Hydro rx-8 to be released in Japan!
 

Todays wall street journal says "Mazda is expected to announce at the Tokyo Motor Show, which opens Oct 22, that it will begin leasing a version of the RX-8 sports car in Japan with a combustion engine that burns hydrogen as well as gasoline"

I knew it existed, but didnt know it will be released to public.

Do you know what section and page this was on?

it is in section D on page 5. upper right hand corner.

The title of the article is "Mazda concept will run on three fuels" the title refers to a gasoline-electric-hydrogen minivan concept called premacy. The part about the rx-8 is in the column all the way to the right.

yea the hydrogen hybrid RX-8 was approved by Japanese govt for street use a few months ago, so it was just a matter of time before it hits the streets :D

it's gonna be interesting how this'll work out :D

What is the official performance of the hydrogen RX8?

It is supposed to have the electric assisted turbocharger on it also :)

so do you think a RX8 that produces water as its main emission will be more or less likely to flood?

jk, thats cool, cant wait to see how they do. I wonder what systems are in place so you can run gas or hydrogen.

Also hydrogen power (at the moment) isnt the 'cure all' for the oil crisis, since the hydrogen we run those cars on is made in a process that uses oil...and other fossil fules.

IIRC, like 108bhp or something weak :o

Well--that was one of the engines if I recall--cause its a hybrid if I'm not mistaken. The combine output was in the 180 range I thought :confused:

yeah i'm gonna have to dig up that Mazda press release somewhere to get the actual number...

http://www.greencar.com/index.cfm?content=features6


"The Renesis hydrogen engine features 210 horsepower when running on gasoline and 110 horsepower on less energy-dense gaseous hydrogen. "
________
naughtyPREGNANT

nothing a little turbo can't fix :)

I think the 110hp was with a turbo.

Dual fuel capability is a good way to start in my opinion. Too much change too fast could be detrimental. And the infrastructure will have time to really develop.

It's a 4 port motor, i'm assuming?

Can it switch fuels on the fly? It would great if it could be controlled through the ECU. Use gas under load and hydrogen during closed loop cruising. 110 hp is more than adequate for steady state cruising.

i believe there's a switch that allows switching between the 2 fuel types

which also means the engine has TWO complete sets of injectors, one for hydrogen, the other gasoline.

Mazda Concept Car Will Run on Three Fuels

By JATHON SAPSFORD
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
October 5, 2005; Page D5

YOKOHAMA, Japan -- In a sign of the growing competition to develop autos that run on alternative sources of energy, Mazda Motor Corp. will unveil a concept car this month that runs on a combination of gasoline, electricity and hydrogen.

The Premacy Hydrogen RE Hybrid is a concept minivan with cutting-edge technology under the hood -- and across the rest of the vehicle. Along with a gasoline engine up front, the car is powered by a large electric battery packed under the second row of passenger seats. In addition, a third row of seats has been replaced by a tank filled with compressed hydrogen gas.


The Premacy gasoline-electric-hydrogren concept minivan from Mazda.


The concept version of the Premacy, which, with a standard gasoline engine, is a key part of Mazda's lineup, was developed for the Tokyo Motor Show, an industry event that tends to showcase more futuristic, dream technologies than many other car shows around the world. The company said it has no immediate plans to mass produce such a vehicle, and the point of such concepts is usually to showcase new engineering work. However, that such a technologically complex vehicle was developed at all underscores the growing efforts of car makers to address the problems of gasoline engines, from the rising cost of fuel to environmentally harmful emissions.

The car is an attempt to meld two technologies. The first is hybrid propulsion systems, which Mazda has been developing along with its affiliate, Ford Motor Co. These power vehicles through a combination of traditional gasoline engines and electric motors and are suddenly popular with consumers. The Premacy functions much like a hybrid: It has a combustion engine, which receives help from electric motors. These run on electricity that is generated by functions such as braking and is stored in a huge battery.

But with the Premacy concept, Mazda is attempting to combine this electric-motor engine with a combustion engine that is itself a kind of hybrid engine -- one that can burn either gasoline or hydrogen, whichever the driver chooses. The company already has spent years developing such dual-fuel combustion engines and says they are now ready for the mass market. Mazda is expected to announce at the Tokyo Motor Show, which opens Oct. 22, that it will begin leasing a version of the RX-8 sports car in Japan with a combustion engine that burns hydrogen as well as gasoline.

Hydrogen is normally seen as an alternative energy source for use in cars powered by fuel cells, in which the chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen is used to generate electricity. Fuel-cell technology is attractive because it releases no harmful emissions, and Japan has roughly 15 government-run hydrogen stations to encourage the use of alternative fuels. More are expected.

But fuel-cell technology is also extremely expensive. Because of this, most industry experts think commercial use of fuel-cell cars is years, if not decades, away. That is why Mazda has been developing engines that burn hydrogen much like gasoline. Burning hydrogen, according to Mazda, is much more practical.

"Fuel cells rely on a lot of components that the car industry doesn't make at the moment," said Akihiro Kashiwagi, the engineer and manager in charge of Mazda's hydrogen-vehicle program. But engines that burn hydrogen are "much simpler," he said. Other car makers, notably in Europe, also have experimented with combustion engines that burn hydrogen.

