I came across a diagram where there is a picture of a car with a fuel cell and with it is a battery, what is the battery used for? To initially start the car?
Most fuel cells do require energy to start the reaction - but it is just initially to generate some heat. You could do this with a small battery to start it up, so the large batteries are not necessary for that. What they are there for is because fuel cells are good at providing a very consistent amount of electricity - they aren't very good at providing big bursts of electricity all at once, and you can't use regenerative breaking to recharge a fuel cell. So instead, you have a battery pack that is much smaller than the battery pack that would be used on a car like the Leaf, and instead you have a fairly small battery pack like the one used in a Prius or some other hybrid car. Personally, while I certainly like hydrogen fuel better than gasoline, it is ultimately just a stop gap until we can drive pure electric vehicles. Because of that, and because fuel cell technology is very expensive, and because we have ZERO hydrogen infrastructure, I'm going to skip them and get an all electric (Leaf) instead. :)
i'm no longer likely to remark approximately hydrogen gasoline cells, different than to declare that i think of they would be out of attain (till and till they resolve the platinum situation) yet i've got owned the two a 2003 honda civic hybrid and a 2006 peugeot diesel (a million.6 Litre HDi -- no longer offered in the u . s .). The diesel have been given 60 mpg. The hybrid began out at fifty 5 and dropped to 40 six, inspite of careful employing. For hilly aspects, hybrids are solid on the downhill, annoying on the uphill. Diesels on the different hand, are very zippy. till those days i thought that diesel became into pass, and that the only situation became into that US wasn't mandating for using extremely low-sulphur the way that Europe is (see the wikipedia article decrease than) yet then i got here across the Union of in touch Scientists record, which incorporates right here assistance Diesel automobiles can help a motor vehicle holiday 30 to greater effective than 40 p.c. farther on a gallon of diesel gasoline. although, this earnings is barely partly because of the better performance of diesel engines, which furnish a fifteen to twenty-5 p.c. progression over gasoline. the relax enhance is by technique of the certainty that diesel gasoline incorporates 13 p.c. greater means than a gallon of gasoline. so, till we mandate that all and sundry new automobiles be great efficient (in spite of the fact that if hybrid-gasoline, hybrid-diesel, plug-in electric, or veggie oil) , the fee aspects are going to be very intense. i think of that, if the precedence for ALL new motor vehicle manufacturers became into performance, then the financial gadget of scale rule might propose that the retooling costs may well be decrease, and shall we arise with the money for to have greater particularly processed gasoline, or categories of engines. plenty to think of approximately!
