Blue Gas - The fuel of the Future - Discuss???

[MBDevotee]

Flowrider posted about this the other day.

I have never heard of it, so went on the internet - it's something that interests me - so call me sad..... !

Anyhow, I've never seen Battery cars as the answer (Despite loving it and loving the drive) and always thought Hydrogen could have been the answer - however the infrastructure is lacking (although the rise of charging points shows that's nothing that can't be easily fixed.

The main benefit is that it has a massively quick refill time - 3 or 4 mins just like a ICE car, and thus range is potentially not an issue, so if it's truly environmentally friendly, it could be the long term solution.

Does anyone know much about it?

 

[M80]

We can hope, I think.
And really I reckon this would interest most bods.

It could end up being a BetaMax / VHS race, where it isn't the better that wins.
duracells have a head start.

 

[MBDevotee]

Yes, and they have their place.

However big batteries have a lot of Lithium in them, Electricity isn't always produced in a carbon neutral way, and some really don't like the potential range issues.

I can see how they would both have a place, a battery car with a small battery for daily inner city use (very cheap very basic) as a second car and a Hydrogen powered car as the main vehicle......

 

[d215yq]

I think the range issue people seem to have is a bit of a lack of willingness to accept change. To me it is crazy that we insist electric cars have a similar range to ICE when 80% of users don't need it. It's as ridiculous as stating that due to electric cars being able to give 0-60 times of 4 or 5s with ease and perfectly smooth drivetrains that we then insist that all ICE cars have similar performance/smoothness/lack of noise.

The ideal electric car that is built properly to its strengths will not have a huge battery pack and a 600 mile range for weight/cost reasons, it will have a 1-200 mile range but many other benefits that an ICE car will not match. Similar in that a normally priced ICE car won't do 0-60 in 6s and will not be totally smooth/free from noise. There's room for both in the market and many people would not need anything more than 200 miles (and those that do can carry on with ICE).

If we as a marketplace just ask for electric cars to be like ICE cars and match them as near as possible then the beneifts will not be realised and a sub-optimum design will continue to be made.

 

[MBDevotee]

Disagree on the range. Because its harder to quickly fill an EV from a time point of view, you do need a 200 + mile range if you are going to use it as the main car.

Many days I have done my daily stuff and only had 60-80 mile range left (so have done 180-200 that day. I actually start to get twitchy with less than 80 miles left for that very reason - a full charge off a normal 7kw charger takes approx 9 hours, so I know I will always leave home fully charged next day (or would if I had a 7kw charger at home...)

For longer trips, yes there is no range issue, get down to 20% battery (about 60m left on mine, and then plug in to a 50kw charger, and I'm back up to 80% (230ish m) in under 40 min so thats just a coffee and loo stop of the Motorway or whatever.

But I would agree as a second car, 150-200m is probably ok..... but not as a main car, or not for me anyhow.....

I was chatting to a guy with a 3 year old Zoe the other day, and he reckons he gets 80m from a full battery, thats just useless to my mind.

What I do love is how many free charging points there still are! Not paid for fuel since last June!!!