Solarius

February 13, 2008

Hydrogen vs. Electric

Filed under: Batteries, Electricity, Hydrogen, Ineptitude, Vehicles — mxhess @ 11:51 am

I’ve been reading a lot lately about hydrogen vehicles and their potential. but the interesting thing about hydrogen technology is that there are some practical obstacles to hydrogen tech that a lot of people are not aware of. A book called, ‘the hype about hydrogen’ states that there are 5 miracles that must occur:

  1. current fuel cell cars cost > $100,000.00 - this must drop in order for fuel cells to even be considered by the average consumer
  2. not enough room for hydrogen - no known material by humankind can store enough fuel on board to give the range people want
  3. fuel is expensive - even hydrogen from dirty fossil fuels is 2 to 3 times more expensive than gasoline
  4. need fueling infrastructure - we have over 180,000 gas stations in the country. We’d need at least 20,000 stations spread out across the country to even make hydrogen a realistic and convienent fuel
  5. hope and pray that current competing technology doesn’t get any better.

These are very realistic and compelling reasons why hydrogen is the carrot and the American people are the donkey in this scam.

15 years ago scientists where claiming that hydrogen technology is 10 to 15 years away. That time has passed, untold billions have been spent on developing basically nothing and where are we at? Well, the technology is 10 to 15 years away from being truly viable and oh by the way.. get your checkbook out.

Why not take a look at history. Over 100 years ago there were more electric cars on roads than internal combustion cars. Electric cars were clearly popular at one point and they can be again if we as a society actually stop being placated by the ‘wait and see’ mantra that has been chanted to us for the last couple years as demand has dramatically increased for alternative fuel vehicles.

I say we forget the alternative fuel and just go for no fuel at the vehicle level. Go electric. It will be compatible with everything. Use the alternative fuels to generate the electricity, it is an even more efficient and cleaner use of those fuels anyway. The technology is already in place in almost every home in America (except the Amish but they have alternative fuel vehicles anyway).

So Mr. vehicle makers (Ford, GM, etc. al), please, get busy serving the American people for once and not your own interests. The first to do so you will find great rewards.

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November 27, 2007

Known vs. cost effective

Filed under: Ineptitude, Mismanagement — mxhess @ 1:57 pm

Why is it that companies tend to go with vendors whose products cost much more than other less-known vendors whose products perform much better in general (stability/performance for the $/functionality/security) when all aspects are considered?

Example:

Company XYZ, inc. chooses to use products from Vendor C instead of Vendor B. The company in question already uses a lot of Vendor C’s products and Vendor C is a ‘preferred’ vendor. Vendor B is an up and comer with several solutions that out-perform all aspects of Vendor C’s identical offerings. Both Vendors are presented to the company and Vendor C is still chosen even though Vendor B is more cost-effective, their solution has triple the performance of Vendor C’s product and Vendor C’s product’s are well known to constantly need software upgrades to fix security issues that the Vendor (through shoddy coding review) allows into ‘final’ releases.

Why did Vendor C get tapped for supplying the companies needs?

The answer is multi-faceted.

Kickbacks to corporate officials or board members of the company, board members with undisclosed conflicts of interest, managers not wanting to ‘rock the boat’ with new technology decisions, a lack of truly solid technical understanding combined with almost non-existent forward thinking (ie: a solution for the now in the now even if it doesn’t meet needs in 2 years).

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