Kill the Messenger - this time the LA Times

[glatt]

Interesting.

I wonder how big the hydraulic accumulator pressure tank would have to be? And how much energy it can store? Will it explode like a bomb if the truck gets in a crash? So many questions...

[BigV]

Great, just what I need, another plumbing project.

[tw]

Originally Posted by BigV

Great, just what I need, another plumbing project.

Ever do helium leak checking for toxic, pyrophoric, and corrosive gases? Doing same for hydrogen makes such testing - finding and fixing leaks - simple by comparison. And yet GM says we will replumb the entire nation with hydrogen? Only those without experience and basic science knowledge would believe their myth. Hydrogen as a fuel - as a carrier of energy - is nonsense.

Why a carrier? Because there is no hydrogen that contains significant energy. Hydrogen must be created from some other energy source. Hydrogen is not really an energy source - a fuel - as GM would have you believe. Hydrogen is only an energy carrier - and not a very good one.

[tw]

Originally Posted by BigV

Great, just what I need, another plumbing project.

Ever do helium leak checking for toxic, pyrophoric, and corrosive gases? Doing same for hydrogen makes such testing - finding and fixing leaks - simple by comparison. And yet GM says we will replumb the entire nation with hydrogen? Only those without experience and basic science knowledge would believe their myth. Hydrogen as a fuel - as a carrier of energy - is nonsense.

Why a carrier? Because there is no hydrogen that contains significant energy. Hydrogen must be created from some other energy source. Hydrogen is not really an energy source - a fuel - as GM would have you believe. Hydrogen is only an energy carrier - and not a very good one.

[tw]

From CBSMarketWatch.com of 20 Feb 2006:

Moody's dunks GM further into junk
Moody's Investors Service on Tuesday pushed General Motors Corp.'s debt deeper into junk, piquing concerns that the troubled automaker is not making adequate progress to avert bankruptcy. ...

The credit-ratings agency cut GM's $30 billion in debt to B2, five notches below investment grade, down from B1. Moody's outlook for GM is negative, which means another cut could be on the way.

As long as the GM problem remains - its top management and especially the bean counter Rick Wagoner - GM will only continue along a well worn path taken by AT&T, big American steel companies, and Penn Central. GM does not even have, standard, 70 Hp/liter engines in their products. In each case, top management was not removed while that top management blamed employees, unfair competition, the economy, economies of scale, the LA Times, and everything else but the only problem - top management.

[Undertoad]

Honda doing hydrogen fuel cell car PLUS home hydrogen generation.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Don't hold your breath. They've got a long, long way to go before that's going to happen around here.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Don't hold your breath. They've got a long, long way to go before that's going to happen around here.

Not really. It's the same as with the hybrids. An innovative Japanese manufacturer builds the first commercially viable models, licenses the technology, and drags the American manufacturers kicking and screaming into the marketplace.

Toyota had the first commercially available hybrid in the US, followed by Honda.

American manufacturers haved been working with fuel cells. There are even buses in the US running on fuel cells. I still own stock in Ballard Power, which has gone from $3 to $150 and back down to about $6. It is the company that was partnered with Ford.

The founder of the company has started a venture to attempt to build the infrastructure in the US and Canada. It is one of GM's Advanced Technology Partners. It just seems odd that with all of these partners, and with concept vehicles already being built, the Japanese are still going to beat GM to the market.

[Griff]

BAE North America is working with Daimler Chrysler on their hybrid bus. Some of the work is being done in Johnson City.
At the heart of the Orion VII hybrid bus is the HybriDriveTM propulsion system provided by BAE Systems. The system propels the bus with a single electric motor that is powered by a diesel-driven generator and an energy storage unit. Among the system's benefits:
The engine is smaller than that used in conventional buses and runs at optimum speed for clean operation and efficiency.
The design offers quicker acceleration, helping drivers merge into heavy traffic.
Customers enjoy a quieter ride than on a conventional diesel bus.
The system design eliminates the transmission, thereby removing a major maintenance item on vehicles operated in heavy stop-and-go conditions.
A regenerative braking system uses the drive motor to slow the bus, effectively turning the motor into a generator to help recharge the energy storage system. This feature saves energy and also reduces brake wear by about one-third, reducing the frequency of brake maintenance.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by richlevy

Not really. It's the same as with the hybrids.

Bullshit. It's not the same as hybrids. H-Y-D-R-O-G-E-N!
Where you gonna get it? It takes a ton of energy to get hydrogen from anywhere. They're using natural gas and that's not cheap or plentiful. Getting it from water is even more expensive. Then you've got to distribute it.
Like I said, "Don't hold your breath. They've got a long, long way to go before that's going to happen around here."

Hybrids are viable right now, but this Honda/Hydrogen deal is way off, if ever, for this country.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Honda doing hydrogen fuel cell car PLUS home hydrogen generation.

