NOT QUITE READYIt appears that we will have to to wait a bit longer before we can whiz through down town in our ultra new hydrogen-powered car. They still don't have the high-cost bugs devalued enough. I may hav committed a literary boo-boo when I used the term “whizzed”,that suggests too much noise and h-car fans insist their new system “whispers” at the loudest.
The thought occurred to me just the other day that, with all that quietness wrapped around us as we drive, we can not only see but also hear what other drivers say about us when they drive eratically. Lip reading will no longer be useful. Driving habits will change.
I was reading just this past week about the Swiss version of such a future car the “Prius Pac-II. The figures I have were done last August and could have changed by this time, but this is typical of the way keep tabs on the matter so they are valid for me. It is sleek, tubular little thing, silvery with three red and yellow Shell logos. With paint, it weighs in at sixty-two pounds. The one hundred pound girl student stands at the ready with sturdy crash helmet in at-hip position.
The students at the Swiss Federal Insitutue of Technology, Zurich,who worked on this car know what it can do and they have learned what it cannot do, and why. They can't expect to set any speed records on a car which runs on two 150 watt light bulbs. So, their next car will be a hybrid using some sort of hydrogen power.
It might prove worthwhile for us to glance down through some of the statistics which cause us to pause in an plans we have to turn out h-cars successfully. For instance, Honda fuel cells offered just sixty-seven miles per gallon That's about average for others, as well, it seems. Studies show that it is more expensive to operate a fuel cell car when compared to a conventional one per killowatt hour in the range of eighty five times.
The United State currently manufactures about 9 million cubic feet of hydrogen perhps,enough of fuel 25 million cars. With current
trends toward offshore manufacturing that could fade away fast under narrow enviornmentalist pressures and the internal production of all hydrogen fuel cancelled. Especially for those people who have continuing “Hindenberg complex” doubts and expect hydrogen in whatever form to explode at any moment.
