Hi Paul,

 No, I am not in Copenhagen.  I have too much work getting our company off
 the ground to go there.  However, I follow what's going on quite closely as
 it will undoubtedly have a strong influence on our business.

 BTW, a friend of mine is working for a large car manufacturer in a
 management position within their fuel-cell car development.  I visited him
 in Germany some weeks ago and got to drive one of their fuel-cell powered
 prototype.  Awesome!  Performance is great (you would need a big-bore
 gasoline engine to match it), the car is extremely quiet (actually they will
 have to generate some kind of artificial noise so that electric cars can be
 heard coming by pedestrians), nice, simple and comfortable to drive.  Of
 course, the manufacturing cost of fuel cells is still astronomical but they
 are working on bringing it down.  Operating costs are a fraction of a
 similar-size gasoline model.  Who will need oil?  ... well, aviation for
 quite some more time, of course.  The Saudis are getting worried and have
 floated the idea that oil-producing countries be compensated for the oil
 they won't sell (good thing for them that ridicule does not kill, as we say
 in French), I love it!  No matter the climate dispute, the technology is
 just plain so much better... a quantum leap.  Those who will not develop
 those "clean" or "cleaner" technologies and gradually replace fossil fuels
 will plain and simply miss the opportunity of the 21st century.

 VBR, Francois


 That is interesting. Back in 1978 I was working with these guys from LASL
 who
 where working on fuel cell powered vehicles at the time.

 Microprocessor-Based System for Roll-Down and Acceleration Tests
 by D.K. Lynn, C.R. Derouin, and Paul Lamar
 Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory
 Published in IEEE Proceedings 29th Vehicular Technology Conference
 (The technical details of the road test system.)
 Arlington, Illinois, March 28-30, 1979

 Things are not progressing very quickly on this technology.

 Paul Lamar


 I agree with you on the challenges and speed of fuel cell development... not
 to mention the H2 logistical chain.  Although I don't know if it was high
 priority R&D until quite recently.  We'll see purely electric cars much
 earlier than fuel-cell powered ones.  They may or may not have a small
 thermal engine (rotary for compactness??) driving a generator to recharge
 the battery on long trips.  Now, batteries is still the missing enabling
 technology.

 Francois



From what I can tell, hydrogen (for use in vehicles) is a dead end.
Here's good link to lots of info on why.  The article also makes a
good case for methanol, a fuel we hear little about outside the racing world.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoax

Hydrogen briefs well, and sounds good from a podium, but the problems of producing it (the most economical way by far is from natural gas, so it's not carbon neutral).  Electrolysis is crazy inefficient--and the electricity has to be made somehow).  H2 is not a fuel source, it is, at best, an energy transfer mechanism, and not a very good one.

But, there will be niche applications where hydrogen makes sense.

Mark Waldron

All this effort is based on the big lie that Co2 is bad for the world.
We need more Co2 to feed the starving people in the world. Not less of it.

Paul Lamar