Why exactly is the US funding this? Why is the US EPA going to spend any money to clean up anything in Russia, last I checked the Russians took greak joy blocking anything we want to do in the UN. What does the US EPA hope to do once they fully understand the diesel black soot? Is the US EPA going to regulate Russian diesels so that the black soot is kept to some reasonable level? What a stupid waste of money.

This is the ugliest car I have ever seen.

I know all about how much money we spend to defend to worlds oil supply. I want off foriegn oil as much as the next guy but we do not have to give up our life style to get it. Personally, I think we should stop giving money to oil companies. All the money that we do spend on defending oil should then be taxed at the pump not on April 15. If that were the case the at the pump price would be 5 or 6 bucks a gallon and market forces would drive the changes you want and not require government mandates. But our politicans have no spine and can't see past the next election. How stupid is it to pay oil companys to bring us more and then tax us for using it. If I own a car why shouldn't i be able to get in it at my whim. Like I said if you wanted to do what you are talking about why don't you just go buy some deep cell batteries and plug those in. Its the same thing. Why does it have to be a battery in a car. If you are willing to give up the freedom to get in your car and go where ever when ever why are not not pushing for light rail and just give up the car completely. The american people are car people. While you and your flower power friends may be willing to give up some of your freedoms to achive this goal the rest of america isn't. Work something out with the utility where i can pay variable rates for electricity like industrial customers do and I will be willing to buy and sell power/

How is this supposed to work. This is an all electric car, right? So you put power in the battery when it is low and then you take power out when demand on the grid is high? What happens if you decide to go to a movie while your car is generously providing power back to the grid? Does your car ask you, "Would you like to drive to work in the morning or would you perfer that I help your utility avoid upgrading there system by proping up this side of town?" If this car were a hybrid with a diesel gen set or something to that effect i may see it working. I might see my car saying "hey look at that the grid is about to collapse and I have a full tank. The utility is paying $.15 per kW-hr right now. Would you like to make some money off your utilities incompitance by burning some of this diesel fuel?" This seems like a gemick. If this worked why don't people have deep cell batteries at there house to change and then resell the power back to the utility. (this is essentially the same thing) Where is my gain from reselling electricity back to the grid at the same rate that I bought it at? You know the utilities do this for themselves. Its called pumped storage, except they can take advantage of changing electrical rates.

This is what aggrivates me so much about proponents of hydrogen cars. They all say that it is made from a limitless resource (water). I read a article in popular mechanics a while back that said that the earth already consumes 75% of the avalible fresh water. After oil is gone the next wars will be fought over water rights.

True, algae biofuel may be expensive but we will eventually have no choice. The days of cheap oil are over. I don't think that liquid fuel is going anywhere because it is relativly light weight and has high energy density. Every one should check out this book; "Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller" EVs may take over most day to day commuting, but over the road driving will most likely only make since with a liquid fuel that can be refilled quickly. We may have to reinvent the way we travel.

When is california going to pass the law limiting vihicle ownership to one vehicle per household. that is the only real way that they are going to make any difference. You can limit CO2 all day long but if the number cars continues to increase the net result is more CO2. Even though CO2 is not a polutant. How about develop a mass transit system. Oh well, I am just keep looking for peak oil and all of this will be behind us because no one will be driving at that point.

This project smeels like government waste to me. Just reading the article it looks like they are getting DOD money, FEMA money, and DOE "green" money to build a "green" coal hauler. It is going to be a hard sale for me to believe that a hydrogen fuelcell was the cheapest option or the cleanest option. Since hydrogen is produced by reacting natural gas with steam there is more CO2 and other emission released from the manufacture of H2 then if you just burned the natural gas in the first place. I know that some people don't want to admit it because the emmission are far far away where you can't see them. What is the cost of the added hydrogen infrastructure? Hydrogen systems (as a whole), from production to end use, are horribly inefficient. Fuelcell themselves are great but the system is not that simple. H2 cost will always be neccessarly higher per BTU then natural gas. It may make since for the military (working in areas where the power is knocked out or deaster relief). I don't see how but maybe. No moving parts is an advantage. It would be just as easy and way less expensive to have a small gas turbine genset on the train instead of a fuel cell. As far as mining i don't see how its more expensive to electrify a mine than buy a 240 kW fuelcell and all the associated batteries. If you are using a train in the mine, it would seem to me that you have to lay rails and if you already haveing to put down rails why not lay the power rail at the same time. I know it sounds crazy but the NY subway has worked that way for a very long time and it looks alot like a train. Sounds like someone tring to make there dirty black coal mine look green. You know the saying about ear rings on a pig.

In the story that you referenced the hydrogen is not being produced on board the out from power from the battery which apparently is not produced from the engine but somehow from the braking. Hydrogen production consumes power. It does not produce it. Sorry, Hydrogen is at best a 60% effecient battery.

SJC, Your understanding of the Diesel engine is a little off. Diesel engine do not inject fuel in the same way that gasoline engines do. Your theroy kind of works with gasoline engine. With diesels injection does not occur on the intake stroke. Injection occurs at 10 to 12 degrees before DTC on the compression stroke and the injection continues until a few degrees before BDC on the power stroke. The reason that injection starts before DTC is so that the fuel has adaquate delay for ignition for the pistion to reach TDC. If the fuel were injected on the intake it would start to ignite on the compression stroke (bad). Once the fuel has ignited (at TDC) the rest of the fuel is injected, burns, expands, and produces power. If your theory is right then hydrogen (injected on the intake with the air as discribed in the story) would work to screw up the timing and cause the fuel (or just the hydrogen) to ignite early on the compression stroke instead of the power stroke which would make fuel actually fight the engine not help it. Not to metion that oxygen consumed on the compression stroke is not there to be consumed on the power stroke. Diesel need a fuel with high cetane rating (ignitability) which is the oposite of octane (resistance to auto-ignition). Diesel engines need fuel that will not resist auto ignition and burn quickly, hydrogen has a octane rating of over 100. I would not put hydrogen in my diesel because it would be like putting high octane gasoline in it. There is a reason that ASTM D975 has a lower limit on Cetain and its not a comspiracy to keep the water-to-gas people down. Its bad for the engine.

Ok, look, it doesn't matter how you swap them around or what order you use them in. You get nowhere by going from one commodity to another. Especially if that commodity is not renewable. Swap gasoline for coal, or gasoline for diesel, or gasoline for natural gas, or gasoline for hydrogen made from coal, natural gas, or electrolysis of water where the electricity came from burning coal, natural gas,.... The thing you are switching to is going to go up in price and we are still on a nonrenewable, carbon based, fossil fuel. I am all for diversifying our fleet of cars but you can already run cars on gas, diesel, natural gas, electricity, or any number of renewable. 500M would be much better spend developing the infrastructure to diversify the current fleet. This will bring down fuel prices by using more stuff that not gasoline it makes it easier to introduce new renewable fuels. The easiest renewable to develop are going to run best in cars that can run on natural gas and diesel not gasoline. We are upside down and this does nothing to break us of carbon based fuel.