When they start mass producing clean cars, of any kind, lets make sure we put the factories in a slave labor country like China. That way we could drive the wages down over here even further.

Who gives a fuck about good paying jobs here, as long as we can buy cheap crap.

How likely is it that this will ever actually become part of how we power our cars? I remember when there was breakthrough research having to do with ethanol and I got excited, before I heard the facts on how cost intensive it is to actually make ethanol. It feels as if it's a too good to be true kind of thing, for two reasons though.

The above like I mentioned, wishful thinking by the scientists engineering the idea and

Corporations simply not allowing it to take off. This one angers me the most specifically, especially when you look at the progress we made with electric cars and the individual parts and pieces that are being developed to make it a reality. These corporations end up getting patents for most of the technology, and hardly fund them, or even put people on the job. They contend that it would not be profitable to switch or to even look into how they would go about switching their structures, from Oil hogging companies to a company that can still be dreadfully profitable, without as much of a carbon footprint. They do this even when it comes to making more fuel efficient engines based out of their own fuel structure. I believe it's Exxon that has a patent on an engine that could end up getting around 100 miles per gallon, but it doesn't get produced or utilized because people would in effect, buy less fuel.

All of that depressing crap aside, I've always had the idea ever since I heard of hydrogen cars and the oh so cool electrolysis reaction, why can't we fuel a motor with energy created from the immediate result of an electrolysis reaction? I always thought a hydrogen car was simply run like a gas car, with hydrogen in the spot that gas took care of. I'm learning more about cars and stuff everyday but I still can't find anything refuting my idea. Wouldn't hydrogen be able to be used as fuel straight from the electrolysis reaction?

It's a really interesting idea.  He says he can make the ammonia for 20 cents a litre.  The energy density of liquid ammonia is  11,308 kJ/litre and the energy density of gasoline is 34,000 kJ/litre.  One gallon equals 3.79 litres.  

So he can make the equivalent of one gallon gasoline for:

.20*3.79*(34000/11308)= $2.28

That seem pretty good, but the attractiveness is lessened somewhat when you take into account the fact that most of the electricity used to make the ammonia is made from burning coal and natural gas.   While the electric grid continues to use mainly fossil fuels it might make a bit more sense to use natural gas directly.  Prices vary but for now it would probably be lot cheaper to.  One source I found listed compressed natural gas at $.99 a gasoline gallon equivalent.   

Well, the idea came from an old article in Scientific American.  I could be misremembering but I though that they said they were going to power cars with it.

In any case, you are correct that hydrogen probably has enough issues that would have to be solved.  They probably could be with enough time.

Thinking further on this, it seems that if the expectation is to get that much hydrogen out at the end, then they could solve the deal by using it to power an appropriate sized turbine generator.  Energy does not get greener than that.

Another idea which also comes to mind:  I don't recall how old the article is but we now have superconductors that work with liquid nitrogen.  That is cheaper to make than liquid hydrogen.  Again, if the expected output volume is that great, why not put Haber Bosch factories at the end of the pipe?  You still need some hydrogen for the process but if the plan was to generate the stuff anyway, then why not make both?

That will cost somewhat less and get the job done just as easily.

Some high temperature superconductors work at Liquid Nitrogen temps, but generally for any superconductor the colder the better.  This is why the cryogenic liquid used is often Helium.  Helium supplies aren't likely to last forever, and I don't think you would have enough to do something as huge as this.  In terms of boiling point the next best is liquid hydrogen (–423 ºF (–253 ºC)), but the safety considerations tend to nix any ideas of using this for much of anything other than rocket fuel.  The new superconductors, which would work in liquid Nitrogen, don't have very high critical fields, the point at which the magnetic field is as high as it will go and still stay superconducting.  This limits their usefulness in transporting electric energy.  You would have to use a lot more of these materials to get the same affect, and I believe that they use rare materials like silver which would make this impractical.  

I like the idea of using wind turbines to produce ammonia.  This would be good in agriculture area were, as you pointed out, they use ammonia as fertilizer.  Why should they have to ship ammonia from all over the place if they can produce close by?  If the ammonia power engines work out it also might be possible to use ammonia to power farm equipment which would be good for a variety of reasons.   

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OK, liquid helium would have much larger issues than liquid hydrogen would. It is a limited resource, more expensive to chill and cannot be contained by any known material. Heck but it can leak through a glass flask in the spaces between the silicone atoms.

That much being said, the paper in Scientific American did envision the possibility of commercially exploitable quantities of hydrogen coming out of the lines at the local receiving stations. When luca mentioned the issues with storing and pumping hydrogen, I then suggested the idea of burning it right on site as a direct fuel source.

That would seem to minimize the amount of plumbing which would have to be replaced on a regular schedule and provide the cleanest fuel source possible, as the “ash” would be nothing more than common water. Depending on the engineering considerations, perhaps it could also serve as a source of steam for a second stage turbine. That would be a bonus if it could be done.

My idea for using nitrogen as a cryo fluid is based on the idea that we can do superconductors that way now. Of the three main cryo fluids, liquid nitrogen is the least expensive and it could serve as feed stock for the Haber Bosch process to make the ammonia for vehicle fuel.

In any case, I think that we really do need to get serious about the so called alternative energy sources. Every location provides it's own opportunities and challenges. For example, the south west has lots of land that has great sun but is pretty much useless for other purposes. Great for solar power. Other areas may be best suited for wind or geothermal. Where I live, the continental shelf is only a couple of miles from shore. If the deep water is cold enough, then Stirling engines could be usefully employed.

Even if alternative energy only provides (and I am just picking a round number on this) 20% of our current needs, that potentially provides “breathing room” which will extend traditional sources while other forms of energy such as nuclear, fusion and methane hydrates are brought up to industrially viable scales.

Interesting. I thought vehicle's had become significantly lighter as a result of new (lighter but more durable) materials.