RX-8 Hydrogen RE a Dual Fuel Car

greekgod8591 writes "Japan's Mazda Motor Corp. said on Wednesday it will begin leasing a dual-fuel car that can run on both hydrogen and gasoline in the auto industry's latest effort to reduce oil consumption in vehicles. Mazda said the RX-8 Hydrogen RE, based on its popular RX-8 sports car, gets around these problems by running on gasoline in the absence of a hydrogen fuelling station, and using existing engine parts and production facilities to lower costs."

62 miles?

[jj00]

"It can cruise for a maximum 62 miles on hydrogen and 549 km (341 miles) on gasoline..."

62 miles on hydrogen? I guess there isn't much room in an RX8 for hydrogen with a full tank of gas.

Re:Currently worthless in North America

[EvilCabbage]

So is that Mazdas fault, or North Americas?

What about the sealing problems?

[Bullfish]

I imagine to use hydrogen, that Mazda must have solved the sealing problems in the engine. They first dropped the rotary because of it's poor mileage and leaky rotor seals. I know a number of RX-3s and 4s had horrible problems with their rotor seals. It looks like they corrected that enough for the RX-8 (the 7 had problems too) to be an efficient gasoline engine. Hydrogen seems dicier to me in the regard of sealing. If they haven't corrected the problem enough to do hydrogen over the long term, this will be a flop.

Re:Currently worthless in North America

[rolfwind]

Um, that's kindof the point of dual-fuel. It's a chicken and the egg problem - would you rather have them wait for the infrastructure? Which will never come because there are no cars on the road that take hydrogen. Because there is no infrastructure?

Also, corn would not be the only way to get hydrogen. Try electrolysis. Put a few solar panels on the roof, let that electricity seperate water into oxygen and hydrogen and collect in a tank. Inefficient - yes. But feasible. Want something more efficient? Use steam electrolysis (which is more efficient) by putting up a parabolic mirror and heating a core of water to the required temperature (2500 C) and splitting the molecules that way. Some obstacles to overcome - but no reason it needing acres of land when the acreage of a roof should suffice.

Sometimes the only way forward with this technology is to take a few steps back because it's more realistic to accept it won't be as good (convenient) as gas overnight. Gasoline had years of market acceptance to develop these advantages.

Re:Currently worthless in North America

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Skip the hydrogen and the combustion. Use your solar powered sterling engine or your solar cells to drive a small air compressor which keeps a larger tank topped off in your garage. Your car will run on compressed air.

http://www.theaircar.com/ [theaircar.com]

Re:Questions

[HappyEngineer]

The idea is also that even if it were less efficient, it'd still be better to use fuel cells just so long as the energy doesn't come from oil. With fuel cells you can pick and choose the ultimate energy source.

Green people should really start pushing that angle. There are lots of people who don't care about the environment who do care about saving money (by choosing the cheapest energy source) and about not funding terrorists.