John Bailo: "... does it take 5 minutes to recharge?" Living in regional Australia, electric vehicles puzzle me. Given their limitations, are they worth buying? Wouldn't it be easier to take a bus or taxi or - gasp - walk?

We are a two car family. One car never left town and it was that petrol car that was replaced with a battery car. The range is ample for our normal urban transport: commuting, shopping, picking up kids from various places, going out in the evening etc.
Yes to energy from the sun. That is the whole point as far as I am concerned: I purchase sufficient GreenPower (really retirement of Renewable Energy Certificates) to run the car and house. This is a voluntary action which means additional renewable energy goes into the grid over and above the amount required by the Renewable Energy Target.
I have never needed to recharge in 5 minutes. Everyone asks how long a recharge takes but in practice it is rarely ever relevant for my usage pattern. On the rare occasion that I have done a long trip and the battery is low it is even more rare that I would immediately need to do another long trip with the battery full. Instead the relevant observation is that I get a useful amount of charge into the battery in an hour or so. The battery gauge very accurately counts amp-hours into the battery and out so the state of charge is always well known.

I was being generous, Peter. most folks up here aren't even ware that some of their $ go out the pipe, so 3/4 might cause seizures.
;]
Another way to look at the watse is that 1 gallon of gasoline requires ~170,000lbs of vegetable matter to be covered nad processed underground for ~700,000 years before we can drill for it.

It's all very ridiculous, and not news at all.

also, most people do not travel 720 miles (btw i thought we use KM's in Australia?) a day.

No Alex, nuclear is not part of the solution, it's just a different set of problems.

For transport; why not take sunlight, add nutrients, carbon dioxide and biology, then let nature take its course? The result is hydrocarbons. Boring, I know, and no profit for the nuclear industry, but effective and potentially carbon-negative.

Turning electricity into fuel for transport is loopy.

David, if you want a converstion, then read.

As I said, local solar PV/hot-water (DG) is an essential part of our future, as opposed to land/resource-wasting 'farms'. This is now a focus in Calif., for example.

Producing your "hydrocarbons" to burn means wasting most of their embedded energy, as we do now for vehicles. So, that's a non-starter. Perhaps you miss thermodynamic realities?

The only need for combustion fuels is for those things like aircraft, that have no compact, light substitutes.

With DG, EVs, efficient storage, and nuclear, we need nothing else for thousands of years. If someone wants Hydrogen, or liquid fuels, the heat of advanced nuclear provide as much as wanted. And, in any case, nuclear has remained the safest form of mass power generation for decades...

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/
http://tinyurl.com/42wvr9l

True environmentalists understand all the above.

Poppycock.

Northern Europe has already built a hydrogen highway and is taking delivery of production model KIA FCVs in 2013.

What people don't understand is the US already produces enough Hydrogen to power 110 million vehicles. This hydrogen is used to boost octane in gasoline.

Get it? We are already running our cars on the Hydrogen bonds from boosted gasoline which by itself cannot run a modern car!!!

So the next step is ditch the substrate and use the H2 directly. In a fuel cell.

Ian, I'm so glad you're here to point out to us that 'there is zero verifiable proof of a relationship beytween the gas and global temperature or climate' - otherwise we'd be indanger of being taken in by obviously amateur bodies like the Royal Society, The National Academy of Science, CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology, etc.

It's also great that you can remind us that the vast paleoclimatic record is actually nothing but a computer model - I'd been suffering under the delusion that computers were invented in the twentieth century, but obviously protean amoebas invented them somewhere back in the primordial slime and all data from the past must be based on readouts from those mighty ur-computers.

Ian L. McQueen: "... there is zero verifiable proof ...". It comes down to credibility.

I've looked at climate science and come to the conclusion that I have no hope of living long enough to come to grips with it. I'm left, therefore, to decide who to believe.

On one hand, there's every reputable body of scientists and the vast majority of scientists who are best qualified in climate science. On the other hand, there's a Canadian retiree.

