Self-Sustaining Vehicles

Why aren't we encouraging and supporting the technology which may already be there?

Researchers are hoping to avoid the need for a hydrogen infrastructure by producing hydrogen onboard from water. While fuel cell vehicles create electricity from hydrogen, this new twist electrolyzes water to produce hydrogen only as needed.

HyPower Fuel's H2 Reactor (H2R) can generate sufficient hydrogen to power a Volkswagen GTi, according to the company. The hydrogen would be burned in a conventional internal combustion engine, which gets around the safety challenge of storing hydrogen in a tank.

According to the company the H2R is "2 to 2.5 times more efficient" than competing methods of hydrogen electrolysis. The claim by one customer that "We no longer have any black smoke emissions coming from the smokestack on our engines.... " seems too good to believe.

Of course, it'll only get better as researchers continue to work on the problem. Cars that create hydrogen from water is a killer app. Especially if they can use ocean water.

Meanwhile, plug-in hybrids, which are often derided because they would strain electrical capacity, could easily be incorporated into the existing grid.

If all the cars and light trucks in the nation switched from oil to electrons, idle capacity in the existing electric power system could generate most of the electricity consumed by plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. A new study for the Department of Energy finds that "off-peak" electricity production and transmission capacity could fuel 84 percent of the country's 220 million vehicles if they were plug-in hybrid electrics.

Researchers at DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory also evaluated the impact of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs, on foreign oil imports, the environment, electric utilities and the consumer.

"This is the first review of what the impacts would be of very high market penetrations of PHEVs, said Eric Lightner, of DOE's Office of Electric Delivery and Energy Reliability. "It's important to have this baseline knowledge as consumers are looking for more efficient vehicles, automakers are evaluating the market for PHEVs and battery manufacturers are working to improve battery life and performance."

Current batteries for these cars can easily store the energy for driving the national average commute - about 33 miles round trip a day, so the study presumes that drivers would charge up overnight when demand for electricity is much lower.

The solution to the energy problem lies in diversification. We can't let ourselves be lulled into a situation again where we are relying on one natural resource - petroleum - for all of our transportation. We need plug-ins, fuel cell vehicles, self-sustaining hydrogen cars, all of them. The technology is almost there. The political will is sorely lacking. They need a good shove.