Fuel Cell Pols Gone Bad Vol. 1
There’s a piece in the Sunday NY Times automotive section (we get it a day early) about a New York congressman, Eric Massa, who drove a Chevy Equinox fuel-cell vehicle from Corning, New York (his hometown) to DC as a demonstration of personal greenness, forward thinking and the potential of hydrogen-fueled vehicles. How is that possible; it’s 280 miles form Corning to DC and there are no hydrogen stations en route? Turns out greenmeister Massa actually drove two Equinoxes. One he drove from Corning to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he changed horses to the fully fueled second Equinox. How is that possible, since you’d think a fuel-cell Equinox would use a certain amount of hydrogen just getting to Harrisburg? Well, it turns out GM towed the Harrisburg Equinox– and also the Corning Equinox, which had to arrive there fully fueled– with a pair of hybrid Tahoes. So Massa actually used four cars and a fair amount of fuel, and produced a goodly amount of CO2, to get to Washington while “burning no fuel and producing zero emissions.”
This reminds me of the infamous RAF Vulcan bomber mission to the Falklands during Margaret’s War. A single huge Vulcan V-Bomber bombed the runway (and missed, by the way) at Port Stanley, which at least scared the beejesus out of the Argies. But it took 13 Vulcans and air-to-air tankers to get that single airplane there and back from Ascension Island. There were tankers that refueled the Vulcan, and there were tankers that refueled the tankers. And at least one backup Vulcan in case anything went wrong with the lead bomber, and it also had to be refueled even though it simply went home from the go/no-go point. The flight of 13 dwindled down to the single bomber and the couple of tankers it took to get it home again as airplane after airplane peeled off and went back to Ascension. Hard to imagine how many hundreds of thousands of gallons of jet fuel were burned per bomb, since the Vulcan could only carry something like four thousand-pounders or whatever they were.
I'm the automotive editor of Conde Nast Traveler and a freelancer for a variety of other magazines as well. Go to amazon.com and read more about me than you ever wanted to know if you do a search for either of my current books, "The Gold-Plated Porsche" and "Man and Machine." Been a pilot since 1967 (single- and multi-engine land, single-engine sea, glider, instrument, Cessna Citation 500 type rating all on a commercial license) and I use the gold-plated Porsche, a much-modified and -lightened '83 911SC, as a track car.
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@ noone Actually, this is what Wackypedia actually says; Current economic uranium resources will last for over 100 years at current consumption rates. China and India plus Indonesia have plans to nearly triple the rate of consumption. Oh dear. while it is expected there is twice that amount awaiting discovery. Completely unproven so far, despite 30 years of trying, and a worsening future for uranium use, although some think investment in exploration should be made now because of the Chinese, India and Indonesia. With reprocessing and recycling, the reserves are good for thousands of years. Breeders! Absolutely filthy. This just adds to an already very dirty and uneconomic fuel process. It is estimated that 5.5 million tonnes of uranium ore reserves are economically viable, while 35 million tonnes are classed as mineral resources (reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction). So 5.5million tonnes gets you 100 years at current rates of consumption. See above regarding the Chinese, India and Indonesia. There is a 300-fold increase in the amount of uranium recoverable for each tenfold decrease in ore grade." In other words, there is very little high grade ore and proportionately much more low grade ore. Aw, damn. There's uranium everywhere, but it's just not economically possible to make use of it. I've seen the seawater stuff over the years; it will cost more in (fossil fuel) energy to retrieve it. Which is what the USSR and the Japanese discovered.
Speaking of striking a green pose, I get the sense from this piece that Ford is about to ask for some subsidy money -- for the children, bien entendu: http://www.calgaryherald.com/Cars/Ford+unveils+electric+future/1166062/story.html