interesting

the auto efficiency calc also shows why folks are so excited re fuel cells.  Much more efficient energy conversion in the engine (look at all that engine loss). Plus the idling loss goes away.  Add in regenerative brakes and looking a whole lot better.  But at $1.50 for a gallon of gas nobody much cares to change the status quo.  High oil prices will be a good thing ultimately.

In their slides they show a concept car that gets ~110 mpg equivalent.  Big deal - VW built a turbodiesel concept car that gets 250mpg.  Concept cars mean nothing because they aren't designed to be mass produced or affordable.  VW has production cars in Europe that get 70mpg - also turbodiesel.  Pluggable hyrbrids have even greater potential.

At what point do we say that the possible benefits of fuel cell cars aren't sufficient to justify billions spent on a hydrogen infrastructure?

My greatest concern about Hydrogen is the simple question - where do we get the stuff from??  The cheapest way to get it is to make it from natural gas or coal.  This does nothing for global warming however, plus it again shackles us to yet another non-renewable resource.

One can also make it by splitting water, but this is very energy intensive and for that matter far less cost effective.  For that matter most electricity in this country is still from coal, so we would still be tied to fossil fuels.  And for that matter a pluggable hybrid is a more efficient use of electricity than having to first make hydrogen and then run it through a fuel cell.

First, what you find out when you try to optimize your hybrid's fuel economy is that the main problem is speed. It's easy to get good mileage if you go 40 mph. It's impossible if you go 70. Everything else pales in comparison. Regenerative braking is cool, but all you're doing is charging up a battery that you're going to use for un-needed acceleration. Idle stop is cool, but if you're idling much then you're in a city where you should be on the bus or your bike anyway.

And the idea of using composites for car construction is folly. Bending sheet metal into car bodies is one of the most efficient manufacturing processes known. You can assemble hundreds of steel car bodies in the time it takes to make a single composite body. Thin sheet metal stamped into shaped panels, spot welded together by robots into a strong, lightweight structure; what's the problem? Sure, composite technology gives you bodies that are strong and light, but it's simply not realistic for mass production because you have to lay up the panel and then let it cure. Aluminum is a good compromise, but you end up with cars that cost $40,000 instead of $10,000.

To solve the transportation problem we have to use less transportation. It's simple: Reorganize our living situation so we can walk or bus to work. Think inner city London or Paris or Boston.

so the creationists are wrong?

i'm stunned.

Most tools that people have invented allow us to change the duration over which effort must be applied thus reducing the effort per second (gears  and pulleys and tackle and levers) -- or to get assistance from free sources like wind, river flow, tidal flow, water and thermal expansion etc. (windmills, sails, water mills, splitting rock with water-soaked wooden wedges)  -- or to transform effort from a relatively weak slow motion for our primate arms and legs to a strong motion (the bowstring drill or lathe for example converts rotation which is hard for us to do, into a sawing motion which is easy). The astonishing bicycle, which reduces the effort of moving our body over the land by 30 percent compared to walking, leverages our human strength and stamina tremendously.  The wheeled handcart or wheelbarrow is another big winner enabling us to carry many times the weight we could tote on our backs.  The digging stick, the hoe and scythe, the spade and froe also leverage and multiply our apparent strength.

The automobile however is a descendant of the concept of draught animal or slave labour.  It doesn't leverage the user's own effort, but exploits an external source -- what Illich called an "energy slave".  It is really an ox cart or horse wagon, evolved to substitute an ICE for the draught animal:  a modern day chariot, barouche, coach, landau, call it what you will, it's an ox cart :-)  Even the railroad train is far more innovative and further from our ancient roots than the automobile.  It's a curious survival, often seems to me a vivid illustration of "paving the cowpath".

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...