Comments on: Vegas adds Ford hydrogen buses to fleet

Las Vegas adds two combustion engine buses that run on hydrogen fuel to its fleet running the downtown route.

[Speiler9]

pre-emptive strike

On behalf of the right-wing neo-cons who have not yet posted but
almost always can't help themselves, I'll save them the bother by
pointing out that any environmentally-friendlier solution to
anything whatsoever is going to be a fraud, a communist
conspiracy and probably funds some kind of liberal subterfuge
that is designed to tear down the economy of the western world.
There you go guys, you don't need to post your comments now!

[Hoser McMoose]

Still the worst greenwashing scam around

Hydrogen as a fuel for vehicles is STILL a terrible solution from both the economical AND environmental standpoint. The design of this bus is totally nonsensical!

Consider that your is only about 65% efficient. Compressing that hydrogen isn't bad, probably 95% efficient. Now add in your hydrogen internal combustion engine which is only about 25% efficient.

Total efficiency here? About 15%, or much worse then simply using diesel fuel (about 25-30% efficient). "But the energy is free!" some will say? Well then why now use it where it's NEEDED, the electrical grid! Why reduce your efficiency by 85% just to move a vehicle to displace a small amount of gasoline or diesel use when you can pump that energy into the electrical grid and displace a LOT more coal? Coal is a MUCH dirtier fuel than either gasoline or diesel and causes FAR more environmental problems than hydrogen does.

Here's a MUCH better solution:

1. Use the solar panels to inject electricity onto the electrical grid.

2. Use electrical buses to take some of that electricity back off the grid.

No point-source pollution problems and probably a lot cheaper then $500,000, even with the $200,000+ that the batteries would cost. Between charging the Li-Ion batteries and running the electrical motors you're seeing about 90% efficiency, 6 times better than the Hydrogen ones.

What's more, this setup becomes a natural for regenerative breaking (something that would be expensive and hard to do with the Hydrogen ICE buses). This would further reduce loses in the actual operation of the buses, probably by a good 30% or more (the stop-and-go nature of typical bus operation lends itself very well to regenerative breaking).

End result of all this is you could go about 8 times further with this setup for a given quantity of solar panels than what the Hydrogen ICE buses can achieve.

As I said, the whole hydrogen vehicle idea is a big scam. The only reason why hydrogen keeps coming up as a potential alternative is because it's one of those technologies that can be eternally "15 to 20 years from mass production". That's what it was 20 years ago, that's what it is today and that's what it will still be 20 years from now. As long as we've got a "solution" available for the future we seem to be content to ignore the problems today.

[Hoser McMoose]

Typo corrections...

Hmm, apparently I need to re-read my posts a bit more before submitting them!

"Consider that your is only about 65% efficient."

Should read: "Consider that your electrolysis of water to hydrogen and oxygen is only about 65% efficient."

And:

"Coal ... causes FAR more environmental problems than hydrogen does."

Should of course read "Coal ... causes FAR more environmental problems than gasoline or diesel do."

[chrisfrary]

Please get facts

Well I agree with some of what you say, those same are arguments for this. We can develope cleaner ways of producing energy by moving the emissions from millions of vehicles to several hundred plants which have stricter guidelines on how much carbon dioxide they release. More could be done to produce more solar, wind, tidal and nuclear and further reduce this. You also argue that its inefficient in a combustion engine, correct. This is why they are developing fuel cells to prolong the travel. You make no mention of fuel cells in your argument. I believe that hydrogen is getting closer every day.

You may not agree and that is fine, but I would like to see efficiency from building new refineries and pumps with transportation costs and all. Cost comparisons across the board. Given that gas is already a massed consumed product, hydrogen prices could be brought down too right?

Batteries are extremely expensive and are also extremely toxic to recycle. Please consider the benefits and the cons when arguing for a point you just call a scam. What solution do you suggest? It can't all be bio-diesel and surely you can't believe ethanol which is largely produce from corn is the answer.