How much is a hydrogen energy bus cost? Australia?
Curiosity11
heard it was 3mill.
heard it was 3mill.
anyone know the price for those new environmental friendly fuel buses?
Tags: Bus Australia, Energy Australia, Fuel Buses, Hydrogen Energy
December 23rd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
whatever the market will bear
December 26th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
There is no cost on the buses in a commercial sense at present. The project in Perth is also loosely related to a project in Europe called CUTE.
December 28th, 2008 at 10:06 am
3 million is not a bad guess. The new Honda FCX Clarity hydrogen fuel cell car is estimated at about 1 million dollars (http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drives/FirstDrives/articleId=123662), and that’s a little car. For a bus, 3 million might even be a little low.
In terms of what you called “environmental friendly fuel buses”, I would challenge that. It’s true, the buses themselves produce absolutely no dangerous pollution. But it would be ignorant to look at just the buses. Hydrogen does not occur naturally on Earth: we have to use electricity to make it. The thing is, that electricity has to come from power plants, which nowadays most commonly is coal (several times dirtier than gasoline).
So, you have a coal power plant making electricity, which is converted into hydrogen (with about 30% of the energy lost), and then it is pumped into a fuel cell which is about 36% efficient (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel_cell#In_practice).
In the end you have a bus uses about 9-14% of the energy in the coal or fuel that was burned in the beginning at the power plant. Compared to a normal gasoline powered car, which is about 20-25% efficient, you see that it’s very likely that hydrogen fuel cells are dirtier and consume more fuel in the bigger picture than the cars we use now.
So, sorry to break it to you, but not only are these buses outrageously expensive, they’re actually worse for the environment than your regular city bus.