Write to Jathon Sapsford at jathon.sapsford@wsj.com1

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112846233890259921.html


Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) mailto:jathon.sapsford@wsj.com

Barrier to widespread hydrogen use is not in technology, rather it is the lack of hydrogen infrastructure that precludes its widespread adoption. Blame big oil (conspiracy?) for that.

No mention of the Rotary engine specifically.

it IS a rotary engine, in the Premacy

yes, they put a rotary engine in a minivan, the end is nigh folks, the end!!!! :o

An even larger barrier to H2 use is the fact that there is no natural resouce for H2. It has to be extracted from other resources, electricy to split H2O, or refining of oil to break apart the long chain Hydrocarbons into CO2 and H2. H2 can be considered a great battery, but it shouldn't be considered a 'fuel source,' since more energy goes into producing H2 than you get out by burning it.

The hope is to use renewable electricy generation sources (or others like nuke power) to create H2. Some argue that this hope is misplaced, since we would have to have 40% more energy than we use now to become a Hydrogen society. Bad news is we may have no choice. If petrolium geophysicists are correct we are nearly 1/2 through the world's supply of oil... (Read up on "Peak Oil.") This is bad news because the last 1/2 of the oil underground is much harder to retreive than the first 1/2.

BTW, my father is a geophysicists who worked in the oil undustry from the 60's throught the 80's. He saw the US Peak oil bell curve first hand. I encourage everyone to read the two books by Ken Deffeyes( Search on Amazon). The books will give you a good understanding of the hard, cold science behind oil formation, extraction, and also some insight into what could happen after peak oil.

I think what you guys are getting at is that Hydrogen is an energy carrier. It takes energy to combine/create the molecule and later you can get that energy back out (with a loss). Hydrogen will be the fuel of the future in 100 years. Battery powered cars really are not practical in large voulmes and are, in reality, inefficient energy carriers due to their excessive wait, waiste problems and low life cycles. The most they expect to get is maybe 4 years out of high yield batteris at a cost of 2.5k per replacement.

As for hybrid, well, they suck. They only work in stop and go traffic well. The NHTSC did a study and said that hybrids actually barely get better gas mileag than normal cars. It's the number one complaint amongst owners. The NHTSC said that it would take 12 years at driving the car 12k a year to make back the money in savings of gas given the extra cost of the car. Not too slick.
Here's why hydrogen will be the fuel of the future:

1) Completely renewable:
a) It recombines to produce water vapor.
b) Solar energy can be used/hydroelectric energy can be used and nuclear energy can be used.
c) The devices are so simple ( cathode/anode and seperater) that many people build them and keep them in their garage.
d) Energy output is better than propane and methane at around 70% of gas powered cars (theoretical maximum given the density that can be injected into the engine since the fuel will be in gas form not vapor).

2) There is no alternative fuel. Methane an propane aren't going to be able to cut it. Especially since one ( can't remember which ) produces dangerous amounts of carcenagens.

The reason that the Rensis will only put out around 50% with hydrogen is because it is dual fuel. We limit our combustion temperatures through leaning and compression because excessive temps produce nasty nitrogen emmissions. The bad thing is that we are restricting ourselves to about 18% efficiency on fossil fuel. If we ran it hotter (lean burn) we'd get a lot more energy. Of course material limitations also hinder that max temp. Same is with a rocket engine (they could get better mdot efficieny). Now if you build a hydrogen onyl car, you could make some neat changes. For instance, run a lot hotter. Then, you could really get up to the 70% mark. However, they still aren't able to get above that because they can't seem to get enough fuel in there. I'm sure it will get better. They say we only have 50 years left of fossil fuel so somethings gotta happen.

BTW Mazda has tested a fleet of 100 hydrogen fueled rotary powered 626's back in the mid 90's, down here in Ca. There was write up in a Popular Science magazine.

The RE in "Premacy Hydrogen RE Hybrid" stands for Rotary Engine. I guess Mazda takes it for granted that everyone knows that abbreviation.

Well, gasoline internal combustion engines are 'hydrogen powered'.

What is so lovely about gasoline is that per unit volume there's lots-o-hydrogen atoms available for combustion.

What is totally crap about H is that it is not dense at all...in fact the lightest element in the universe, #1 in the periodic table. Compressed hydrogen is a crap way to tote potential energy around. Even compressed, the amount of mass per unit volume is a joke compared with hydrocarbons. Not to mention the very many problems with toting around highly compressed explosive gas around in a moving vehicle with people inside. Pretty stupid, really.

What would be really cool would be to utilize hydrogen to synthesize a compound with similar properties to hydrocarbons...liquid at reasonable temperatures & relatively dense w/a lot of hydrogen per unit mass.

Cracking H20 with electrolysis is admittedly inelegant but there's lots of untapped wind, tidal, geothermal, and *gasp* nuclear power available to make hydrogen, which is really a 'battery' of sorts. Converting that to another, more dense substance would put Al Qaida, I mean Exxon, er, Saudi Arabia, um, OK, all of the above out of business.