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Daimler, Ford to partner on fuel cell company »

Posted by: TechnologyExpert 2 years, 1 month ago
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Daimler and Ford Motor are partnering on a privately held company to develop automotive fuel cell technology, both companies announced Thursday.

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I am Editor-in-Chief at Alice Hill's RealTechNews (http://www.realtechnews.com). I also have my own blog (Tech-Ex) at http://TechnologyExpert.Blogspot.com. Finally ...

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Comments: 6
  • Avg rating: (+0/-0 0)joeblowe
    joeblowe
    Nov. 8, 2007, 12:50 p.m.

    Fuel cells sound like fun, but I'm concerned that it will be difficult to get sufficient energy out of one to actually RUN a car without having an intermediate layer of batteries of some kind. Which I suppose is OK, but you still have to put SOMETHING in that fuel cell to generate electricity. Where are you going to get it? What will the range be. If you are in the middle of nowhere and the fuel cell is dry and the batteries are flat - now what? The tow truck is probably NOT going to bring you a few cubic liters of hydrogen. Still some hurdles to jump over, it seems. But at least this indicates a serious effort. OR - for those conspiracy fans - it's a further effort by the car companies to SQUELCH the effort by buying up the company and slowing/stopping the real research. You choose your favorite explanation.

    • Avg rating: (+0/-0 0)Grrr
      Grrr
      Nov. 8, 2007, 2:46 p.m.

      Drag is that the main easily usable source of hydrogen is water, which is in for severe shortages soon, as well. Not sure if you need to desalinate sea water before you can split the molecules cleanly enough to harvest the Hydrogen. We can harvest it off planet easily enough, I guess.

      But Hydrogen is definitely the way to go if we really want to keep our cars and our environment, too.

      Mainly, though, WE HAVE TO STOP THE DEFORESTATION OF THE WORLD. Those are the big active carbon sinks that are being released into the environment right now. It not only stops collecting carbon but releases what has been collected back out. Bio-fuel doesn't help that. Increases the problem.

      • Avg rating: (+0/-0 0)Grrr
        Grrr
        Nov. 8, 2007, 2:54 p.m.

        Another thing about Hydrogen is you could just burn it like gas if you wanted to. Any internal combustion engine can be converted to hydrogen and get similar horse power. You can carry water in the trunk and gas tank and split it with electric current, siphon off the hydrogen and put it straight into the carburetor. Yeah, the water's heavy, better use a V8. Exhaust is water/steam. Rusts the engine from the inside out if you don't coat the inside with stainless or something like that first. In case you were wondering. ;)

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