OT: Hydrogen Powered SUVs are Here

Having lived near a large European city for 12 years, I would assert that exactly the reverse is, in fact, the case. They tend to do what the authorities tell them without question. Live in a large apartment block in Switzerland, for example, and you are forbidden from hanging your washing out on your appt balcony to dry. You may also only use the communal washer/dryer machines in the basement during your alloted time-slot. Otherwise you're fined by your landlord. And don't imagine that the landlord employs snoops to discover miscreants; your neighbours will consider it their duty to grass you up.

Makes my point above.

Also makes my point.

Hmm, pretty sure this group has UK in the title.

Nothing is technically impossible, but I consider that very improbable. Slightly less improbable would be for new hybrids to be “geo-ringfenced” so that their ICEs couldn’t operate inside a clean air zone. Already done with some very high performance cars to limit their performance outside a race track.

Tim

Switzerland is not typical.

The Germans I know find the Swiss adherence to such trivial rules amusing and slightly baffling.

Transponders would not be required in Switzerland. As you say, they would adhere strictly to the rules.

That is where I am trying to buy the car :-)

That would require them to automatically update the database every time a new zone was created. Transponders only need a local transceiver to activate them.

The efficiency of a gas turbine running at rated power is usually very high, and comparable with diesels. Feel free to justify your claim with a cite. I know you can't.

Most investment is based on payback faster than that, so no reason why not.

I wasnt talking about the gas turbine. I was talking about producing the hydrogen, storing it in the car for use as fuel for the gas turbine.

That would be a piece of cake. New cars can do software updates “over the air”.

You need a network of local transceivers that we don’t have. To change zones would mean erecting new transceivers.

Tim

We don't yet have the zones that need them. IMO more reliable than software updates.

Instituting a geofence could be done with virtually no new hardware and software updates can be automated. I don’t see the government going out of their way to encourage the continued use and sale of plug-in hybrids though so the whole argument is probably moot.

Tim

With only 0.25% of cars on the road in the UK having batteries and nearly half of those being plug-in hybrids, I don't see banning all non-electric cars in cities in a single step being politically expedient. So, I would expect to it be staged, over a number of years, starting with low emission zones excluding ICE vehicles above a certain emission level, then, later vehicles that do not have a electric mode and finally electric only vehicles.

They exist today:

(reg plates picked from random ebay listings)

Theo

As part of my university engineering course (Mid 80s) we did a session of measuring fuel flow/power output/efficiency against throttle setting for one of the early Rover gas Turbines.

(scarily bad at anything other than high throttle settings)

But does produce h2o which is also a greenhouse gas

ISTR Jaguar tried one on the 50s or 60s

The ocean gives off H2O as well, perhaps we should ban all oceans. By 2035, let's say. Seas and lakes by 2040, and then rivers.

Sooner than I expected.

So does hydrogen or any other hydrogen fuel and of course it may well be a greenhouse gas, but since the air is already mostly saturated with it, it can't make things hotter, just rainier.

Anyway its all irrelevant. It's a political and commercial scam.

Nothing beats hydrocarbon fuel for energy to volume ratio, and that's what important in aircraft and cars for drag reasons.

Rover Shirley? Ran it at le Mans. Horrendous efficiency at part throttle as too slow to rev up

You need it coupled to a hybrid, so its idling, or charging, never in between