http://www.drive.com.au/news/article.asp?article=http://drive.fairfax.com.au/content-new/news/general/2003/09/18/FFXVJ8GOPKD.html

Whichever way they choose, please give us more power!

Ugh! Please tell me they're not banking on this as their next upgrade to rotary power! They've been working on hydrogen powered motors for years, and while they've had some interesting successes, I wouldn't exactly call them powerful. At any rate, this technology is still years away from production. And....hybrid motors? And it would be prohibitively expensive to simply making the current rotary a bit bigger?

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that this is disinformation. Whew!

jds

I read somewhere that hydrogen has less energy measured in BTU's per unit volume then gasoline. Actually gasoline has one of the highest energy per volume of any fuels. The other problems is that it takes more energy to extract hydrogen from water then it will give back when its combusted.

I actually like the hybrid idea, but my interest would be more of using the electric motors to assist take-off in the front wheels, just like Honda's new generation NSX concept. A pseudo-all wheel drive rotary powered RX-8 that gets 30 to 40 mpg. Cool! :D



Magic8

This issue has been done to death here - do a search for hydrogen. But just in case I haven't completely made an arse of myself, I'll try to touch on a few points here.

I like hydorgen. There are some books on Amazon ("The Hydrogen Economy") that go deep into it. I guess I like it because it helps the environment (net). The biggest problem is getting enough hydrogen "gas stations" to compete with gasoline.

Yes, hydrogen packs less punch per gallon than oil, so don't think this'll solve your HP problems. And yes it takes a lot of energy to produce, if you use electrolisys. But there are other ways of getting hydrogen, as the by-product of many industrial processes.

And just look at the energy it takes to make a tank of gas:
- Years of military build-up
- take that military to a middle-eastern country, overthrow the dictator, and create your own government
- build oil wells there
- build pipline
- run tankers to bring the oil back here, some of which break up off the coast killing all marine life for miles around
- refine the oil
- pay Ken Lay's salary
- ship refined gasoline to local gas station
- put 15 gal in your RX8 to go 150 miles
- spew tons of smoke in the air
- bribe government officials not to notice

But we already have an infrastructure to do all of the above, so why change?

I'm not trying to troll, and I realize I've stepped on a political minfield, and I realize I'll probably regret hitting the Submit button, but here goes ...

Oh, I don't have a problem with hydrogen as a fuel at all. I think it has exciting potential for the future. It is not, however, any sort of near term answer to getting a more powerful Renesis, whether it be for an updated RX-8, a new RX-7, whatever, which seemed to be what the little referenced blurb was implying.

jds

To improve MPG, I've been thinking about getting larger diameters at the wheels, in lieu of a lower rear end ratio. May do that when my treads wear out. Have 1800 on the odo, so waiting for mileage to level off (now at 19+) before turning off the DSC to see that effect (hoping its worth 1-2 mpg). Was really counting on Mazda to come through on the 24 hi-way, that I thought I'd be able to squeeze out to 24+ with efficient driving.

What I'd really like to see is an RX car with hybrid propulsion. Can you think of a super tuned rotary (constant speed) "mini Hoover Dam" driving wheel mounted electrics for 50+ hp at the wheels and 35+ mpg? Would like to see what the "conventional" HP geeks would do in a side-by-side against that setup.

Sounds funny now, but by 2008, you may be laughing with, rather than at, me.

BTW, This car ROCKS!! Just needs a more modern (efficient) propulsion system.