F3 Electric Concept Vehicle

[Myersd802003]

Could you imagine the cost of fixing an issue. It's bad enough for ROTAX issues.

[Rob Rodriguez]

Good for PR but not realistic for the "real" world I don't think. Electric vehicles in general are a waste of time in my opinion. They just seem to be a band aid (an expensive one) for whatever is going to be the future of transportation. Personally I'd rather see all those $ being spent on a hydrogen infrastructure. The same vehicle you drive today could run on hydrogen if the infrastructure were there to provide it. The technology has been around for a long time.

[jcthorne]

Good for PR but not realistic for the "real" world I don't think. Electric vehicles in general are a waste of time in my opinion. They just seem to be a band aid (an expensive one) for whatever is going to be the future of transportation. Personally I'd rather see all those $ being spent on a hydrogen infrastructure. The same vehicle you drive today could run on hydrogen if the infrastructure were there to provide it. The technology has been around for a long time.

And where do you think the hydrogen would come from? Hydrogen is NOT a fuel source. Its an energy storage media. IE you take energy FROM some other source and use it to produce hydrogen. The hydrogen is then used to propel a vehicle.

Besides, the only reason hydrogen is of any practical use is that fuel cells that run on liquid fuels directly have not been practical.

The VAST majority of hydrogen used in powering vehicles and in process industries comes from reacting natural gas at very high temperatures with steam. A steam methane reformer. Its a less than 50% efficient use of the energy in the natural gas.

[Rob Rodriguez]

" Hydrogen is NOT a fuel source. Its an energy storage media" Isn't this true with gasoline, coal, natural gas, etc as well? The energy is stored in these things. You have to expend energy to release their energy.

[jcthorne]

" Hydrogen is NOT a fuel source. Its an energy storage media" Isn't this true with gasoline, coal, natural gas, etc as well? The energy is stored in these things. You have to expend energy to release their energy.

No these are all energy sources. The oil comes out of the ground with the energy already in it. Gasoline is just changing its form or refining it. The energy was already there. There are no hydrogen wells. Hydrogen is made by expending energy to create it. Think of at as charging a battery. When you use hydrogen, you are consuming natural gas. More than twice the amount you would have consumed had you just run the vehicle on natural gas to begin with.

[bruiser]

" Hydrogen is NOT a fuel source. Its an energy storage media" Isn't this true with gasoline, coal, natural gas, etc as well? The energy is stored in these things. You have to expend energy to release their energy.

yes. These are all "potential energy" sources. With the sources you listed, they all have to be "burned" to produce energy. A battery stores potential energy. Nuclear systems require "fission" to produce heat to create steam to run turbines.