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GM : Chevy Volt, Chevy Spark, upcoming Bolt Fiat-Chrysler: upcoming Town and Country PHEV Ford: C-Max, Fusion PHEVs. What am I missing here?

• threeseed 11y ago
  That there (a) is clearly a demand for a clean car but (b) the hydrogen infrastructure is non existent. Hence the availability of electric cars. GM/Ford also have hydrogen cars in testing e.g. Chevrolet Equinox. And Fiat has had a number of hydrogen cars they previous developed.
  • mtgx 11y ago
    I think there's a demand for EV cars, not just "clean cars". Hydrogen cars won't give you maximum torque from the moment you press the pedal, complete silence, or the improved efficiency in using modern "smart" technologies in an EV compared to using them in a hydrogen car (the electronics can use the electricity directly from the battery, while with gas and hydrogen cars it has to be converted). Another point that's very important, is that every single hydrogen car I've seen so far looks either dumb or ridiculous. It's been true for most EVs, too, so far, which makes me wonder if they do it on purpose to sell few models and then say "there's no demand for clean cars" or something. Fortunately Tesla came along and showed everyone else you can actually sell a "normal" looking EV car.
    • threeseed 11y ago
      Who cares about maximum torque ? Is the best selling car in the world a sports car ? No. It's a Camry. We are talking about the future technology of the masses here. And yes car companies can make normal looking hydrogen cars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex09fldnr1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex09fldnr1E
      • toomuchtodo 11y ago
        There is no hydrogen fueling infrastructure, and there never will be. Electric outlets are everywhere, and where there aren't, there are Superchargers.
      • nanofortnight 11y ago
        If you want a clean car a hydrogen car is a terrible clean car. Look at the maximum theoretical efficency of a hydrogen car. It is far lower than even current efficiency of electric cars. Pushing hydrogen cars is insane if you want to be clean.
        • Gibbon1 11y ago
          After years of hearing people talk about hydrogen powered cars I almost want to believe they are ruse to get people distracted from working solutions. IE, hydrogen power cars sound like a good idea, the exhaust is just water! And for entities deeply invested in the current infrastructure the idea is great because it'll never happen.
          • WorldMaker 11y ago
            I once had a silly argument with a hydrogen fanatic (who insisted he built a working hydrogen fuel cell in his garage in the 70s, but we'll get to that) which was back and forth like this: Hydrogen Fan: But the exhaust is only water! Me: All electric cars have no exhaust! Hydrogen Fan: Well they do at the coal plants! Me: So we are going to count electric production? What about Hydrogen production? Today it uses fossil fuels and outputs carbon and methane worse than coal plants. Hydrogen Fan: But the real exhaust is only water! And you could eventually get the hydrogen back out of the water! Me: That's not how Chemistry works. Where does the energy come from to split the water molecules? That's about when I gave up on the conversation as it derailed into the aforementioned beliefs that the guy built a Hydrogen Fuel cell that somehow fueled on water, spit out water as exhaust, and was capable of driving a car in the 70s but then his garage experiments were stopped by a government conspiracy. (I presumed drugs were heavily involved in the actual reality of this story, this was a middle aged guy working in a hardware store.) This entire conversation felt like par for the course when dealing with people that think hydrogen powered cars are anything but a ruse. You even hear variations on it from the Big 3 car companies. ("Well we almost had hydrogen working in the 70s but the government stopped us." Yup, it was clearly the government and not, say, the basic laws of chemistry and physics.)
• Aoyagi 11y ago
  Cadillac ELR? :)