Works for me, propane is a bit more expensive than CNG, but why not? It's been used for a long time as a motor fuel too. Hydrogen is still just a stupid idea though.

Where, pray tell, are you going to get burnable hydrogen? From Water? Have fun with that.

You obviously don't understand what it takes to convert water into hydrogen fuel. HINT: Lots and LOTS of electricity, which, despite what you might think, cannot be produced for free. Windmills and solar cells cost money and harm the environment. Industrially, Hydrogen is currently produced FROM Natural Gas, not water.

But never mind all that.... Try this one. Using hydrogen as a method to "store energy" is a stupid approach. You would be better off using currently available battery technologies (lead acid, Li-Ion etc) by nearly 10 times.

Oh sure Natural Gas is cheaper, it has to be.

As I posted previously, where do you suppose we get hydrogen now? For industrial supplies we reform natural gas, which involves steam and fairly high temperatures. Processing and storage of hydrogen is harder than for natural gas. So, hydrogen will be more expensive, it simply has to be. Start with Natural gas, process by adding heat to get hydrogen, suffer larger losses in the storage and distribution of hydrogen and it will ALWAYS be more expensive.

And before you start down the "just use solar/wind power to split hydrogen" understand that neither of these technologies are cost effective and doing what you suggest is much less efficient than even Lithium Ion batteries.

Next to the cell phone.

Again, just in case it wasn't clear from my first response. Who is concerned about Hydrogen's safety? Hydrogen Gas is no less safe than Natural Gas and I'm not debating this aspect.

What I AM saying is that Hydrogen is a stupid idea when you consider the engineering efficiency of the whole system. Just burn Natural Gas as a motor fuel, it's easier and more efficient (and cheaper as a result).

Huh? Who's talking about safety here?

Why do the hydrogen canard then? Why not burn Compressed Natural Gas? Nearly all the benifits and CHEAP fuel too...

Oh, and before you start into the "Using free solar electricity to disassociate hydrogen from water at home" exercise, let me remind you that even solar power costs (both in money and environmental damage), the process is wildly inefficient and currently the industrial source of hydrogen today is reforming natural gas.

Oh stop with all the facts... You are confusing people with the truth.

Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is what we should use. We have a LOT of it in the States, it's currently cheap, and we already have distribution infrastructure for it. Industrial sources of hydrogen come from Natural Gas anyway... Oh, and gas stations that sell CNG already exist.

Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is what we should use. We have a LOT of it in the States, it's currently cheap, and we already have distribution infrastructure for it. Industrial sources of hydrogen come from Natural Gas anyway...

Hydrogen is a stupid idea.

Use CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) and just forget this nutty hydrogen idea. Getting Hydrogen from water and electricity is wildly inefficient and thus extremely expensive. It's also not a very good motor fuel because it takes some pretty major modifications to existing motors.

Do you know where we get most of our industrial hydrogen gas? From Natural Gas. Guess what? We already have a distribution infrastructure in most of the States for Natural Gas. We should just cut to the chase and go to CNG which burns very clean with a minimum of modifications to existing engines. All this hydrogen talk is just hype..

Hydrogen is still a stupid idea.

Look, either go full 100% electric and just put in chargers everywhere, or use CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) and just forget this nutty hydrogen idea. Hydrogen is hard to obtain and store and there is no existing distribution infrastructure to speak of.

Does anybody here know where we get most of our industrial hydrogen gas? From Natural Gas. Guess what? We already have a distribution infrastructure in most of the States for Natural Gas. We should just cut to the chase and go to CNG which burns very clean with a minimum of modifications to existing engines. All this hydrogen talk is just hype..

Hey, I use Open Office all the time on my Windows laptop... But I'm a confirmed penny pincher who has some IT experience.

But I think you miss the point that we are discussing infrastructure level stuff that the end user NEVER sees. So your example doesn't really wash. MS Office is entrenched because it's what people know and use at work, it's what they are used to. Who knows what relational database the application uses? Not the end user.

What's actually happening is Oracle is falling out of favor in new development. There are cheaper options that do the job just as well. So Oracle is facing a declining user base as they loose market share. It may take decades to die, but Oracle is done unless they can start to capture more of the new development market share. The end user doesn't care what database is the application uses, as long as it works.