BMW heads black to the future
Hot-looking hydrogen prototype shocker
Know an environmentally friendly superhero?
Replace "time machine" with "hydrogen fuel cell" and you've got this, one of the company's fuel cell research vehicles, a heavily modified i8.
Finished in exposed carbon fibre it looks appropriately mean and futuristic, with a heavily revised front end and modified bodywork to make it even more aerodynamically slippery. The big air intakes at the front are necessary to deal with cooling, and although the company is being coy about the exact technical layout it's reported that the fuel cell is mounted where the three-cylinder engine normally goes. This is fed by an on-board hydrogen tank and produces electricity that drives a rear mounted electric motor.
Better aero = better mpg
Of course, we're still a long way from being able to buy a hydrogen-fuelled road car we can top up at the local Asda, but there's certainly an appeal in the idea of a future including cars that don't require you to haul around several hundred kilos of batteries. Apparently this i8 has recently been taken out of use, with BMW's move to jointly develop fuel cell technology with Toyota moving things onto a new generation of prototypes.
Keep making them look like this, and we might stay interested.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7
Hydrogen is an almost perfect fuel apart from the storage aspect and that is what needs solving.
All the rest is easy, you can run a normal petrol car with minimum modifications on hydrogen.
I'm curious as to what the range on this vs the electric i8 is though.
All the rest is easy, you can run a normal petrol car with minimum modifications on hydrogen.
Hydrogen cars are the future. But the distribution and storage problems will need to be overcome, and I can't see that happening. The inferior alternative is battery storage of energy and charging off the mains grid; something which is already in place and proven, and much less hassle than H2. It's highly likely therefore that hydrogen cars won't ever become mainstream, which is a shame.
If the only objection to electric cars is 240 miles is too little (The Toyota Mirai costs $60,000), hydrogen fuel cells are good but an expensive alternative to an ampera / other plug in hybrid.
If you dislike electric cars for other reasons you will not like a hydrogen fuel cell car because they are the same thing.
The only people i can imagine making a decent business case for a hydrogen fueled internal combustion engine are cars that get driven short mileages because burning hydrogen in an engine will cost a minimum of twice what petrol does even when the infrastructure is mature so caterham. Also they will sound like old diesels unless the manufacturer does a good job of disguising the noise because hydrogen burns rapidly making a sharper tone than petrol / diesils.
Still i am happy that someone is investing because the fuel cells will eventually need to replace the engines in the amperas.
Hydrogen cars are the future. But the distribution and storage problems will need to be overcome, and I can't see that happening. The inferior alternative is battery storage of energy and charging off the mains grid; something which is already in place and proven, and much less hassle than H2. It's highly likely therefore that hydrogen cars won't ever become mainstream, which is a shame.
Distribution isn't tricky if the storage issue is solved. We manage distribution of petrol perfectly fine after all and I see no reason why (if storage was solved) we wouldn't have hydrogen tankers instead of petrol tankers.
IIRC Best solutions so far seem to be nano-sponges but I have no idea how good they are for storage or how close that is to reality let alone production.
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