I did see a report that even the legislators may be backing off a bit. Speed would not be limited mechanically but a warning system woould blare at a driver if he exceeded the local limit. It's all nonsense, of course, and doesn't save lives. You can't legislate against stupidity. I've been stuck on a U.S. highway behind two semis, one passing the other. Both governed, of course, but as luck would have it, one of them could do 1mph more than the other. Mile after mile after mile.....until there was a huge tail-back of very frustrated drivers, all devoutly blessing their politicians for introducing these essential safety measures and celebrating all the lives not lost. Yeah, right! Sorry, doesn't work.
I imagine that they are getting huge pushback already, from every auto manufacturer in Europe. The negative impact on engineering innovation alone would be immense. In fact, I expect the legislators in Europe are going to get their heads bitten off on this one.
It's one thing to try and eliminate carbon emissions, and even with the obvious survival motive quite hard enough. But to go after performance, like speed is now a negative, that just strikes at the heart of why people have cars at all. If people wanted to get somewhere slowly, they could take a bus or a bicycle... or walk.
This sounds like something the Soviet Bloc would do. "No Ferrari to dream about for you, not even a VW Golf. But you can have a Trabant. It goes exactly as fast as every other car or truck or tractor out there."
Now this would be an even better idea than a speed limiter. Have a build in speed detector system that automatically issues a ticket every time the car goes over the speed limit. Its going to solve the problem for 99% of the cars out there.
Oh, god it would be like Demolition Man or something. "John Spartan, you have been fined 20 credits for a violation of the drivers' morality statute...."
Recently, I rented a car while I was back east, and every time I hit 130 km/h, it would sound some ominous warning, like it was going to snitch on me or something.
The ICE getting banned by 2030. Well if it could burn hydrogen gas (by product of combustion is water), it won't be. But burning carbon fuels, yeah I can see that, but alot of infrastructure has to be made in order to eliminate carbon fuels.
Every country should be madly producing solar cells but they aren't.... and put them towards a central grid for power. limits are battery storage means.
Chances are in the future it will either be a fuel cell car or a ICE burning hydrogen.
A fuel cell car can have a battery as the floor, making any type of interior space limitless.
Storage of hydrogen is problematic, as a liquid and even as a compressed gas. A car travelling at over 80 km/h getting into an accident could turn into a fireball.
Hydrogen is no worse than gasoline or propane for being explosive / flammable, but as you say, it is harder (in general) to store. Still, the tanks they store them in are pretty tough.
I can't see it powering direct combustion engines though - at least not for road travel. More likely it will be used to power a combo of fuel cells + electric motors. As such, the hybrid vehicles of tomorrow would not be using carbon-emitting engines, but likely would be a combo of plug-in electric with hydrogen fuel cells to extend range or boost power when needed.
The availability of hydrogen as an element is of course, massive. But the
useful availability of hydrogen as a fuel - replacing carbon fuels - depends entirely on what source of energy is being used to extract it. It takes a lot of energy.
Burning any carbon fuel (coal, natural gas, etc.) to create "clean" hydrogen would put society no further ahead. The energy input for cracking would have to depend on either renewables (solar, tidal, wind), or nuclear (expending uranium or thorium as fuel).
Same principle goes for BC's LNG project. The energy used by LNG for cooling and storage is massive. If they are burning gas to cool and store gas, the GHG emissions will be massive also, so it's hardly a solution to curb carbon emissions. To have any prospect of improving the emissions situation at all, the whole plant has to be electrified - drawing power from the BC hydroelectric grid. (Makes the purpose of the Site C project clearer now, huh?)
