How much will it cost to convert your gasoline car into a hydrogen fuel cell car?

Question

Hey, I need an exact estimate on how much it would cost to convert your gasoline car into a hydrogen car. I would like to know how much would it cost if you do it yourself and if you took it to a car center. Thank You

Answer 1

Over $1 million.  I'm serious.  Plus there are hardly any hydrogen refueling stations (unless you're in California or New York).

You're better off converting to electric.  That'll cost below $10,000.

Answer 2

Way more than you could afford.  The fuel-cell stacks themselves just recently came down past the million-dollar (!) mark, and the high-pressure hydrogen tanks and other stuff aren't cheap either.

You can already buy kits for electric conversions, and a small generator would let you run past the battery-only range (AC Propulsion did this with a 250 cc Honda engine for a battery car).  You can get electricity everywhere, and it costs the equivalent of about 75¢/gallon.  Just forget hydrogen, it's the fuel of the future... and always will be.

Answer 3

Not much if you know what you are doing.  A Philippine man did  it 30 years ago and the world has yet to catch up to what he did.

Answer 4

This isn't practical nor is it affordable.

Hydrogen isn't going to be the fuel of the future.

Answer 5

Ah, the fuel cell.  

There are the real kind--the sort that they use in spacecraft--and these work just fine if you can find hydrogen to use in them and if you can afford the hundreds of thousand dollars they cost.  

Then there's the bogus kind--the sort that we see everywhere on the Internet, and in that video from the Philippines.  They use electrical energy from the car battery to dissociate a little tank of water, which they are pleased to call a 'fuel cell,' and then they pipe the hydrogen and oxygen gas into the engine.  The problem here is that the inventors don't understand where that energy actually came from: the energy to break the hydrogen bond of the water came from the battery, but the battery must be re-charged by the alternator, and it requires extra energy to turn that alternator when it's loaded down by a battery in need of recharging.  The energy to turn the alternator, of course, comes from the engine itself, through the alternator belt.  You're actually losing energy, because some of the electrical energy from the battery also goes to heat the water.  

If you want to gripe about a conspiracy, consider the one that kept you from learning anything useful in science class.  Education is about the only cure for silly stuff like this.

Answer 6

The problem is not only with changing it over but where to get refill your car when it runs out. There is no infrastructure to support hydrogen cell cars yet.