I’m thinking there’s a market (well an aftermarket) for this…So long as it doesn’t play “turkey in the straw” on a loop and make me hungry for icecream.
Hydrogen isn’t really a fuel, because exploitable free hydrogen does not occur naturally on earth. It’s usually considered an energy storage medium, one that is far less suitable for automotive use than the type of batteries the Teslas use.
If you go to a hydrogen filling station in Cali, you’ll find that the hydrogen is made from… wait for it… fossil fuels! You’re just storing the energy temporarily in an expensive hydrogen storage cell.
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[quote=“fuzzyfungus, post:3, topic:50533, full:true”]
I admit to being somewhat baffled by the enthusiasm for engine noise, since noise is, every bit as much as heat, just a symptom of inefficiency, some energy not being used to propel you with suitable power.[/quote]
I’m also actually a bit puzzled by the enthusiasm for speed and power, given that there’s virtually no place where anyone can legally open up even a normal car to anywhere near it’s limits, never mind a sportscar.
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Technically, all fuels are just energy storage mediums. The only question is how the energy came to be stored there.
It’s nice to have a car that can get out of its own way, even if it’s only on freeway on-ramps. During those benighted early years of attempted fuel-efficiency and half-assed emissions standards of the 1970s, you were lucky if your flashy ride could even make noise, let alone do a quarter mile in less than a quarter-minute. But now that even the cheapest 6-cylinder Camaro gets 323 horsepower and 30 mpg (and a speedy-looking DeLorean can be handily outpaced by a bonestock Toyota minivan), we are truly spoiled for performance these days.
Man, you never realize how much you appreciate it until you’re forced to drive without it for a few years.
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Yup.
But it doesn’t blind me. Because frankly, if you’s relying entirely on your hearing to make decisions about moving cars, I dare say you are doing it wrong.
Sure, but generally we’ve made the useful distinction that a fuel is something you harvest from nature and refine, and then destroy to do work. Tesla talked about it a little in 1915.
But admittedly there are always problems with such definitions - if I steal my hydrogen from you at gunpoint, I guess I could call it “harvesting”, eh? 
Humans are part of nature!
In any case hydrogen has such an incredibly horrible energy density by unit volume that it’s really not possible to make a hydrogen car that can compete with a gas car. The math doesn’t work. Gasoline’s 34.2 MJ/l, and H2 is 0.01005. Even if you make a massively heavy pressurized cryogenic storage system that outweighs a school bus, you still can’t store hydrogen at anything approaching the energy density of gasoline.
Hydrogen is essentially an oil company scam, when you’re talking about cars.
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Unless you’re one of the tens of millions of pedestrians who are actually blind.
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Slow down, it’s beginning to sound like the Inspector Gadget theme.
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Tis true. The SS Ignoble Calumny ain’t what you would call an eco-friendly frigate.
But she’s MY ship. Which means I’m the only one who’s got the right to slander her.
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Blind people can hear electric cars just fine, without any noisemakers. See my response to Davide405, above, which references the bad science and flawed conclusion of this study as the reason people think that electric cars need noisemakers.
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So every motor vehicle needs to be as loud as every other motor vehicle? Is that a realistic thing?
I didn’t say that. I’m saying not everyone who relies on hearing to detect coming cars is “doing it wrong.”
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Which I didn’t actually say. Okay, reading back, I did kinda say. But it wasn’t actually what I meant.
What I meant was that I’m having trouble actually conceiving of using hearing to build and maintain a mental map of multiple cars and their trajectories that is sufficiently complete and accurate. The hypothetical I responded to mentioned the normal sound of an electric car being masked by the roar of a semi to say that the electric car needs to make enough noise to be heard over the accelerating semi. That line of thinking, to me, sounds rather unrealistic.
please redo your J/L calculations using liquified hydrogen. Thanks!
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Very cool, thanks, and it’s kind of amazing that the video was posted in 2009. Why aren’t we all driving electric by now? Rhetorical q, :-/
I enjoy the near silent take off of the Prius, especially when I can be a block ahead by the time the person next to me who is in their phone realizes the light is green, and then laugh at them at the next light. Some passengers say “Do you hear sirens?” when I decelerate or “Is your transmission slipping?” when I accelerate.
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Guess what I did on my last trip to Berlin 
That said, nasty Peugeot crossover hire cars don’t feel especially safe at high speed.
Also, I drove a Ferarri track car around the Vegas motor speedway and that was an awful lot of fun (also, scary, and over way too quickly).
But driving in the US (and particularly, driving automatics) is a slow, boring, soulless thing). Even driving in the UK is more fun. But should driving be fun? I’d commute any other way if it was practical and safe.
