Tag: Hydrogen

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Cars

New Mercedes S-Class: 2025

Wondering about the next Mercedes S-Class? Unfortunately, I don’t know the next S-Class, but I know the S-Class for 2025! Here is the technical information!
It will powered by four electric engines, no internal combustion (unfortunately) and generating total of 231 PS sustained and 313 PS peak. I don’t know the why two engine output is given. Acceleration is 4.9 seconds to 100 kph (62 mph), thanks to lightweight structure that is only 1760kg. Also, it is capable of accelerating from 80 to 120 kph (50 – 75 mph) in 3.2 seconds! As the electric engines need electricity, it is produced by hydrogen. And hydrogen consumption is 0.79kg/100 km and CO2 is zero! Estimated range is 1000 km (620 miles). I hope until 2025, there will be more hydrogen filling stations. I don’t know why, but they also provided the luggage capacity, 470 lt. This hydrogen powered light S-Class is capable of achieving 220 kph (137 mph). Batteries are made from lithium-sultur and contents 10 kWh of energy. So, don’t put your finger or mess up with the batteries. And hydrogen tank is capable of accommodating 7.5 kg hydrogen. I guess, it is enough for 
1000 km :)
These figures are amazing, and Mercedes is planning to manufacture this car 14 years later. I am sure that, they are capable of manufacturing this vehicle but I am not confident with the hydrogen filling stations. Still, I don’t see any hydrogen stations are built around or replaced the ordinary stations. And 14 years is not a very long time period for this type of infra-structure change. 
In terms of automotive language, 14 years means two generations. Each seven years, every model is renewed and 14 years is too soon for every manufacturer to move hydrogen technology.  

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Mercedes

Fuel Cell, this is real cell :)

For long time, I was waiting to see a hydrogen car. I know they don’t very different rather than the normal ones but I would like to see how it drives and how it looks like. Hopefully today I saw three of them at the same time. They weren’t production models but at least they were hydrogen powered cars.
They were looking very nice for prototype and actually looking better than many Toyota cars! However the interior is a total catastrophe! Of course, it is pointless to expect to see very high quality interior from an university prototype. These cars have a range of 160 km. And very silent! Actually they are too silent and you may not even notice that a hydrogen car is approaching to you.
Finally, I really don’t know where they fill up the car. It is sure that, they are filling up them somewhere but I didn’t see.
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Cars

How to fuel future?

In 1890s, internal combustion engine was a fresh technology and it was a great opportunity to replace inefficient horses which have limited top speed of seventy km/h. There were some electric engine cars and plans to run diesel engine with peanut oil but they were all died by petrol. End of 19th century was the rise of the petrol, people find out that petrol is something very vulnerable  and can be used in cars. It can be considered as petrol is invented a bit earlier than petrol engine! And this made it very easy to fill the cars’ tank. Engineers did not invent an engine which is using something that does not exist!
However the case is totally opposite now! We are trying to find ways to use electric cars and hydrogen cars. But both of them cannot be filled very easily. Honda’s fuel cell car works on hydrogen and it does not emit any emissions at all :) That’s a great news but producing hydrogen is an expensive and complicate process. It will take decades to have hydrogen filling stations like petrol stations. So the car is ready but its fuel is not ready!
With electric cars, situation is a bit complicated. We can charge our e-car by plugging into our wall at home but it takes very long time to charge and electricity is not something cheap and you still emit emissions while charging it. One other fact; if we all drive electric cars and charge them at night, we could end up burning the whole electricity network which is not designed to charge whole countries’ cars! So, there should be a huge investment to upgrade electricity network for charging our cars.
In the two alternative cases, invented technology is moving faster than the fuelling technology. I cannot say the exact for hydrogen cars but I could see one thing clear, we will drive petrol engine for quite some time.
Picture is from;
Honda Website