MAZDA RX8 Hydrogen Powered!!
 

My dad and I went to the North American International Auto Show in Detroit yester day.

And low and behold up on a rotationg platform there was a white RX8 that was powered by both Hydrogen and Gasoline.

There was an actual 13B with both feul systems set up, under glass. There is also an electric turbo charger. Very sweet!!

I spent about 30min with a guy at the working model of the Rotory engin explaining the in's and out's of how the rotory engin works. Very cool stuff!!

I did not take my camera, but I will see if I can find some pics on line

anthrax

As prommised
 

Hydrogen RE

Not off the Autoshow page, or mazda but this is the car I saw

It's been posted in the lounge, etc.

Opps Not trying to double post.

I stay out of the loung for the most part.

Just thought it was relly cool

I had not seen it befor...

It sounds interesting but what's all the hub-bub about? Piston cars can run gas and hydrogen too can't they?

They do, but a rotary powered one is a rotary powered one! :D

Actually, rotaries have this tendency of backfiring less when hydrogen is burned in them. They also burn it more efficiently than a piston engine apparently.

The RX-8 actually has the option of running gasoline OR hydrogen. I dont know how many piston engines can do that.

it also has to do with the nature of the engines. The rotary intake stroke is not as hot as a piston. since a rotary has all the ports such a distance from each other

the piston engines have all the valves in one spot . So iff the flashpoint is reached before the hydrogen mixture is in the compression stage the you have problems.

So I have read many years ago

So do they have a tank for hydrogen? Is it a factory option? I havn't read anything about that.

I think storing the hydrogen as hydrides would be better to eliminate risk of explosion. Somebody should move this thread.

Damn, that makes perfect sense..

Some guys around here have converted boingers to H, and they usually run badly with a lot of backfiring. They tried Hydrides, etc., but the best seems to be cryogenic H.

B

Shit man, if BMW had realized this before investing millions into the Hydrogen piston cars... ;)

Sometimes I wish that Mazda would push the rotary concepts more though. I have still yet to see an Rx8 commercial on TV, and while I've been told they exist, it would be nice to see it during the superbowl or something.

Get more rotary engines on the road and mechanics will have to learn about them. Let's hope that BMW's "let's make hydrogen gas-up stations available in alot of places" initiative combined with this awesome Rx8 will do some good for our cars and our favorite engine.

oh, you guys should check this out:
http://www.moller.com/skycar/

while it's a frikking awesome concept in it's own right, check the technology section and see what kind of engine they're using ;) That's right... Wankle Rotary :)

This is how I knew that H2 Rotary was possible, but the Rx8 is the first on-the-ground vehicle version I've seen.

Jon

Jon

Just thought I would chime in with something no one ever mentions, or really thinks about.


You will still have to plug in a hydrogen car.

At least at night in MI winter weather you will.

Water Freezes very easily.

You don't have to plug a Hydrogen car in any more than you have to plug in a Natural Gas car!

Hydrogen... IN IT'S GASEOUS STATE is what runs this car. It's not a "water, broken into hydrogen and oxygen and burned back into water" car! Those have to have a secondary power source such as solar or regular gasoline generator to make the electricty to break the water apart.

No, no, this car is based on the idea that you pull up to a pump, pump H2 gas into the car, and it burns that gas like it would burn gasoline or natural gas. It's quite a clean system, but not perfect. It's probably about 90% water that comes out, instead of the pure 100% nothing-but-water the H2 fuel cell cars make.

So you'd not have to plug it in during the winter for fear of your gaseous h2 freezing.

Jon

So what's the deal with the hydrogen stuff? Are we still go go go? I think that woudl be incredible if most of the statements here were true.

Phantom

Couldn't get to the pics through the link... Went the the Manufacturer links and such.... (god damn the advertising on that website is intrusive!)

I'm psyched for Hydrogen power, specifically in a Rotary :-)

This car is only rated at 120 BHP though ?!!

Also, although there's most definitely a turbo in the renderings of the engine, the website says it's NA ?

I would hope that Mazda will improve the performance significantly before they make it a production model. (and damn, I want to see that be a production model!)


Any chemistry majors here know the difference in attainable power between a liter of gasoline and hydrogen in a typical rotary setup? That is, are they near the max or is there more engineering to be done?

Ive always thought that internal hydrogen combustion would be the answer to clean burning while not sacrificing power like the electric cars do. But even with propane there are parking complex restrictions etc. and how much worse would they be with liquid hydrogen tanks - eek. Also liquid hydrogen would probably cause a lot more injuries than propane in terms of dumb people trying to fill them etc.

I read an article where GM stated there were working on a car with 4 electric motors - 1 for each wheel. They claimed to be able to generate something like 1000 hp at each wheel. So maybe electric's the way to go but just needs a lot more R&D. I don't think hybrid's the way to go. I mean the diesel Jetta gets almost as good mileage without sacrificing much power - that seems like a better way to get > 50 mpg to me.

Frankly, I don't see electric cars pushing 1000HP at each wheel...
I grew up around electric motors and I know that even a 25 HP motor draws a large amount of current with 3 phase power....

1000 HP from a DC system is extremely unlikely in my book...

The exhaust valve can ignite the incoming hydrogen. Stupid boingers. :rolleyes:

There is a lot more engineering to be done. Just as rotaries only have maybe 40 years of developement under their belt while boingers have over 100, the hydrogen powered passenger car is still in the early stages.