I hope the author is wrong about Miles per Pound becoming a standard, but I suspect, if H2 does ever catch on (which is hardly a sure bet anyway) that he'll be right. Decisions made thus far have been outside of the broader public view. If H2 goes mainstream, our banal and parochial legislative representatives will likely undo any progress initially shepherded by NIST. I hope I'm wrong, but US history is sobering on that front.
From: Nat Hager III Sent: 07/10/2008 1:34 AM To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:41377] FW: Impressions of a Futurecar - FlowChart (usnews.com) Sorry, missed the most controversial part.. Hydrogen car article in US News... >>>Kilograms per what? The Hydrogen 7 has one of those onboard computers that >>>display your fuel efficiency-for both gasoline and hydrogen. Gas mileage, of >>>course, is measured in the familiar mpg. But hydrogen mileage is flipped >>>around and expressed in kilograms per 100 kilometers. This took a bit of >>>noodling to understand, like figuring out the inverse of a currency exchange >>>in a foreign country. Simply put, it's the metric version of how many >>>gallons it takes to go 100 miles. If you're averaging 4 gallons per 100 >>>miles, for instance, that's the same as 25 miles per gallon; 3 gallons per >>>100 miles would be 33 mpg. So in hydrogen terms, the lower the number, the >>>better. I started out averaging 3.3 kilograms of hydrogen per 100 kilometers. I tried to drive gently and see if I could improve on that, and I got it down to 2.9 for a while. Then I hit traffic, and it went back up to 3.2. I studied the instant efficiency reading, too, which ranged from 0 to 10. When coasting at about 50 miles per hour-a very efficient speed for most cars-my hydrogen consumption was less than 2 kilograms. But when pressing hard on the accelerator to pass somebody, I pegged the meter, burning the maximum 10 kilograms (or more). If hydrogen catches on, there will have to be standardized metrics for expressing fuel economy. My guess is that the federal government will adopt something similar to the mpg construct, while taking account of the fact that hydrogen is typically measured by weight, not volume. So an Americanized version might be expressed as miles per pound. If that were the case, my 3.3 kilograms per 100 kilometers would equate to about 8.5 miles per pound of hydrogen. I think. Or maybe we'll just have to join the rest of the world and learn the metric system. >>> http://www.usnews.com/blogs/flowchart/2008/7/9/impressions-of-a-futurecar.html Nat
