I ran across this page and found it to be interesting to say the least. I used these guys a few times back when I was in college to order some radioactive isotopes for some research I was doing. At any rate it looks to be legit from a company/technical standpoint, they just appear to be having trouble with their Hydrogen generator making the amount of Hydrogen they want to produce in over a specific amount of time.

The Vette they are using is a C4, but the kit looks like to will be sold for ours as well. I wonder what all is involved in installing something like this. I know there would be a weight increase, but the ability to drive using either gas or hydrogen seemlessly sounds promising. What do you all think about the technical merits of such a system. Also, read the link before flaming about driving around a bomb or such. They appear to have addressed this in their design

United Nuclear Hydrogen Kit

 

Only problem is hydrogen doesnt rhyme with grass or a$$.

 

 

Can't get enough of these either

Just wondering why this company can put this together so easily (relative term) when it will take the major auto makers (except for Mazda) 10+ years to come up with a viable solution

 

It seems as though they are getting the whole hydrogen car thing figured out. My only question is about the power output. Is the hp when running on H2 comparable, better, or worse, than when running on gasoline. I would hate to see the day where all cars run on hydrogen, but are heavy and underpowered. I also wonder about the sound while running on H2. Does it still sound like a corvette?

 

Currently on vehicles tested by BMW and Mazda, they are seeing worst case scenerios of a 20% loss in power over Regular Grade gasoline. So this would bring my Vette from 350bhp to about 280bhp along with the weight increase of the tanks and the minimal increase from the extra electronics and lines. I am not sure what the tanks will weigh though. I wonder if it will add 50lbs,100lbs, 200lbs It's hard saying

 

I agree it is not something that I would want to do at this point I just thought that it was interesting that this small company is coming out with options such as this when the large auto makers are struggling to bring alt fuel vehicles to market. I was also wondering what may be envolved in installing a system like this.

Now for us who plan on keeping a Vette for 20 years, something like this may become a necassary evil someday, but for now gas is still relatively cheap here in the USA

 

I agree that they do not make economic sense...yet. Sooner or later though, they very well may. Especially once cheaper ways of extracting hydrogen become available such as nuclear fusion (new reactor going up in france) or if demand keeps out doing supply for petrol

 

Hydrogen powered vehicles use an electric motor as the power plant. Power is not an issue as there are electric drag cars. These things are very fast! The only problem is the weight of the batteries. Currently fuel cells might be a tad big and heavy but the technology is getting smaller all the time. And Hydrogen is about 20 times more exposive than gasoline. But it is also more abundant.

 

can you say bump/boom. If corvette makes it I'll drive it ,untill than give me GAS. [pass the tumes please]

 

If you read the details of this company's work, the tanks are not explosive whatsoever. These guys did their homework and I want in on the IPO if they go public (if they are not yet). Their system seems very well engineered, and if they can change two factors (storage capacity of the hydrogen and the recharge time), this is about as close as you will get to the Mr Fusion in Back to the Future...

Also, again in the details of the webpage, you will see that the extraction/generation of hydrogen with their system is FREE, using solar power across 24 hours of sunlight. I follow all alternate forms of energy pretty closely, and if this company would team up with the Canadian team that just developed IR solar cells (30+% efficient vs 10-20% for visible light cells), they would have the solution. Take this research one step further, and couple this solution with a solar IR cell roof panel, and you could have the system regenerate the hydrogen while you are work, endless almost free power...

As for the payback period, if you kept the system and took it off one car and moved it to another, the payback for a 10K investment is worth it. We have people at work that commute many miles to work and have an average $4K annual purchases in fuel, this system pays for itself in 3 years.