Hydrogen News - 1995
1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990
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12/1/1995   Europe Gears Up for ‘Car of the Future,’ Other Technologies, With New EC Action Plans - H&FCL

The most prominent example of Europe’s push toward fuel cells is Daimler-Benz with Ballard. Another example that was to have been announced by now, is a 35- to 40-kW PEM fuel cell that Italy’s Ansaldo Ricerche, of Genoa, is developing for a hybrid engine for a mid-sized car project with Peugeot-Citroen. Siemens is reportedly gearing up PEM activities with BMW and possibly Volkswagen and Opel, GM’s German division.

11/1/1995    House-Senate Conference Committee Approves $14.5 Million Hydrogen Energy Budget for ’96 - H&FCL

WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S.A. — Unlike many other programs under scrutiny by the new Republican-run Congress, hydrogen energy research funding for once is actually ahead of the game — and ahead of what even some hydrogen supporters had hoped for: The House-Senate conference, whose task it is to reconcile differing House and Senate versions of the same bill, decided in late October to allocate US$14.5 million for fiscal year 1996 to DOE’s hydrogen energy program.

10/1/1995    First Atoms of Antimatter Produced at CERN - CERN

The recipe for anti-hydrogen is very simple - take one antiproton, bring up one anti-electron, and put the latter into orbit around the former - but it is very difficult to carry out as antiparticles do not naturally exist on earth.

10/1/1995    Chicago Transit Unveils Ballard Hydrogen Fuel Cell Bus, Fleet Test to Start Next Year - H&FCL

Paul Howard, Ballard’s vice president for programs, said more such fleet tests are planned: “This is the first of selected fleet demonstrations which will take place before commercial production of Ballard Fuel Cell Engines begins in 1998.” Howard said the basic package price per bus is $1.4 million compared to about $250,000 for a conventional diesel bus. But Ballard’s Rasul was quoted in the Chicago Tribune as saying, with mass production the price could come down as low as about $300,000. In London at the Grove Symposium, Ballard vice president Keith Prater estimated the price could be in the $500,000 to $550,000 range.

9/1/1995   H Power to Roll Out Commercial Fuel Cell Busses Next Summer, Seeks ZEV Certificate - H&FCL

SACRAMENTO, CA - H Power Corp. is raising the ante: In an early bid to define an emerging market, H Power says it will roll out two commercial fuel cell bus versions for both the North American and Asian markets next year, with commercial deliveries scheduled to start in 1997.

8/31/1995     Livermore Researchers Believe Jupiter Has No Boundary Between Mantle and Metallic Core - LLNL

Jupiter is 90 percent hydrogen.... The findings of this team on the behavior of compressed hydrogen go well beyond the nature of the Jovian planet and have positive implications for the National Ignition Facility (NIF), which will focus its 192 laser beams on hydrogen targets, as well as on nuclear weapons programs.

8/1/1995    IBM, Dow Win $2 Million Commerce Dep't ATP Award for Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Development - H&FCL

WASHINGTON, DC - Big Blue wants to spread its electronics-based manufacturing technology to fuel cells: In a surprise development that could mean new competition and more vigor to the entire stationary fuel cell field, the Commerce Department's Advanced Technology Program has awarded $2.07 million to a joint Dow Chemical-IBM project to develop an advanced planar Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) for power generation.

7/1/1995     Climate Institute Launches International Effort to Speed Clean- Technology Commercialization - H&FCL

WASHINGTON, DC - In a sharp break with past philosophies, the Climate Institute here has launched an ambitious program to forge an international government-industry alliance to accelerate commercialization of greenhouse-benign energy technologies on a world-wide scale.

6/1/1995       Nickel Metal Hydride Batteries Power Electric Car to 238-Mile Record Distance - H&FCL

BOSTON, MA - Metal hydride power provided the winning edge to set a new record for the distance covered by a single battery charge in the annual "Tour de Sol" electric car race - 238 miles.

5/1/1995       House Passes $100 Million Hydrogen Bill - H&FCL

WASHINGTON, DC - The U.S. House of Representatives passed Rep. Robert Walker's (R-PA) $100 million "Hydrogen Future Act of 1995" (H&FCL, March 1995) on a voice vote May 2. Two amendments, one to cut the bill by $36 million and the other to eliminate caps on DoE energy research, were defeated.

5/1/1995  Stanford U., General Electric, Propose Massive Demo of Hydrogen-Fueled Cars in LA Basin - H&FCL

STANFORD, CA - If Paul Kruger gets his way, the first of some 100,000 hydrogen-powered vehicles - give or take a few ten thousand - could start operating in the smog-soaked Los Angeles air basin around the turn of the century in a massive demonstration of hydrogen's power to clean up the atmosphere.

4/1/1995  Five Hydrogen Vehicles, Alternative Energy Policies Highlight NHA Meeting - H&FCL

ALEXANDRIA, VA - In what must have been something of a record, five vehicles running on hydrogen or hydrogen mixtures from four different institutions were on display outside the Radisson Plaza Hotel here on the occasion of the Sixth Annual U.S. Hydrogen Meeting organized by the National Hydrogen Association (NHA) March 7-9.

3/1/1995       Hydrogen Down, Fuel Cells Up in '96 Budget - H&FCL

WASHINGTON, DC - The Clinton Administration's $17.8 billion budget for fiscal year 1996 for the Department of Energy, up $300 million over FY '95, is contradictory in its funding requests for various renewable and alternative energy categories.

