The H-racer ($40), a new toy car from a Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies, is a fascinating look into the potential hydrogen economy—although a sad excuse for a toy. The H-racer is pretty much pointless without it’s Hydrogen Station accessory ($40), which extracts hydrogen from water using electrolysis. That process is powered either by an included solar panel or by AA batteries.
The folks from Horizon admit that they are a fuel cell company, not a toy manufacturer, and perhaps it might require the skills of a seasoned toy industry veteran to include something such as remote radio control. But was it too much of an intellectual challenge for a company of engineers who spend their days blueprinting fuel cell stacks to design wheels that steer?
Okay, so the thing only goes in one direction, the fun part is supposed to be the hands-on demo of the technology that will single-handedly solve the fuel crisis. Here’s how it works: First, you build the car (which involves around 10 minutes of hooking up internal tubes and screwing together the case). Then you use an included syringe to extract any residual gasses in the car’s hydrogen tank—really just a little balloon. Next you plug the car into the fueling station, fill the station’s pump with water, plug in the solar panel, and wait. Then, after around three minutes, you get sick of waiting, and you turn on the battery power to fill the tank at a less glacial pace.
Then you’re ready to go. Flip the on/off switch on the bottom of the racer and its little wheels turn as fast as they can—which is actually not that fast at all. Nor is it that far. In our tests, the racer seemed to travel around 25 feet before petering out. (Inexplicably, this seems to occur while the balloon is still full.)
Nevertheless, the H-racer does provide a powerful lesson about the feasibility of a hydrogen fuel economy. And that lesson is that, as demonstrated, it is a disappointing power delivery system. As you patiently wait ten minutes for the fueling station to extract enough energy from the solar panel to create enough hydrogen to eventually run the car, you can’t help wondering why you didn’t just strap the solar panel and a battery to the car and be done with it? Instead of a miracle fuel, the tank full of hydrogen is just acting as a complicated battery with plenty of built-in inefficiency and extraordinarily low capacity.
So what’s the lesson? Hydrogen is a nice, clean way to run an electric motor, but pure hydrogen doesn’t just make itself. These days, when battery-powered cars such as the Tesla can go 130 mph and get up to 250 miles on a charge, the happy hydrogen future seems more and more like a lot of pressurized gas.
The folks from Horizon admit that they are a fuel cell company, not a toy manufacturer, and perhaps it might require the skills of a seasoned toy industry veteran to include something such as remote radio control. But was it too much of an intellectual challenge for a company of engineers who spend their days blueprinting fuel cell stacks to design wheels that steer?
Okay, so the thing only goes in one direction, the fun part is supposed to be the hands-on demo of the technology that will single-handedly solve the fuel crisis. Here’s how it works: First, you build the car (which involves around 10 minutes of hooking up internal tubes and screwing together the case). Then you use an included syringe to extract any residual gasses in the car’s hydrogen tank—really just a little balloon. Next you plug the car into the fueling station, fill the station’s pump with water, plug in the solar panel, and wait. Then, after around three minutes, you get sick of waiting, and you turn on the battery power to fill the tank at a less glacial pace.
Then you’re ready to go. Flip the on/off switch on the bottom of the racer and its little wheels turn as fast as they can—which is actually not that fast at all. Nor is it that far. In our tests, the racer seemed to travel around 25 feet before petering out. (Inexplicably, this seems to occur while the balloon is still full.)
Nevertheless, the H-racer does provide a powerful lesson about the feasibility of a hydrogen fuel economy. And that lesson is that, as demonstrated, it is a disappointing power delivery system. As you patiently wait ten minutes for the fueling station to extract enough energy from the solar panel to create enough hydrogen to eventually run the car, you can’t help wondering why you didn’t just strap the solar panel and a battery to the car and be done with it? Instead of a miracle fuel, the tank full of hydrogen is just acting as a complicated battery with plenty of built-in inefficiency and extraordinarily low capacity.
So what’s the lesson? Hydrogen is a nice, clean way to run an electric motor, but pure hydrogen doesn’t just make itself. These days, when battery-powered cars such as the Tesla can go 130 mph and get up to 250 miles on a charge, the happy hydrogen future seems more and more like a lot of pressurized gas.
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