Well as I said in the title, I would be talking about green technologies in my posts here on the blog, and the first one that has caught my interest is Hydrogen Cars. Hydrogen Cars have had lots of critiques over the years about whether or not we could make then, and how expensive they would be.
As for whether or not it is possible to build hydrogen cars, the clear answer now is that it is possible. So this is no longer an issue to discuss about hydrogen cars.
However, there are two main issues I would like to discuss.
The first of these is price. As far as how expensive the cars would be, they would be really expensive, both to make and to fuel and even fuel cells if those were to be used instead of the hydrogen combustion engines. Some of the estimates that I saw end up being about 50,000 dollars more than normal cars and then there is the price of fuel. However, with fuel cells, there is talk that mass production of the cars could drastically reduce price, which makes sense according to economic theory. One estimate showed that a certain hydrogen fueled truck with fuel cells could be sold for about $20,000 bucks. That's not too bad when compared to our current prices; it is much better than a $50,000 difference.
The second issue is about the main by product of hydrogen cars, water vapor. Some of you may be thinking at this point (and I did too) that since water vapor is a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, hydrogen cars may cause global warming more than normal cars do. However some research on this showed that to be false. For one thing, water vapor is actually also a by product of normal cars and supposedly not much more is emitted by hydrogen cars than by normal cars. So because of the added carbon dioxide emissions in normal cars, they most likely do emit more greenhouse gas than hydrogen cars and definitely cause more pollution.
So to conclude, I think that hydrogen cars will be an efficient green technology if the day does come where they are easily affordable.
source:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4563676/
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Iron Man, I find this concept very interesting. However, if hydrogen cars did become a substitute for normal cars; the rate of change at which people would switch car forms would be relatively low, due to the fact of the cost of buying a hydrogen car is relatively high. This slow change would therefore not have a fast enough effect on global warming. Therefore it would have no immediate positive effects. Also, approximately 60 to 75 percent of Americans drive cars. So, if we were to replace all normal cars with hydrogen cars; where would we dispose all the normal cars which no longer have valuable use? Would this not negatively effect the environment in the long run?
ReplyDeletehttp://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_percentage_of_people_drive_a_car_in_the_US
hi cuba2miami:
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, the math on that link you posted fails. If 25% of people are under 18, and 17% of people under 18 drive, then that mean 83% of people under 18 do not drive, and 83% of the 25% of people in the US under 18 is about 20.75%. So assuming everyone above 18 drives (which is of course false) then about 79% of the US drives, not 61.
Also, as I said one of the main problems with hydrogen cars is their high cost. So, as I said, they would have to made affordable to be effective at decreasing carbon dioxide emissions.
Also, as for the normal cars, I would say we would need to find a way to recycle as many of their parts as possible (although this is an interesting question, thank you for asking).