Yeah, this guy has a vision, and it's worthy of H. G. Wells or Jules Verne, but not the 21st Century.

We will be powered by Hydrogen.

Hydrogen is a "battery" without the heavy carcass.

It can be generated from water with 100% efficiency.

In small amounts at home...in large amounts at wind-solar generating plants.

It's engines can be ICE or fuel cells.

The Gaseous Revolution has already begun...anyone not in the 3rd state of matter is left far behind...

@ jabailo:

What is clearly needed here is a little bit of thermodynamic and engineering education.  lets run through why, to say it politely, these points fall down.
Sourcing of hydrogen -  you cant drill for it, you need to make it.  Electrolysis is not 100% efficient, in fact its 50% at best.  Automotive fuel cells currently convert at about 54%.  Ignoring transportation, that is a system efficiency of 27%.
Transportation -  Hydrogen can't be transported easily.  It embrittles metals, and requires expensive stainless steels and high pressure tanks for containment.  is everyone going to generate hydrogen at home for personal use?  I doubt it.
Usage efficiency? Hydrogen fuel cells are not 100% efficient, and neither are hydrogen ICEs.  If we are going to have electric cars powered by fuel cells, why change electricity to hydrogen, and then back to electricity when every conversion wastes energy?

in favor of PHEVs
Efficiency - the grid is an existing transport mechanism for electric power, it is efficient and has off-peak capacity to power most of our vehicles.  so there, i just save probably a trillion dollars of infrastructure, and a lot of electricity lost in conversion inefficiencies.  Transmission efficiency is 80%, decent batteries are roughly 90%, and electric motors at least 90%.  that is a system net efficiency, including transportation, of 65%.  More than twice the efficiency of fuel cells.
Availability - people can make their own PHEVs in a garage with existing technology, and all the major automakers are developing PHEV vehicles for release in the next few years.  dont tell me i will be able to buy a cost effective fuel cell vehicle first.
Cost - do you know how much a fuel cell costs? Lets just put it this way, a lot.

It is claims like yours that make environmentalists seem like off-their-rocker nut cases. Education and discretion will go a long way in furthering our cause.

Thank you and good night

  I suppose it's an indication of just how ignorant the green folks are when I see Agassi's silly swappable battery scheme taken seriously. he even convinced Israel (well, he convinced them that they don't have to spend any govt dollars from  his scheme - it will all come from the pidgeons who sign up for his service).  Aggasi
is prone to making totally fallacious arguments,
which misleadingly pit his scheme against $8 gasoline powered cars, when his true competition is, of course, the plug-in hybrid. And he also implies that his scheme will eliminate crude oil as a fule, another big lie : only a fraction of any country's transport duel is used for the cars that could be replaced by Agassi's scheme (which he didn't invent - swappable batteries is an OLD idea). He also, like many  green souls out there, actually believe that there is a significant
difference between the two technologies : battery-only electrics versus plug-in hybrids. There isn't. Battery-onlies will, in fact will often require more carbon emission from their owner than plug-ins to get somewhere. Even if the driver
off a battery-only could use it for ALL of his transportation needs (fat chance), the differences between the technologies are trivial
in their abilities to avoid either gasoline or emissions. Israel has absolutely no need to spend all that money (and it WILL be their money that pays for it)in order to accomplish nothing and
pay exorbitant prices per mile. Agassi's scheme requires 4 to 5 batteries in reserve for each traveler on a day long trip (such trips in Israel would seldom exist) - that is multiplying the cost of batteries to support the drivers. Each car owner cannot now afford the $20,000 battery pack that last only 5 years and have a 100 mile driving range - they certainly can't afford a system that requires far more than 1 battery pack per car.  Even a shallow analysis of Agassi's scheme shows how  nutty it really is. And if a realy good battery shows up, most of Agassi's
system becomes instantly obsolete. Right now it is just dumb. Really dumb. I can't beleieve that greenies are gullible enough to swallow a concept this stupid. But then, they also swallowed the  thousand lies in "Who Killed the Electric car?"

How is that new? As long as the dominant transportation model is individually owned vehicles on asphalt roads it isn't sustainable. It might be a major improvement over gasoline powered vehicles on asphalt roads but sustainable it isn't on a global scale. The only scale that matters.

Plug-in hybrids and EV's just give us more time to weasel out of really looking at sustainable environmental policy.

Plug-in electric vehicles sound like an improvment over gas-powered vehicles in any case.  But maybe we should upgrade the grid to the point that we can run home and business air conditioners in the heat of summer before we count too much on them.

i used to be a huge advocate for hydrogen, until i found out that the same OIL companies today want to control tomorrows fuel market.  

seating them selves as the so-called experts across every major energies board (including hydrogen).

no thanks.  i'll stick with battery technologies.  got my hopes on companies like phoenix, goss132, and tesla.  (technically the former 2 are good. tesla is too expensive)

in any event... goss132 says you can exchange the batteries as you see fit as new ones come out.  so if you wanted longer range, or faster charge etc just invest in new battery packs instead of a new car all together PLUS it's a alot cheaper.  got to love that!

check out goss132.com if you desire to save money!

theBike45 wrote:

"And if a realy good battery shows up, most of Agassi's system becomes instantly obsolete."

Okay, Bike, maybe I'm missing something, but it sounds to me like if a really good battery shows up, Agassi's system becomes way the %#&!! better, and all the objections you raised become instantly obsolete.

Is there a blank someone needs to fill in here, or what?

I am getting increasingly frustrated at Wired's ridiculous articles on climate/energy issues. They need to stop swallowing whatever wacko idea rolls by and start talking about the real solutions like baseload solar, energy efficiency, distributed energy generation, public transit and smart growth.

i always feel like such a bad environmentalist when i fess up to this, but I am not in favor of electric vehicles....

this is a massive toxic waste problem in waiting...eventually, the toxic substances in all these huge batteries will need to be disposed of....

i could also state my opinion about hydrogen vehicles (which is a little more optimistic), but I don't want to distract from the real solutions: density where it counts, getting people to live closer to their jobs via good planning, planning for pedestrian and bicycle commuting, amazing mass transit... a world where the personal automobile is pretty much a thing of the past, except for emergency vehicles, rental vehicles, cooperatively owned vehicles - none of which need to be used for that daily commute or to go buy groceries. we need to focus not on automobile solutions but on planning and transportation solutions....

I am for hydrogen,but all of this hinges on where does the energy come from? Hydrogen comes from electricity breaking down the hydorgen from water and that is fine excepting that it takes alot of electricity to do this job.The electricity comes from coal fired plants and nuclear plants and both are nasty forms of electricity.We need wind,solar,tidal,and hydro to make electricity for the conversion of electricity to be safe and energy effiction and safe.