Hydrogen Cars, Vehicles and Infrastructure
This category involves the myths surrounding hydrogen fuel and hydrogen cars.
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 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 Many of us who saw the hydrogen transition coming over two decades ago are frustrated by writers today who feel obliged to apologize for the vast amount of hydrogen that goes into fertilizer and petrochemicals. Many of these folks probably feel they have to mention it because so many have […]
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 (a version of this blog first appeared in my Mooresville Tribune column) Still hanging in the air is the sensationalism smoke (“Oh, the humanity!”) from the 1937 Hindenburg myth. It’s polluted the true hydrogen story for about 80 years too long. Maybe it’s time to clear the air by whistling-up […]
Continue Readingby Guest Blogger Stan Thompson A headline in the January 2018 online issue of Britain’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers publication is the latest hydrail transition landmark: Transport Secretary calls for hydrogen trains Transport Secretary Chris Grayling has said the introduction of hydrogen-powered trains is “a priority” for Britain’s railways. The article by Amit Katwala goes […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger, Stan Thompson Media covering the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week missed one of the biggest stories there. The new Hydrogen Council announced at the Forum included Alstom Transport, the Paris-based train builder that’s sold 40-50 hydrail trains to four German states. Last year the German Federal Ministry of Transport published an […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson It’s been 18 years since Dr. Holger Busche proposed that German electric passenger trains could run on wind energy carried on board as hydrogen. Once pointed out, it was an obvious thing to pursue; but the first German hydrail train won’t go into service until late next year. The impediment hasn’t […]
Continue ReadingThere is an old joke that hydrogen (and hydrogen cars) are the future and always will be. The phrasing has changed from one hater, critic or denier to the next, but the sentiment is the same. And I beg to differ on this statement. As I test drove a Mirai fuel cell vehicle (pictured […]
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