% years ago, they were the way of the future..and no one looked at electric and hybrid as anything but a stopgap. Now you never hear about fuel cells..and I am guessing that development has pretty much stopped. Not saying it really was something feasible in the near future..but still...there was a lot of money invested in it.

 

i never understoof hwo they worked

just seemed to be steam engine liek derivative that weighed more than what it should.

 

Isn't that Honda's gig? and if I had to guess, the big hang up is probably still producing hydrogen in an efficient manner and infrastructure issues for that fuel?

 

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-e.../fuel-cell.htm

 

They're basically an electric car. Instead of using the grid to generate electricity they use a hydrogen fuel cell to basically recharge the on-board batteries. The reason for slow deployment is the lack of a distribution network for the hydrogen. They are currently more popular in Scandinavia. Personally I think their use and development would increase if a distribution network were to be developed. I concur, they are definitely a better long-term solution to the hybrid.

 

GM still has a 400 person huge R&D facility in Honeoye Falls NY that does nothing but work on fuel cells and batteries. Batteries weren't added until 2009, before that it was just fuel cells.

-Geoff

 

I still like the idea of hydrogen, if the electric grid could be built up then home electrolysis machines would make it pretty easy.

 

It's not just the hydrogren infrastructure, although that's certainly an issue. The cost of fuel cells is still way up in the stratosphere (I think it was costing Honda around $250k to produce each of their FCV vehicles a couple of years ago. I think the mistake most people made was to assume that costs would keep coming down through R&D and economies of scale, but it doesn't always work that way. Sure they brought costs down a lot in the beginning, but after they get all the low-hanging fruit, the law of diminishing returns kicks in. Eventually you get to a floor where all the costs are wrung out and you can't get any lower ... I suspect that for fuel cell vehicles, that's going to be considerably higher than for conventional cars for the foreseeable future.

 

Expect a fuel cell drivetrain, even a truly mass-produced and amortized one, to at least double the cost of typical passenger car. It is somewhat precious-metal-intensive powerplant.

Then figure the cost of hydrogen to equate to about 20 dollars per gallon.

Short of an alternative energy manhattan project, I don't see them being particularly commonplace in our lifetimes.

 

http://www.autoblog.com/2006/09/18/p...el-cell-fleet/

GM has more miles driven on Fuel Cell powertrains than any manufacturer in the world. I can't find any current info, but the project driveway program was extended and I think the number of cars were doubled. Over 1,000,000 miles have been driven.

 

Fuel cell or battery, right now they are both just energy storage for electric cars.

 

Fuel Cells were not technology for the next 5 years, they were for the next 20. It will be a while before we see them in mass produced cars.

 

The real problems with fuel cells are:
1. Generating\seperating hydrogen efficiently and cheaply.
2. Storing extremely high pressure hydrogen onboard.

 

are they safe?

like, anything under high pressure sounds bad to me.

 

I was blown away when I saw at GM's Heritage Center a hydrogen van from 1966 and a Corvair from the same era with batteries in front and back.

They do have an ev1 in the collection, it was buried in the back row that day. I got a kick out of the fiero style interior in the ev1 and wished my fiero had that alum chassis.