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Don't hold your breath. They've got a long, long way to go before that's going to happen around here.

This summer!

http://www.portfolio.com/news-market...l-Cell-Vehicle

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

This summer!

http://www.portfolio.com/news-market...l-Cell-Vehicle

Honda won’t disclose marketing plans, but several dozen California drivers are being tapped to sign $600-a-month leases. At the pump, hydrogen fuel costs roughly the same as gasoline, but there are only 66 operational hydrogen gas stations in the U.S. (19 in the Los Angeles area). So Honda is developing the Home Energy Station, a hydrogen pump for garages (which uses a process critics say releases greenhouse gases).

Not around here.

[fargon]

What is wrong with GM? What is always wrong with GM, Back in the '70s my Dad had a friend who was a GM engieneer. When my Dad asked him why they didn't put a 4-53 2 stroke diesel in the pick up trucks instead of some POS made out of a big gas V/8? He was told that the public would not buy a 4 cylender engine when they could have a V-8.
And the GM 2 stroke diesel engines will last forever, Why put them in a car that will only last 5 years.
Ford uses a V-8 built by Navistar (International Harvester), and Dodge uses an inline 6 cyl. turbocharged monster. My 91 dodge 3/4 ton has a twisted frame and the transmission has only 2 speeds that can be used because that engine has so much torque that it destroyed the truck, after 750,000 miles. The only thing we use this truck for is feeding the cows. that engine starts and runs like it did when it was new.

As far as Hydrogen fuel goes, we have a viable fuel source now every time you flush your toilet. Self produced methane has been in use for years in many third world countries. Hog farmers, and dairymen have been using this technology to produce eletricity with very positive results.

GMs got a problem? Yes they brought on them selfs.

[tw]

So many have considered saving GM from itself. Ross Perot tried and was eventually paid a massive and handsome reward to go away. T Boone Pickens had looking into it. Carl Icahn considered it. Kirk Kerkorian is the latest to try having bought just short of 10% GM stock over 18 months, suffered large losses, got GM to talk to Nissan and Renault, and has apparently just given up after initially suggesting he would increase his GM ownership to 12%. From the NY Times of 7 Oct 2006:

Dissident Quits Board at G.M.
More than that, however, Mr. York said he had not found “an environment in the boardroom that is very receptive to probing much beyond” data provided by management.

But Mr. York always faced the risk of being the board’s odd man out. Early on in his tenure as a G.M. board member, management experts suggested he would probably be isolated, given that every other G.M. director was chosen while Mr. Wagoner was chief executive or a top company manager.

In fact, Mr. York’s comments echoed those of another dissident G.M. board member, H. Ross Perot, who parted ways with the company nearly two decades ago after a brief but bitter stint on the board.

From the Washington Post:

In his resignation letter, York said he quit because the boardroom environment was not "very receptive to probing much beyond the materials provided by management."

That is what Ross Perot also complained of 20 years earlier.

The Nissan Renault alliance fell through when Wagoner (GM's top executive) insisted those other companies pay a premium surcharge for doing the alliance with GM. Wagoner somehow insisted that doing business with GM would vastly reward those other two companies. Maybe if GM had something of value to provide. GM products are some of the world's crappiest. The reason that Nissan and Renault were talking is because their changes to GM would make GM more valuable - in direct contradiction to Wagoner's thinking. GM without Nissan and Renault would only continue to stagnate. Why should they pay GM a premium to save GM?

1970s meant innovation with overhead cams. 1980 were the 70 Hp/liter engine (85 and 100 for turbo and supercharged). 1990s were the development of a hybrid. GM still has no overhead cam engines, still does not sell 70 Hp/Liter engines which is why so many GM cars are six and eight cylinders - for more expensive. And, of course, GM still has no hybrid. Classic when management all comes from business schools, does not drive, and fears innovation.

[richlevy]

GM bitches about fuel standards.

DETROIT (Reuters) -- A proposal to increase U.S. fuel economy standards would force Detroit-based automakers to "hand over" the market for trucks and sport-utility vehicles to Japanese manufacturers, a senior General Motors Corp. executive said.

Bob Lutz, GM's vice chairman and the head of the company's global product development team, said the proposed changes to the government's Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards would represent an unfair burden on the traditional Big Three automakers.

"For one thing, it puts us, the domestic manufacturers, at odds with the desires of most of our customers, namely larger vehicles," Lutz said in a year-end posting on a Web site maintained by GM.

He added: "That effectively hands the truck and SUV market over to the imports, particularly the Japanese, who have earned years of accumulated credits from their fleets of formerly very small cars."

Lutz, a long-time critic of government fuel economy regulations, compared the attempt to force carmakers to sell smaller vehicles to "fighting the nation's obesity problem by forcing clothing manufacturers to sell garments only in small sizes."

So basically, now that everyone else in the world has shown that fuel efficient cars can be made, it's unfair to actually set better standards. Cry me a river, Bob.