Hydrogen Cars, Vehicles and Infrastructure
Includes hydrogen infrastructure issues not covered in production, storage and distribution areas.
by guest blogger Stan Thompson If you’ve ever seen a slow-motion video of a dropped glass object shattering, then—the video reversed—reassembling to form the whole again, you have some notion of futurism. Futurists pay attention to the moving fragments all around us: which are biggest; how they are shaped and spinning; and the direction toward […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson updated 12/21/2020 In the late 1800s Nikola Tesla took Thomas Edison’s DC and alternated the polarity back and forth so that its voltage could be stepped up by a transformer and hauled much further by overcoming electrical resistance. Way off in the distance, at the user end, another transformer stepped […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson Very different processes distribute the earth’s mineral wealth and the political configurations of its surface. Though different, they coincide in ways that profoundly impact our destinies. In the late industrial period, the relative value of energy has been so high, and energy extraction as oil and gas has been so […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson Davidson College is near our NC home and its proximity offers neighbors access to an astonishing parade of great minds. In 1962 I met cosmologist George Gamow there and got to ask him a few questions. Albert Einstein had died only seven years earlier; some would say Gamow was his […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson The world may little note nor long remember the routine June 8, 2020, press release by Germany’s venerable Thyssenkrupp industrial giant. But to me it is a transition marker that’s profound in the same way that the tiny band of iridium and ash around the world marks the cretaceous-tertiary boundary […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson When Russia and Japan recently exchanged econdev ideas (December 2019) at the ministerial level, two of the specifics discussed were hydrogen production and greater use of the Trans-Siberia Railway. Those two dots, connected with others, could lead to Russia leaping the high speed bump now obstructing the way to wireless fuel cell […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger, Stan Thompson Let’s limit the damage to hydrogen progress caused by “friendly fire.” Good reportage, scholarship and fair play do not require that every article point out that most hydrogen comes from extracted carbon. It’s true, it’s undeniable—but it’s totally irrelevant. The vast amounts of hydrogen produced from hydrocarbons to make petrochemicals, […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson On Sunday, September 16, 2018, at Bremervörde, in the State of Niedersachsen, Germany, I boarded the first intercity hydrail train—my dream since 2003! It was Alstom’s shiny new blue Coradia iLint Hydrogen Multiple Unit light rail train, wireless electric and silent as the wind turbines on the North German horizon […]
Continue Readinga first step toward bringing hydrail back home by guest blogger, Stan Thompson North Carolina operates its own passenger railway service. The State Department of Transportation has begun plans to modify the locomotives on its line from the State Capital (Raleigh) to the State’s biggest city, (Charlotte) to be powered electrically by hydrogen via fuel […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson The University of Rome II at Tor Vergata hosted the Thirteenth International Hydrail Conference the week of June 4, 2018, and it was a delightful success! Professor Stefano Cordiner and his colleagues saw that the Conference ran like a well-oiled clock (Tutto era semplicemente perfetto! Grazie!). The IHC’s have come […]
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