2/1/1995  Rep. Walker Introduces $100 Million Hydrogen Bill - H&FCL

WASHINGTON DC - True to expectations, incoming House Science Committee Chairman Robert S. Walker (R-PA) introduced a new three- year $100 million hydrogen bill in late January that, if passed, would significantly expand the U.S. hydrogen program.

1/1/1995   Four Foreign Organizations Get WE-NET Contracts - H&FCL

TOKYO - Four foreign organizations have been named to participate in the first phase of Japan's $3 billion WE-NET project, WE-NET officials announced here in late December.

Hydrogen News - 1995
1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990
1989  1988 1987 1986 1985 1984 1983 1982 1981 1980
1979 1978 1977 1976 1975 1974 1973 1972 1971 1970
1969  1968 1967 1966 1965 1964 1963 1962 1961 1937
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE ICHC SHORT LIST


1) The Riversimple Open Source Car Design

Are Our Designs Free?
Patrick's blog    40 Fires Foundation    June 19, 2009

How does open source car design work?
    The honest answer is that we won't know until we have done it. But we have plenty of ideas, which will develop over the coming months as we share the designs for the Riversimple technology demonstrator and start to produce collaboratively a production prototype.
    There are lots of inspiring examples from open source software, and we are being advised by people with experience in this area. But there are many differences between open source hardware and software design.

Differences between open source hardware and software
    There are some major differences between open source software and hardware design:

- There is a "gap" between the on-line design work and the finished product delivered to the consumer. Not only is there substantial physical testing to be done, but also there is significant work to be done to turn the designs into an actual functioning product (we like the analogy of a food recipe – a recipe is not a meal, you need a chef to turn it into a meal). The answer we believe lies in establishing the right relationship between 40 Fires and the manufacturers (the first of which is Riversimple), where each party has its needs met.

- There’s a technical challenge to share ideas on-line, where there is no satisfactory open source CAD (Computer-Aided Design) application. Our solution is to use a low tech approach at first, using a wiki-based website and freely available 3-D viewers to show the 3-D drawings. In time we may get involved in developing a OS CAD program.

- Licensing. We cannot simply take the standard OS software license (the GPL is the most common), since we are dealing with hardware, which is not so well protected by copyright. See further down for some thoughts on the licensing issues.

We'd like to hear from you!
    As in Open Source software projects, we are not attempting to do everything at once and we don’t have to. The designs that Riversimple is licensing to 40 Fires resemble in many ways the code base which a complex software project starts with.
    However, because a car is different to software and requires different development stages and processes, we will be asking for input into specific areas, as well as procedural matters.
    That's why we would like to hear from you, not only from engineers or designers, but also if you have contributed to large scale open source software projects and can help set up our project management structure. Lawyers with an understanding of copyright and patents would also be useful as we review the most appropriate license to use and if and how we should be using patents for some new inventions which emerge.
    To get involved, send an e-mail to participate@40fires.org explaining your interest and skills.

The stages
    We envisage different stages:

Stage 1  Over the coming months, starting this month (July 2009), we will make available design schematics from the Riversimple technology demonstrator vehicle, together with a description of each component's function in the whole system, and a vehicle design brief for the production prototype. We will provide a mailing list or discussion forum to enable comments and discussions. At this stage we expect Riversimple, as the creator of the original designs, to be leading the discussions.

Stage 2  As the detailed discussions develop, we expect a broad consensus to emerge amongst the participants as to which is the best solution to pursue for each design . By this stage, we expect the conversations to be more democratic, with a broad cross-section of collaborators participate, sharing their knowledge and insights.

Stage 3  We start creating detailed designs collaboratively and publishing them on-line. Eventually an entire vehicle will be created, and tested, on-line. We are aiming to complete the design of the production prototype by the summer of 2010.

Stage 4  Riversimple and other entrepreneurs, under license from 40 Fires, can start downloading the schematics and building and testing the vehicles. With the lessons from this, work can start on an improved production prototype.

Are our designs free (as in beer)?
    Richard Stallman famously said that free software is "free as in speech not free as in beer."

Are our designs free?
    We consider that the designs themselves will be free in the sense of free speech, with one exception. Currently we have chosen a Creative Commons, non-commercial license. So the designs can be used, modified, distributed under the same license terms but not for commercial purposes.
    We have chosen to be conservative at this stage and not allowed commercial use. This may change - we intend to set up a discussion group to debate this. The issue is that we don't want a large, profit-focused organisation taking the designs and starting manufacturing with them yet. We intend that when we grant a manufacturing license, this will be for a small fee (say $10 per car) to cover 40 Fires running costs.
    We are also keen on collaborating so if a commercial organisation wants to use the designs, we'd like to chat with them first before allowing them to use the designs for commercial purposes.
    The licensing issues are very complex (patent law is not copyright law; cars are not software) and we don't pretend to have all the answers. It is quite possible that our license may in the end not meet the strict requirements of the Free Software Foundation. But all we really care about is that the license works to ensure that the cars can be built in hundreds of different variations around the world, by local companies and entrepreneurs as well as big multinationals if they like, and that no one company (whether Ford or Riversimple) can dominate the market and keep the ideas to itself.