The BMW Hybrid Car
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The first hybrid car was introduced into the world market in 1997. It was only 5 years that other companies followed and the BMW hybrid car is one example.
BMW first started with the X3 which uses the same principle as the Toyota Prius and any other vehicle that uses electricity and gas. This was also done with their 2007 X5.
But what makes the BMW hybrid car so special is the fact the company decided to do something no one else has done before. They developed a vehicle that runs both on gas and water which was introduced into their 7 Series model.
The BMW Hydrogen 7 is the first car in the world that uses this technology. When the car is placed in hydrogen mode, water is injected into the car’s air intake manifold so this can be combusted in the engine’s cylinder rather than converting the hydrogen’s energy into electricity which in turn will spin the electric motors like a fuel cell.
This will enable the driver to switch from hydrogen and water or vice versa even automatically if one fuel source has been depleted.
This vehicle uses the same 6 liter V-12 motor like the 760i and the 760Li. The hydrogen fuel of the BMW hybrid is stored in a large, 30-gallon, bi-layered and highly insulated tank that stores the fuel as a liquid rather than as compressed gas. This offers 75% more energy per volume as a liquid than compressed gas at 700 bars of pressure.
To keep the water from evaporating, it is insulated under high vacuum equivalent to that of a 55-foot thick wall of polystyrene Styrofoam.
But why develop a car the runs on water? Well because water just like solar energy does not emit any carbon emissions into the atmosphere. It is a renewable resource which is good because this will reduce the dependency on oil which is a non-renewable resource.
This particular model uses more than fuel than most trucks. It consumes about 13.9 liters for every 100 kilometers and 50 liters of hydrogen for every 100 kilometers. In US standards, that means you go 16.9 miles per gallon for gas and 4.7 miles per gallon for water.
But why the big difference between the distance between gas and water? Simple because we still have a long way to go to make hydrogen combustion just as efficient as fuel cell technologies.
Since the cost of making one of these vehicles is quite expensive, BMW has produced only a small number of these and handed these out to a chosen few which they perceive as goodwill ambassadors that will promote protecting the environment.
Another car that the company has developed is the BMW H2R. Unlike the 7 Series which is produced using fuel cell technology, this vehicle is produced with ICE technology and uses liquid hydrogen as fuel.
The BMW H2R uses a 6.0-liter V12 gasoline engine and with 285 horse power, the car can reach a maximum speed of 300 kilometers per hour. It can accelerate from 0 to 60 seconds in under 6 seconds and has garnered several land speed records.
Just like Toyota or Honda, BMW has not made a lot of models that use hybrid technology. In fact, you can count it all in one hand and it has not yet reached 5.
Is it worth it right now to buy a BMW hybrid? At the moment some say no because the price of the 7 series for example is more than $118,000. Owning one will be hard also because there are only 5 filling stations in the world that support BMW’s filling technology so you can’t just bring your car anywhere to gas up.
But the company plans to do more in the future by conducting more research and tests so the same technology or even better can also be applied to their other models. While using water is already a first in the industry, the people who work there want to do more than just build a BMW hybrid car. In 15 to 20 years, it is possible that they will be able to build a vehicle that runs only on water.
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