Open-Source Hydrogen Car Takes to the Road
A new hydrogen-powered car, whose designs will be “open source” and posted for free use on the web, was unveiled today in London. The company behind the Riversimple urban car claim the new model proves hydrogen automotive technology is ready for roll-out now rather than in 10 years’ time.
The open-source approach means entrepreneurs around the world could download the designs and manufacture the two-seater prototype locally for free.
The car, which drove in to the launch event, is capable of a 50mph top speed, 0-30mph acceleration in 5.5 seconds, and has a 240 mile range. The car’s backers say it has greenhouse gas emissions of 30g/km CO2, less than a third of the latest hybrid petrol cars such as the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight.
The lightweight Smart car-size vehicle uses hydrogen in a modest 6kW fuel cell, and – in the case of this prototype – uses hydrogen converted from natural gas. Hydrogen can also be created from water using electrolysis and potentially even from bio-fuels.
- » See also: Copenhagen Opens First Hydrogen Fueling Station, Unveils Fleet of Fuel Cell Cars
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The open-source decision was made to speed the car’s commercialization, with the company hoping entrepreneurs globally will adapt it to local conditions. Hugo Spowers, a motorsport engineer and the founder of Riversimple, said: “We want competitors, even if they’re in the UK. We believe that open source is commercially the best thing for us to do, as it will help grow the market for hydrogen technology, from parts to repairs and the refueling infrastructure.”
Sebastian Piëch, the financial backer for Riversimple, added: “Now that we have the basic vehicle in place with practical technology, the challenge is to begin the development of a fueling infrastructure to accompany it.”
The car, which cost nearly £500,000 to develop in partnership with Oxford University and Cranfield University, is expected to cost £200 a month to lease when it is launched as a production vehicle. The date for UK availability is yet to be announced, but Riversimple is in talks with UK cities including Oxford and Worcester for pilots.
Hydrogen cars have so far enjoyed little real-world success, due in part to a lack of charging infrastructure, cost and – more recently – a political swing towards electric cars.
Gordon Brown has publicly backed electric cars as a way to reduce UK carbon emissions, and in April the government announced plans to offer £5,000 grants towards anyone buying an electric car in 2011.
In the US, the Obama administration recently cut research budgets for hydrogen vehicles. Steven Chu, the US energy secretary, last month said: “We asked ourselves: ‘Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will convert to a hydrogen car economy?’ The answer, we felt, was ‘no’.”
Spowers disputed the notion that widespread hydrogen technology was a long way off. “I agree the passion is swinging away from hydrogen, but the reason is people are skeptical of the near-term possibilities of hydrogen vehicles – people are still clear that hydrogen is the end-game.”
The Riversimple urban car, he said, proved the technology was available now.
Designs for the Riversimple urban car, capable of a 50mph top speed and a 240 mile range, will be freely available online in a bid to help grow the hydrogen market.
Source: The Guardian
hm, what about the bicycle? vegetable matter powered.
Wait… If it’s using H2 to run a fuel cell, why does it have any CO2 emissions at all?
David Edmeades:
The lightweight Smart car-size vehicle uses hydrogen … converted from natural gas.
The conversion from natural gas releases carbon dioxide.
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoax
That would be the thing that I didn’t read. Thanks.
I am saddened to learn in this article that the Obama admin has cut fuel cell research funding, resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy that the hydrogen cell car is 15 or 20 years out, with the resulting diversion to low tech, “short term” (20 years) of battery / electric cars. I commend this manufacturer for making the technology publicly available. We should all write to Obama administration declaring that the hydrogen distribution will happen when they require it, similar to requiring X % of green power generation, and X mpg fleet standards.
We should all write to Obama right now and ask him to scrap the idea of the hydrogen funding today.
Burning one of a number of fossile fuels to make another form of energy is ludicrous, its far too wastefull.
The main problem lies in the internal comustion engine which burn whatever fuel is made because 80 percent of any energy that is burned in it is wasted.
If you use 3 times as much energy to get another, in this case its hydrogen and then burn it in the I C E
then you have a further 80 % loss, its a no brainer from the very start, don’t do it.
O SOLE MEO
This is where we will eventually get our erergy, we just don’t know how to do it, or should I say we do know how to do it, but not at large enough ammounts to supply our greedy wastefull ways.
I think every penny from fuel profits should be chanelled into finding our energy needs, since the advent of oil our governments have spent nothing but a token amount into finding this technology, they have done ziltch, and time is running out fast every day we expand our population and build yet another truck, car and plane.
We have all the power sources our forfathers had, wind, water and sun, do some reserch into the river that runs past your door or town and see how much energy is flowing away.
A local river here used to have 15 mills in only a mile and a half stretch of its waterway, if every river was plumbed into the grid, we would have thousands of smaller turbines etc working for us, if a few went down no one would notice, localcouncils waste more money every year they could easily build at least one power plant, take a large power station out for a day and there would be utter chaos.
We know where we could help our cause, yet we do nothing, its like banging your head against a wall and expecting it not to hurt.
When Dr. Chu took charge of the DOE, he was saddled with a department that was about a decade behind the rest of the world. The DOE was making plans based on inadequate measurements; for example wind power potential was measured at heights and locations that had little bearing on the actual level of energy obtainable with modern technology. It seemed to be totally ignorant of the large 6-MW gearless wind turbines being manufactured in Germany by Enercon. And ignorant of the established hydrogen economy developed by the Danish wind-power pioneer, Poul la Cour in the late 1800s. He made practical use of hydrogen using an electrolyzer powered by wind turbines, and established the world’s first school to educate wind-electricians. Far more electrical power (and hydrogen) is available to our nation than the DOE estimated. The electrical power can be transmitted farther and with less loss than expected by the DOE by using high-voltage DC transmission to the grid.
The DOE has carried out tests of at least a couple of commercial electrolyzers recently, but that seems to be the limit of progress toward a viable hydrogen economy. Hydrogen, as Poul la Cour realized long ago, is an excellent storage and transmission material. It can be used immediately in existing hydrogen enriched natural gas truck engines, or compressed or made into hydrides for storage and shipping. It can be added to our present natural gas pipelines in increasing amounts as more wind farms are developed.
Our big problem is how to strongly stimulate the Obama administration to the point where they will take action now to implement our own hydrogen economy rather than wait for other countries to get so far ahead of us that we never catch up.