I was meeting a friend for lunch today, and was cruisin down the way when I passed a nice building complex with multiple national flags out front. I glanced in while passing and saw a Nissan Exterra lifted like 4 feet!!!

So I stopped and went on in. Turns out this place is the California Fuel Cell Partnership HQ and they are working on Hyddrogen powered vehicles. As luck would have it, they give public, free tours every 3rd Friday of the month and I got there right before it started. SWEET!

They had a really nice presentation that talked about how the process works, and how they are currently working to commercialize Hydrogen power. They spoke about safety and the like.

Some specs:

* Currently the hydro vehicles get about 50 miles to 1kg of hydrogen (1kg == 1 gallon of gasoline) but they can only fit so much hydrogen on the vehicle and currently their best range is 186 miles.

* Because the hydrogen is currently made from mostly methane (or methanol), some companies are working on storing the methanol on the vehicle and having the conversion to hydrogen happen there. This would effectively increase range of each vehicle.

* By current processes, Hydrogen is stored at 5,000 PSI on the vehicle. Another idea they have to increase storage is to store the Hydrogen at 10,000 PSI.

* They've made HUGE progress. They've been here in Sac for four years and have already had to install new hydrogen pumps because they've made such advancements in how and how pressurized hydrogen is stored.

* All hydrogen vehicles use direct drive, meaning no transmissions, no CVT.

* This partnership does not use the explosion of hydrogen and oxygen to create an internal combustion engine (however BMW, who is not in this partnership is). Instead, they use the hydrogen to create electricity and store it on-board.

* Each of the fuel cell vehicles are powered by electric motors, meaning all of their torque is available at almost 0 RPM. I rode in a RHD Toyota Highlander and they had to de-tune it because they had a ton of problems with wheel spin.

* They're currently releasing these hydrogen vehicles to cities for use - some cities have buses running hydrogen power, others just cars in their fleets. Mercedes is getting ready to release a small fleet of their A-seriece cars (ultra small - like a geo metro) for end-user (public) testing. From there they will be ready for production.

* This should disgust you. To bring the cars to market and get them more attention in the US, the partnership is mostly putting the hydrogen power in to SUV platforms because that's what most of US drives However, the technology is very scalable so it's easily put in a car, they're just using SUVs to get the idea across that it can work.

* The cars are SO quiet and smooth. It was so nice not feeling the car shift gears.

All in all, very cool. I had a really good time and learned quite a bit. Everyone was very friendly. They were giving rides and had a Mercedes A-series (with carbon fibre seats), a RHD Toyota Highlander, a Nissan Exterra (with Recarro seats) and a Hyundai something or other SUV thing.

Overall, it was VERY cool.

California Fuel Cell Partnership (CAFCP) website

Photo Gallery

The FCV Exterra (viewable from street, which attracted me).

The Highlander I rode in.

There are tons more pics at the full gallery and you can get ultra hgh res pics of each (me thinks).

These pictures are all copyright the CAFCP

 

Yeah, that is cool.

I don't know if I like the idea of riding around with a 10,000 psi tank full of hydrogen in the trunk! "Remember the Hindenburg"?

Now we know what we need to do to become rich...we need to invent a way of smartly storing hydrogen (Is it liquid or gas) for fuel cell vehicles.

That project has been there for awhile. I always wanted to stop by there. You know that the oil companies have to be aiding in the slow progress! I bet they are paying off the engineers on the side...

Late,
Andy

 

can't say i care to much abotu suv's
oh btw, i didn't read any of the post

 

*****!

 

dont think you can turbocharge a hydrogen powered vehicle

OoHh No..

 

I asked them if you could. They just said "uh..well, it kinda is, sorta.."

then they probably all snickered behind my back

 

STUPID SCIENTISTS