Jay Leno Becomes BMW Hydrogen 7 Pioneer
The latest addition to Jay Leno’s incredible collection of automobiles is one of BMW’s hydrogen-powered 7-series sedans. Mr. Leno is well-known for his love of cars and follows in the footsteps of Will Ferrell, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Richard Gere and Sharon Stone by taking the keys to a Hydrogen 7.
The green theme of the 7-series is echoed in Leno’s massive 20,000 square-foot garage, which is largely powered by steam. Another notable “green
Comments
luke hagen
How is steam power green? Unless its generated from electricity made from a solar panel or dam, steam is just fossil fuel power in another form. Same thing for electric cars, though they have some benefit in taking excess power from the grid at night. Just because you can't smell the exhaust, doesn't mean its not somewhere else...
chris mich
luke hagen-
what's your alternative?
Ducati Minor
It emits vapor. Thus, it is a clean-air vehicle. I know electro and diesel nuts are going to bash the hydrogen thing, but I applaud BMW for making an effort at something green.
Don
Steam is water vapor unless I'm mistaken, Luke.
John Carder
A couple of facts:
The reciprocating engine has oil, whether it burns hydrogen, diesel or gasoline. Part of the pollution that it emits comes from oil in the cylinders. So, the hydrogen car does pollute.
What hydrogen doesn't do is emit carbon dioxide as a primary product. Some scientists believe that man-made carbon dioxide has caused global warming. A recent paper
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf
is one of the best at questioning that connection.
Solar cells are energy sinks, consuming more energy in their production than they produce in their entire lifetimes. http://www.tinaja.com/glib/energfun.pdf
Is the BMW a good idea? That all depends on how you produce the hydrogen. Hydrogen is not pumped out of wells. It's like a battery. You use electricity to create hydrogen and oxygen from water. So, there's no net energy produced by hydrogen fuel. In fact, because neither producing hydrogen, nor burning hydrogen is perfectly efficient, you waste electricity converting it to hydrogen, before burning it. So, the question becomes how did you produce the electricity that made the hydrogen that powered the car? If you did it with a nuclear reactor, then you did not produce a significant amount of carbon (if that's your concern). If you created the hydrogen with a conventional power plant, you actually wasted energy and produced more carbon running your car with hydrogen than you would have with gasoline.
It's pretty simple science, that gets lost in politics.
Jonathan Fung [Gotakon]
Don,
What Luke means is that to make steam, energy has to be used. And generally, fossil fuels are burned to get that energy to make steam. So yes, while steam itself is just water vapor, pollution is still released from the fossil fuels burned to produce it. So I think Luke makes a good point when he says that "Just because you can’t smell the exhaust, doesn’t mean its not somewhere else."
And on that note? What exactly is the most up-to-date method on extracting pure hydrogen? Still zapping H20? I remember we did that in 8th grade science, then lit the contents of the test tubes on fire. Cool stuff.
Adam
Water vapor is considered the most abundant greenhouse gas, causing about 36-70% of the greenhouse effect on Earth. By comparison carbon dioxide causes 9-26%, methane causes 4-9%, and ozone causes 3-7%. Water vapor seems like a 'cleaner' alternative, but is potentially just as troublesome from a global-warming/climate-change standpoint.
CHARLES G.
Okay, class. Everyone put away their car keys and get out their Keds. Oh, sorry, that won't work either. Rubber soles and all that. Hmmm....
John Carder
Adam,
It's a mistake to lump water vapor in with greenhouse gases. While it can act like a greenhouse gas at high altitudes, low-level (
John Carder
Adam,
It's a mistake to lump water vapor in with greenhouse gases. While it can act like a greenhouse gas at high altitudes, low-level (less than 3km) clouds act as COOLING agents. That is the biggest problem with most of the climate models. They have no clue about low-level clouds, typically holding them constant. In other words, water vapor may cool more than it warms, depending on where it is, and in what form.
[apparently the html parser couldn't handle a "less-than" symbol]
luke hagen
Hey Jonathan,thanks for explaining to Don. And actually, the main source of the hydrogen for hydrogen cars right now is...fossil fuels! There are fewer emissions, but we are still dependent on using old dino juice.
To answer Chris...my solution is bike and use mass transit whenever you can, and have light fuel efficient vehicle when you can't. I know, crazy stuff.
We have to change, and I'm not against new environmentally friendly technology, but there are too many people drinking the "green kool-aid". All of the costs and benefits of any new technology should be scrutinized, not just assumed beneficial because the press release says they are.
Ducati Minor
Currently, the easiest source to extract hydrogen from is natual gas. Or so says Time, Popular Mechanics, and The NewsHour.
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