Cutting the Petroleum Knot

t current regulatory and infrastructure rates of change, yes, it would be fair to say that it is 10-20 years off. But in terms of technology being practically applied right now the cars exists, function, and are completely consumer ready. In terms of manufacturing, the German marques are all quite serious when they say they could be mass produced in the next available model year. Aside from my somehow ingrained cultural and genetic predisposition to things German that might be blinding me into thinking hydrogen is the superior future fuel, the issues that compromise the other alternatives seem to me to be the more likely ones to have unintended consequences.

For example, the cars that rely on a hybrid system of a gasoline primary engine coupled to an electrical storage/redistribution system have two problems. The first is obvious- it still uses gasoline as a primary fuel. If the goal is to reduce or eliminate the need for a fossil fuel, then any vehicle that still requires gasoline remains part of the long term problem even if such a vehicle seems better compared to a standard gasoline fueled vehicle. Sure it might boast of getting 30 MPG combined performance, but it would ultimately remain a problem in that even if every car was a gasoline/electric hybrid we would still need massive amounts of gasoline for such a fleet. Given that our population will continue growing, as will the numbers of households with automobiles, in a very short time of years we would again return to our current levels of consumption of oil. If oil is a scarce market commodity now, what is the likelihood that it will be plentiful in the future?

The second problem with the gasoline/electric hybrids is tied up in the added resource costs and ultimate disposal costs associated with such vehicles. In terms of manufacturing, the additional need to put larger DC alternators on gasoline engines so that they can additionally serve as an electric drive do not just grow on trees. The additional requirements for copper windings of larger diameters means that copper would become and even more stressed resource. In the case of hub-driven hybrids, instead of having a single alternator per-vehicle, you have five. Then there are the batteries themselves. In terms of efficiencies they have become better at holding a charge, delivering a charge, and returning to the pre-charge level. It is this development which has made it feasible to even make gasoline/electric hybrids.

The problem is that these new batteries are made from essentially exotic metals. Nickel, cadmium, lithium, & other exotic metals are not exactly materials that grow on trees and aren't better used in other tools. Imagine for a moment if we were now having to dispose of such batteries after their utility as
storage for a hybrid drive system has failed. Many cars never make it to junk yards. Do you want such metals decaying into your water table? Even if recycled, the recycling costs are almost as high as the original construction of such batteries. Plus there will be unrecyclable material that cannot be reused and cannot go into anything other than an inert landfill. Do we really have such an abundance of landfills that meet this qualification that we can absorb the yearly waste metal slurry from hundreds of thousands of batteries? We have enough problems with the waste left over from the yearly recycling of standard automobile batteries right now. Imagine if the waste was double or triple the amount, but instead of being plain old lead byproducts it is instead lithium or cadmium.

The other pollution component is a function of it still being a gas powered system. You still have exhaust gasses. Yes when the gasoline part of the engine is idled in favor of the electric side, the emissions are zero. But, the minute you turn it back on it still churns out noxious gasses that at the least effect the local environment. If the Global Warming nutcases are serious in their belief system, any automobile power plant that still releases noxious gases should be a problem due to the scale of numbers of such cars that would be on the road. Surely, such cars would likely cut in half the current automobile pollution levels from exhaust. But if Global Warming is such a dire disaster, the priority should be to replace cars that emit tons of noxious gases per hundred miles with cars that release pounds of non-noxious gases per hundred miles.

Environmentally the hydrogen cars are the better solution because in the short term, they can utilize the old petroleum based gasoline distribution system while the hydrogen distribution system is deployed. Meaning the upfront costs of deploying the fleet can be spread across a decade. Meaning we wouldn't have to destroy our economy with a massive emergency deployment. As more hydrogen cars come online, automobile emissions will decline rapidly. Within ten years, passenger car emissions of noxious gasses would drop to less than 10% of what it is today. In ten years of deployment of a hybrid based system, you would possibly drop it to only 30% of today's value- but eventually the numbers would start to climb as new population growth put more vehicles into service. At some point you would again face the same problem we do right now in terms of pollution and consumption requirements of fossil fuels.

I can't remeber the name of the General Motors all electric car that was leased to people in California. I think it was the Impulse. Alex is wanting to go play so I will just make my point quickly. The car was a response to a California legal regulation. It made it possible for General Motors to meet California zero emissions standards and allow it also to keep selling normal cars. Any way, the cars cost a fortune to make and GM lost around $4,000 on each car. You couldn't buy one but could only lease it for three years. Then the car would need to have its batteries removed and new ones installed, the car was supposed to be cosmetically refurbished, and then the car was supposed to be re-leased to a new person. They made something like 1000 of the cars- and they were ugly, small, practical only for a concentrated urban environment, and prone to battery failures/fires. As the first ones began being returned, GM discovered that the batteries were essentially unrecoverable and had to pay a fortune for each disposal. If GM had added the cost of disposal to its original finished good cost, the price would have increased by half. It became very obvious to GM that a car that cost that much to refurbish and required each car to need a sanitary secured disposal burial plot was an idea that made zero sense. Plus, after three years of trying to lease the things, they still hadn't managed to lease all of them.

In the end, GM collected all but a handful of the cars which went to a handful of museums. The rest, including the ones that it never managed to lease one time, were sent to a specially built landfill site. The cars were all crushed, deemed toxic waste, and buried.

The thing is companies in America including Ford, GM, and Chrysler all bet that electric cars would be legislated into viability by California and the infrastructure would be mandated legally. It didn't happen. Environmentally, the cars were supposed to be vastly superior to standard cars. They weren't since 99% of the entire material in the construction run is now toxic waste in a secured sanitary landfill. The only net positive that resulted from the failed product was that GM, Ford, & Chrysler all decided it would be better for them economically if they took a baby step into gasoline/electric hybrids.

And that is the real problem. American companies jumped on the gasoline/electric hybrid bandwagon with the Japanese manufacturers. Its really where most of their R&D investment has went for the last ten years. They knew about the Germans and their various duel fuel hydrogen systems. But they reasonably concluded that an incremental step would be regulatorilly neutral and remain compatible with the existing fuel delivery system in the country. Now that petroleum is pushing the futures markets at $120 a bbl, they see the potential to be able to have the public make their investment profitable.

They do not want to see the hydrogen cars come easily to market.

The benefit to Hydrogen system cars is obvious. They can run on either existing fuel sources or on hydrogen. They are essentially the exact same engine as a standard gasoline only engine. The canister bottle is almost indestructible and 100% recyclable. The hydrogen car is as recyclable as any standard car is. It holds the potential to ultimately derive all of its energy needs from non-fossil fuels. It has the potential to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions from the national automobile fleet to levels not seen since the early 1900's. Additionally it has the potential to contribute only H₂O as an automobile derived greenhouse gas.

In short, the Germans invented the magic bullet. The American & Japanese makers gambled on an incremental step, the Germans succeeded on an evolutionary step.

If we expect to remove the Middle East oil flow from our considerations in the future, the only viable solutions are those which eliminate fossil fuels from the equations.