If you see this vehicle around the NYC area that is me driving around in a fuel cell powered vehicle. Finally, after waiting for two years in the "Project Driveway program". I was the lucky recipient of a Chevy Fuel Cell Equinox vehicle. Not everyone in the program gets to drive one. It is like a lottery and I won it!! and then I have to give it back in a few months.
"Project Driveway" is the first large-scale market test of fuel cell vehicles with real drivers in the real world. Why? Because hydrogen fuel cells use zero gasoline and produce zero emissions other than water vapor. They're a sustainable technology for a better environment. And they will ultimately reduce our dependence on petroleum.
Equinox Fuel Cell is an electric vehicle powered by the GM fourth-generation fuel cell system, our most advanced fuel cell propulsion system to date. The electric motor traction system will provide the vehicle with instantaneous torque, smooth acceleration and quiet performance.
Although these vehicles aren't available to purchase, they're already receiving recognition from Green Car Journal. The Chevy Equinox Fuel Cell was given its 2008 Green Car Vision Award®,3 the first time the magazine has recognized a limited production vehicle for its forward-thinking technologies. The Equinox Fuel Cell won the award over several nominees, including the Honda FCX Clarity and Toyota Prius Plug-In.
For the past 28 years, the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has been conducting research on hydrogen fuel cells for use in transportation, industry and residential use. According to the LANL, "Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Research at Los Alamos has made significant technological advances in Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cells, Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFC), and related technologies such as the electrolyzer (a fuel cell in reverse, liberating hydrogen from electricity and pure water)."
Unlike many of the hybrid and "green" cars currently on the market, hydrogen fuel can offer the promise of zero emission technology, where the only byproduct from the cars is water vapor. Current fossil-fuel burning vehicles emit all sorts of pollutants such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, ozone and microscopic particulate matter. Hybrids and other green cars address these issues to a large extent but only hydrogen cars hold the promise of zero emission of pollutants. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that fossil-fuel automobiles emit 1 ½ billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year and going to hydrogen fuel based transportation would all but eliminate this."
Not only that, hydrogen cars will lessen the United States' dependence upon foreign oil. The so-called "hydrogen highway" will mean less dependence upon OPEC, the big U. S. oil companies, oil refinery malfunctions and breakdowns and less resistance from oil-selling nations like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia or from hostile nations who would rather sell elsewhere.
President Bush when he was in office allocated approximately $2 billion in hydrogen highway research funds. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was pushing to get 200 hydrogen filling stations built by 2010 stretching from Vancouver, British Columbia, all the way down to Baja, California (but has fallen short of this goal because of a poor economy and lack of political will).
Since Californians buy one-fifth of the nation's cars, the new hydrogen car technology could replace the current gasoline engine automobiles in what is called "disruptive technology" where something so innovative comes along it simply replaces the old technology very quickly.
Then again, a more likely scenario is that dual-fuel automotive systems will be developed that can run on either gasoline or hydrogen fuel as the hydrogen infrastructure is being developed. The conversion from gasoline-powered internal combustion engines to hydrogen powered combustion engines is agreed upon by most scientists and engineers to be a particularly easy transition and would buy time for hydrogen fuel cell cars to be fully adapted.
The new small scale alpha prototype, however, that is being designed to NextEnergy specifications will be able to output at both 350 bar (5,000 psi) and 700 bar (10,000 psi) satisfying the international protocols for the European Union and the United States.
Besides home refueling the new hydrogen generator, which will be able to accept both electricity from the grid (in off peak hours presumably) and the intermittent power of renewable energy such as wind or solar power, may also be headed for warehouses to be a part of the emerging hydrogen forklift and palette truck market.
But, according to Dr. Cooley, ITM Power’s main thrust going forward in refueling hydrogen cars is a two pronged approach. The first prong is the building of the ITM Power HFuel commercial refueling station that is getting ready for prime time now. And, the second approach is the development of a home hydrogen refueling station that meets international automaker standards.
This way, consumers will be able to refuel their hydrogen cars at home, take a road trip, refuel in town or another town as needed, then head back home where they will refuel overnight. Putting part of the national refueling infrastructure inside of people’s garages will cut down on the amount of large-scale commercial refueling stations that will need to be built in public area and will be consumer-friendly as well.
This is the type of win-win situation that is necessary in order to expedite the building of the hydrogen refueling infrastructure that is so badly needed within the next 5 years in order to keep up with the major automakers who say they will be rolling out commercial H2 vehicles in 2015.
From my personal experience I am slowly getting comfortable with the vehicle and prefer to drive it than my own Honda Civic. There are four fueling stations in the NYC area where I can go to and the fueling station in the Bronx seems to be the more reliable. Shell is the only oil company to start investing in the hydrogen pumps. When I fill up the tanks they take about 4Kg in total. Each Kg is about a gallon from all my recent research. I wanted to start "gestimating" the total cost of fuel but without and infrastructure in place is hard to do. My guess is that it will cost anywhere from $3-7 per Kg and filling up will take 5 or 6Kg but that is just a rough guess. I am so excited about the program and the potencial use of fuel cell in the future. I feel the US is always one step behind as Japan has the infrastructure in place and makes use of this energy and has the "Clarity" hydrogen vehicle on its roads.
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