Is fuel-cell vehicles

[Topaz]

Are fuel -cell vehicle the future or are they here now. Many auto makers are testing them in certain countries with the public and if this does grow like wild fires, the oil companies could be in trouble. Of course, the cost of the auto and the price of they fuel also depends on the success. Thoughts? https://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars-may-finally-be-on-their-152011739.html

Edited May 18, 2015 by Topaz

[TimG]

Are fuel -cell vehicle the future or are they here now.

The trouble with fuel cells are the fuel since hydrogen has to be industrially produced and is expensive to store and transport. The one advantage that hydrogen has is it, like electricity, can be produced by a variety if processes which opens the fuel supply market. In practice the companies with existing large scale distribution systems will have an advantage so I would expert the major gas companies to adapt to any move to fuel cell vehicles. The losers would be governments in place like Alberta or Russia who make a tidy profit digging up hydrocarbons. Edited May 18, 2015 by TimG

[Bonam]

Fuel cell vehicles are less efficient and more complex than battery powered electric vehicles. They also require an entirely new set of piping infrastructure to be built to support them, and hydrogen is not an easy fuel to deal with. Battery powered electrics are already being mass produced and the cost of batteries will only continue to go down, and it's already been demonstrated that battery powered vehicles can have the range and performance that consumers expect from a normal car. The remaining issue is cost, and that's only a factor of 2 or so away from being reasonable, which should be achievable with larger economies of scale and continued development.

I'm gonna guess that fuel cell vehicles will never become mainstream; the emerging market of zero emission vehicles will be dominated by battery powered electrics.

[On Guard for Thee]

The trouble with fuel cells are the fuel since hydrogen has to be industrially produced and is expensive to store and transport. The one advantage that hydrogen has is it, like electricity, can be produced by a variety if processes which opens the fuel supply market. In practice the companies with existing large scale distribution systems will have an advantage so I would expert the major gas companies to adapt to any move to fuel cell vehicles. The losers would be governments in place like Alberta or Russia who make a tidy profit digging up hydrocarbons.

Ah I wouldnt worry too much about them. Even they will learn to get their heads out of the (tar) sand, or else become extinct like those dinosaurs that begat them.

[Je suis Omar]

The losers would be governments in place like Alberta or Russia who make a tidy profit digging up hydrocarbons.

You really have no sense of shame, TimG.

The DoD runs on oil. Despite its daily oil consumption has been declining from almost 400,000 barrels in 2004 to less than 350,000 barrels in 2012, the DoD is still the single largest oil consumer in the world. There are only 35 countries in the world consuming more oil than DoD.

http://www.dailyenergyreport.com/how-much-energy-does-the-u-s-military-consume-an-update/

Edited May 25, 2015 by Je suis Omar