Last I read (yesterday) the Hydrogen House in New Jersey has been alive and well, producing its own energy and enough excess hydrogen to power the owners car. It has been around since 2007 and has been profiled in Scientific American.

http://www.energydigital.com/green_technology/the-hydrogen-house-weathers-the-storm

Just FYI, discussion with a expert in Chinese energy and pollution costs described yesterday how current air pollution in China creates healthcare costs of >4% of Chinese GDP, and kills ~700,000 Chinese people yearly.

That's all San Franciscans wiped out each year. Ok, so that frees up some prime Marina housing, but still...

The absurdity of arguments like Ian's will not prevent folks like him from being first in line for handouts, when their ignorance eventually bears distasteful fruit.

You're late to the party, as usual, Ian -- the "hydrogen highway" went out here even before Schwarzenegger got in with their maid.
;]

You are right, Tim. Calling something a "cell" doesn't mean it's efficient. Fuel cells engage chemical reactions to generate heat to generate electrictiy.

Charge/recharge of standard batteries can be over 90% efficient, just as electric motors/generators are.

Combustion for power/propulsion makes no sense, except for aircraft/rockets, etc.

The 'famous' Bloom Box" here in Calif. is a fuel cell system that burns natural gas to amek electricity at maybe 50% efficient. A combined-cycle fossil or nuclear plant beats that easiy. Advanced nuclear's higher temps beat the best combustion plants, whether combined or Brayton cycle.

Any system running over 700C can break H2O & CO2 apart to make ammonia or any hydrocarbon we wish. That's what Gen-IV reactors are capable of.

.

Oops, forgot -- p132 of the 1st of these shows comparisons for 'renewables', nuclear , etc. And both explain why any system running at 700C or better can make whatever we want, with N, H, O & C.

http://tinyurl.com/cxplxx3
http://atomicinsights.com/2012/12/power-cheaper-than-coal-thorium-and-uranium-make-it-possible.html

@John Bailo

"The car body and drive train and motor are exactly the same."

I don't know what remark of mine this is in reference to,

"The inefficiency of the battery is that storage is proportionate to its heavy weight."

Energy storage being proportionate to weight is a common feature of all fuels.

Why does the head of an institute have an aol address?

This ignores what I tried to convey from real science above -- thermodynamics of combustion of anything is very inefficient.

Piping combustible gas around the world is very energy intensive & dangerous -- remember our 8 San Bruno folks burned to death by our utility PG&E a couple of years ago? Remember the explosions in refineries in Calif. & Texas this year? Ever investigated pipeline deaths around the world each year.?

Yes, solar energy is abundant and very important, By itself it isn't sufficient, but it works well with EVs & storage as part of a long-term solution.

The other 'renewable' with many thousands of years of availability is nuclear. Geothermal is nuclear -- remember where its heat comes from? We have plentiful supplies of fissionable materials on Earth and if fusion ever works, we have plentiful resources there as well.

The ultimate human energy use limit is not dictated by sources we can find but by the waste heat dissipation we produce, relative to the climate's energy balance and solar input.

Wise choices can only be made when all these parameters are understood.

Zvyozdochka, not sure if you've read the article properly mate.

If you have any hydrogen<-->methanol fuel questions, let everyone else know!

Cheers,
Paul

@ Paul Moonie

Is you comment necessary?

The author appears to me to be suggesting Australia should spend money on the hydrogen-economy. I don't think there's much more to learn about creating or using it. There is a major lesson yet to be admitted however; that it's difficult and expensive, and we would essentially replace almost all of our liquid fuel transport infrastructure.

How will we fly our aircraft on hydrogen gas energy storage? We can't.

My comment is that it would be unecessary if we aimed for (renewable powered) synthesis of liquid hydrocarbon fuels instead however .... Like this;

http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas

The costs of methanol production and the land and water uses limit the amount of methanol for transportation. We can use the additional help from hydrogen. Hydrogen used in fuel cells for EV cars can be emission free both in gas production and vehicle operation. For ships, sourcing hydrogen from water is the ultimate efficient fuel. We can use all transportation options for replacing petroleum. Hydrogen produced by electrolysis using off peak production from wind and solar power is also a good way to provide power storage in the form of a readily dispatched fuel, which can be used in backup generators for low wind and solar production times, or sold as transportation fuel. http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/11/tmc-20111115.html#more