Toyota develops new fuel cell with improved range

http://www.canadiandriver.com/thenews/2008/06/08/toyota-develops-new-fuel-cell-with-improved-range.htm

Toyota has developed a new fuel cell hybrid vehicle in Japan that travels more than double the distance of its predecessor model, increasing the maximum cruising range from 205 miles (329 km) to 515 miles (828 km). The new Toyota FCHV-adv (fuel cell hybrid vehicle advanced) improves the cruising range with its newly-designed, high-performance Toyota FC Stack.

Fuel efficiency was improved by 25 per cent through improving fuel cell unit performance, enhancing the regenerative braking system and reducing energy consumed by the auxiliary system. The new Toyota-developed high-pressure hydrogen tanks also make it possible to travel approximately 828 km on a single fuelling, which more than doubles that of the previous Toyota FCHV.

The new system also deals with the low-temperature start issues typically associated with fuel cell vehicles; the FCHV-adv can start and operate at temperatures as low as minus 30 C.

<not much more>

info!

Yet another hydrogen HYPErcar!

Let's start paving the road out of Mumbai! Out of the way homeless people, a FREEWAY's coming!

Will it be in showrooms by 2005, just like Amory Lovins hydrogen HYPErcar?

Does governor Hydrogen Hummer have one?

The fundie car cults are amazing if only for their blindness.

Heckuva job, fundies. Heckuva job.

This may come as a surprise to the thermodynamically illiterate classes, but even a car that gets a brazillion miles per gallon will go zero miles on zero gasoline.

You couldn't care less about what your actions do to other people.

You're obviously using a computer that took megatons of petroleum and toxic chemicals to produce, not to mention the gigajoules of energy it takes to transmit your witty missives around the planet.

Perhaps living in a computer-free cave or igloo would suit you better.

is that I know that my lifestyle is not sustainable. I am not arguing that we can save cars, say, by building a bunch of whooping crane blenders in the sky in Oklahoma.

The fundies, on the other hand, can't imagine life without their cars. They believe in distributed energy, which is basically libertarian "fuck you if you inconvenience" me theology.

I am hardly here arguing that it was possible to prevent the Banqiao disaster by placing lots of bandaids on the dam.

The car cult is dying a well deserved death. All the fundie posts in the world about fuel cells will not sustain the 250 million cars that operate in the United States and definitely won't replace them.

You ain't seen nothing yet.

By the way, if you have a computer - and I'm guessing that your post came here from devine transcription - the best way to minimize it's disasterous environmental impact is to keep it for as long as possible. Electronic waste, which as luck would have it is exactly the same waste profile as PV solar electricity, is a huge problem. I am proud of the fact that my computer is the same one that I was using when I was confronting fundies who were announcing in 2002 that solar energy was just around the corner from saving us.

More than 100 billion tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste dumping later, I still think they're full of shit, and regrettably no matter how much shit they toss, they still can't fill a digester able to make the equivalent of a twenty-five minute ride in a car.

And LOL about the PV part. Its amazing how many fundies like to ignore the waste part.




You can use a computer from 1995 to post on DU if you configured it right. Many people buy computers every year because they can't stop going to infected P0rn sites and infected games. Meaning a LARGE amount of E-Waste of computers that are not refurbished.

:D

The reason that solar has been, is, and always will be a trivial form of energy is that it takes too much mass to manufacture it.

Do you have any idea about the thermodynamics of reducing silicon?

No?

Have you ever considered why, with less than a billion people on the planet, humanity abandoned solar energy after using it for several millenia?

No?

Why am I not surprised?

It takes too much mass to manufacture solar energy? That could mean that the sun itself is a poor means of producing energy, or you could be saying the energy (E=MC^2) in the material to manufacture the system to collect solar is too great, or you could be saying the energy used to manufacture the system to collect the solar is too great, or perhaps it is something else that only you think you know.

Energy density by mass is a measure of energy storage potential of various storage mediums. It is very important, but it is only one factor among many that need to be considered. And in the case of comparing solar to biomass and farming it tells us little.

Considering the longevity of the system, any of the solar energy collection systems are tremendously more efficient than farming. Photosynthesis is only about 6% efficient at converting and storing solar and the result is either crops that can only be harvested yearly or woody biomass that must converted to heat. solar photovoltaics convert around 15-20% of the energy that strikes them and delivers it in the most versatile form of energy - electricity.

I think the comparison you're actually trying to dance around is one based on energy returned for energy invested.

Nuclear is what, about 5:1 and declining as fuels become scarcer?

Ethanol is about 1.2:1 or maybe 1.6:1?

Solar is what, about 20:1 or 30:1 and climbing?

Wind is what, around 50:1 and climbing?


Nuclear is a clear indicator of what is wrong with the present system.
Ethanol is a clear indicator of why we looked for something better.
Wind and solar are good indicators of why we are looking to renewables. Along with wave/current/tidal and geothermal, they have all the potential we need to continue our wasteful and decadent ways of living above the level of bare subsistence.

Like I've said before, you couldn't make a coherent argument if your life depended on it. Keep trying though.
If you think less about being hateful and more about the content of your message and it might help.

We collect it.

In full sun, you can safely assume about 100 watts of solar energy per square foot. If you assume 12 hours of sun per day, this equates to 438,000 watt-hours per square foot per year. Based on 27,878,400 square feet per square mile, sunlight bestows 12.2 trillion watt-hours per square mile per year. Put another way, the solar energy hitting the earth exceeds the total energy consumed by humanity by a factor of over 20,000 times. There's plenty, we just need to collect it efficiently.

You want more numbers?

Silicon is also very abundant, just go to the beach to find some. But collection of solar energy is not restricted to silicon only. There are many ways of collecting it.

any reasonable person knows it's going to take a mix of many renewables to solve this problem.

there has to be a reason for all these outburst.:shrug:

of a really bad liver.

its all so sad

I can't say I blame him for his outbursts; there are plenty of days I feel like screaming when I read or see what's happening to this planet despite all the rosy scenarios that have been fed to us for the past few decades. But that also doesn't excuse him from his frequent insulting and inflammatory rhetoric. Indeed, his increasingly belligerent behavior is counter-productive to any message he may be trying to get across.

:rofl:

It doesn't matter at all when we talk about our hydrogen HYPErcars. No number is too big for our "solar will save our cars" crowd.

:rofl:

As we've discussed in previous threads this will net out very nicely in cutting greenhouse gases and hydrocarbon consumption--even when the cars are charged with dirty, coal-based power.