spokane (67 miles from the cemetery at the city limits to either Sacred Heart or Deaconess hospitals in Spokane) or to Coeur d'Alene (72 miles from Ed's R&R to the hospital). If my mom needs to go to the hospital and my dad wants to visit her, they can't go in your freedom car--they'll run out of gas in a place you really don't want to run out of gas.

If I need to drive from Fayetteville to Greensboro for training I can't do it in this car.

If my sister who lives in Lewiston wants to visit mom, that's 110 miles one way. And in case you've never seen the Lewiston Hill, trust me when I tell you that you're NOT going to tow an electrolyzer up that hill with anything smaller than a one-ton pickup.

And I just might suddenly feel the need to drive from Fayetteville to Charlotte, okay?

Besides, didn't this thread start out with a car that's about five years on the other side of the state of the art? Let's see...you've got a massive fuel cell, four pancake motors, a very complex emulated-differential control system that's NOTHING like the one in a dump truck (those big-ass dump trucks don't run on banked roads, for one thing), either a photoelectrolyzer or a lot of conventional solar cells operating a standard electrolyzer, a compressor that will take the output of the electrolyzer up to 3000psi...to do your Freedom Car, you've got a ton of currently-insurmountable problems on your plate and you've got to tackle them all at once.

What makes the hybrids we can buy now so expensive? Novelty, for one thing. But consider this: the hybrid as it is currently constituted looks like a conventional car, drives like a conventional car, and quite often SOUNDS like a conventional car, and that's because a hybrid is all this high-tech shit tacked onto a conventional car. The most expensive parts of the car are the regen braking system and the continuously-variable two-input transmission. With wheel motors you don't need a transmission at all, which saves that money. You can also use them as the "generator" part of your regen brakes, which further saves you money. Use a small engine-driven generator to produce "makeup" electricity (to "make up" for the times your fuel cell won't put out enough power on its own) and you can use a fuel cell that will suffice most of the time instead of one that's big enough all the time...said fuel cell will be much less expensive, will draw less fuel, and will take up less space in the car. Use a cell that will use any fuel, not just hydrogen, and if your "20 miles fuel left" light comes on when you're 5 miles from a Wal-Mart but 30 miles from home, you can get a tank of grill gas that will get you back home.

'Course, we could always build a 900-pound four-passenger car powered by a 1-litre 2-cylinder aircooled turbodiesel that's compatible with waste vegetable oil and that gets 60 to 70mpg in town then sell that car for $4500 with income-variable financing. Make it a real simple car--no AC, no cruise control, stamped steel wheels, heat by blowing air through a jacket around your exhaust manifold (which used to be how all cars were heated), vinyl interior and you buy your own radio. The suspension is just big sausage-shaped hunks of polyurethane. The body is rotationally-molded glass-reinforced nylon over a stamped-steel cage. The transmission is a real basic three-speed automatic of the kind GM and Ford churn out by the brazillion. If, through good engineering, you could produce a quality car like this for $3500 and (after everyone got their cut) put the car on the showroom floor with a $4500 sticker on it, a LOT of people would buy this. We're currently looking at the threat of a Chinese-made $5000 car; a $4500 American-made car would find a lot of friends. The best part: you could do this right now if you wanted. Look at one year from concept to cars in showrooms. We know how to make this car. There are absolutely no technological demons to conquer.

And that, fine sir, will put more Americans on the road to freedom than would designing--or trying to design, more than likely--a car that's so futuristic we'd be out of Iraq before we got a running prototype.

I hate to sound negative about this, but consider: how many thousands of projects like this have been doomed to failure because of excess grandiosity? Too many to count.

[zeemike]

109. Thanks for asking these questions,

they are important.

My goal and one of the technical requirements is that the freedom car to get at lest 200 miles in a single run distance. (in other words not stop and go traffic of the cities)and you have forgotten that it has a storage battery that can be charged like any other storage battery. And it is there so that you do not need a huge fuel cell to power it when you want to spin your wheels or go from a stop on a hill. All of that would be in the technical requirements that the engineers receive when they go to designee it.
Efficiency would be achieved by simple designee. There is not a problem with not having a differential if the wheels are independently suspended and driven. A DC motor spinning under a load at 100 rpm has some of the load lifted (as the outer wheel travels farther and so faster). RPM goes up current goes down. So there is I know some miniscule drag or something that does not make it perfect and it need not stop us form doing what we need to do.

As to the poor in the city they could still use one even if they had to travel to the outskirts of town to the H fuel station, you know the one by the big electric wind mill?
But it would take some time to get it for all people that need it but start with the ones that need it and can use it the best and then the rest.
But long ago I live in the citie of Seattle and did not have a car. But I went to work every day and went to town on the electric buss that came by every 15 minutes about a block from where I lived. Isn’t it a shame we have to go back so far in history to find a workable mass transit system?
Another thing Traction. It has 4 wheel drive and sufficient power form the battery to clime any hill the average car could clime. You must understand that a DC motor can have tremendous torque. If you have a motor that runs on the level at 30 volts and you step on it (apply 120 volts to it by floor boarding it) the torque is there I assure you. But the nice thing about these wheel motors is that when you come back down the hill and slightly step on the brakes as you go down, it changes the motor to a generator and it puts some of that electricity back into the battery.

And I am not at all against the hybrid car no matter how hi tech they want to make it. I think the competition is a good thing. They can fill the market where people can afford the hi cost of ownership and still do the world a good and get us off of the oil thing.
But what would make the freedom car work is it’s simplicity someone said earlier it would be the new Volkswagen and there is some truth to that because what made the VW cheep to make and easy to own was it’s simplicity.
Except for the fuel cell the rest of the car could be simple. A frame and body 4 independently suspended wheel systems, the steering and controls (which would be old school and rugged) and a battery You could have a streamlined underside because nothing would be under there.

But the far futurist ideas I agree with. But I suspect the far future has a system for us that uses little energy, and if free to all, and will take you anywhere you want to go at high speeds and with no input from the passenger. But that is a whole other dream that I will leave to the younger dreamers.

[ContraBass Black]

107. Certainly, all these things are possible

But what makes them better?

[zeemike]

110. money for one

Cheaper to produce cheaper to own uses less resources, NO pollution from emissions, and it leads us into the future just like the model T led at the turn of the 20th.

[ContraBass Black]

111. The refinement of hydrogen uses a quantity of fossil fuel

Comparable to that of fossil fuel use to produce the same amount of energy in a car.

Good batteries are expensive too, as are generators for recapture. This car would be a significant initial investment for the buyer.

How would four motors be cheaper than one motor and a transaxle? Where would all the motors go?

[zeemike]

113. it uses no fossil fuel

if the electricity used to make the hydrogen is generated buy solar or wind.

The motors are built into the wheel hubs And electric motors are cheep and easy to build. A transaxial and transmission have a lot of moving parts that require a lot of machine work to make, You could by a dozen good motors for the price of a transaxial and transmission. And the only difference between a motor and generator is the way they are connected electrical and so it is a simple matter with a solenoid switch to change the motor from drive to generate. What the driver would see is that when he stepped on the break slightly the car would slow from the motors generating electricity. There is nothing new in this system it has been used for years.