Justin G. visited the main Hydrogen Cars website recently and sent in a lot of his opinions about different topics that he would like to share:
“I was surfing your site and couldn’t help but notice on your page about the 1966 GM Electrovan you mention that the setup used to power the vehicle was originally intended to go into the 1966 GM Electrovair. I’m not trying to dispute this information, I just figured I’d mention the fact that the 1966 GM Electrovair was indeed an actual vehicle made by Chevrolet. The vehicle wasn’t powered by hydrogen, but was in fact powered by a 100HP electric motor. I’m not sure if the car was originally designed to be powered by hydrogen or not, but I think it would be a cool addition to your page if you added that the 1966 Electrovair was indeed built using fully electric propulsion. The car doesn’t need it’s own page devoted to it (Especially seeing as how it’s not hydrogen powered) but it would be nice to see the car get some recognition.
“Honda and Toyota seem to get all the credit in the alternative fuel market, I just think it’s time for people to realize that these are not new concepts, and that most were actually introduced as concepts by American manufacturers over 4 decades ago. The same goes for modern fuel injection systems, which made their first widespread appearance in diesel engines, then were adapted to gasoline engines by Alfa Romeo. Bosch made the fuel injection systems put in Mercedes Benz vehicles in 1955. Even Chevrolet had a fuel injection system by 1957. In 1958, Chrysler developed the first form of “Electronic” (If you could even call it that) fuel injection on their line of HEMI engines, yet Japanese companies who mass produced such technologies still seem to take all the credit.
“Anyhoo… I just hated when Toyota got all the credit for making a “Semi-Electric” car (The Prius), when Chevrolet had a fully electric concept in 1966. It broke my heart to see Honda take credit for the first hydrogen fuel cell vehicle (FCX Clarity) when, again, Chevy had similar (Albeit primitive) technology in 1966.
“I guess the import market does deserve credit for creating such vehicles worthy of mass production and marketing to the public, but I hate to see the efforts of our own domestic manufacturers go unnoticed, especially since their achievements over 40 years ago were so advanced for their time. This raises the question, what happened to us that we abandoned such ideas so long ago?
If these companies had invested a little more time, effort, and money into these projects years ago, we would’ve been driving electronic fuel injected V8’s in 1965, hybrids by 1975, electric cars by 1980, and probably hydrogen powered vehicles by 1985. Man, where did we go wrong….. My guess would have to be big oil companies and their big wallets keeping these technologies at bay until people finally got fed up with the gas prices…. Enter, stage left, the Japanese automobile market……”
Agree or disagree, Justin G. lays it all out there and perhaps a few more people would like to add their comments to this thread as well.
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