View Single Post
      02-22-2020, 09:42 AM   #42
zx10guy
Brigadier General
5139
Rep
3,235
Posts

Drives: 2013 135i
Join Date: Feb 2014
Location: DC

iTrader: (0)

Quote:
Originally Posted by dtla1 View Post
Interesting. Where was the hydrogen being emitted from? And who/why did someone have the foresight to measure the hydrogen levels?

From someone who doesn't know shit all about this, but does have a technical background, I'll spew some random theory for you to read and laugh at.

The Hydrogen was being drawn out of the atmosphere as a result of the ionization of the air around the transformer caused by the magnetic fields emitted by said transformer.

And I'm assuming the houses were setup with sniffers through out to find CO, NOX, etc, and hydrogen just happened to be something the system could detect. Not sure if anyone actually was actively looking for hydrogen concentrations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by roastbeef View Post
were these a bunch of non-sealed lead/acid batteries?
This was many many many years ago. So I'm dating myself. But pretty much all the EV cars we were testing were using lead acid batteries. The hydrogen was coming from the normal recharge cycle of lead acid batteries. Hence why the experiment was being done to see how bad hydrogen emission would be in a normal residential garage. Two of the test vehicles were modified Geo Metros. Other than being rolling tin cans, they didn't require a huge battery pack to power the electric motor. One of the Metros even had solar panels mounted to the top of the car. But even "sealed" lead acid batteries are not totally sealed. There are vent tubes on the side of the batteries. If you look closely, you'll see them.

The cool thing at the time was when we got the GM EV1 for testing. It was pulled into the test house near dark so spy photos couldn't be easily taken of it. The car came in on a semi with Hughes Network Systems plastered all over the side of the trailer. The charging station for the EV1 had to wired into the house's electrical system. The charging station is similar to one of those B&O contemporary speakers. And the charging is done through an inductive paddle that was inserted into a front slot of the car. It was cool to have been passively involved with that project. I couldn't get too close to the car. The head engineer that created the experiment was the only one from our company that GM would allow to physically touch the car. This all happened months before the EV1 was available for public consumption. I still have pics somewhere of the EV1 shot by the head engineer as it was being offloaded from the trailer and pushed into the garage.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lups View Post
We might not be in an agreement on Trump, but I'll be the first penis chaser here to say I'll rather take it up in the ass than to argue with you on this.
Appreciate 1