Isn't driving a hydrogen car like driving a bomb?

Question

Honda has a new low emissions vehicle that runs on hydrogen fuel and is powered by a reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. Isn't that same reaction what causes explosions like those that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I mean, what's the difference? Both are a reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. Does anyone know what auto makers - namely Honda - have done to make driving these cars safe?

Answer 1

A hydrogen fuel cell doesn't use nuclear fusion as its fuel source like those bombs.  The bomb fuses atoms together, creating heavier elements and absorbing energy (that energy is subsequently released in the form of radiation).  In a car, hydrogen can react with oxygen to produce water and electricity.  Getting the hydrogen compact enough to be able to fit enough into a car's tank is still a challenge.  (I'll bet that you can't get nearly as far with that Honda as you would on a tank of fossil fuel.)  Bear in mind that compressed hydrogen is not synonymous with fused hydrogen.

Answer 2

No more dangerous than driving a propane car.  If you park it in a garage it might start a fire.  If you crash and break the tank it might leak and burn.  

The bombs that were dropped on Japan were reactions between neutrons, Uranium ans Plutonium.  Actual hydrogen bomb are small uranium or plutonium weapons with two isotopes of hydrogen that are fused to make helium.  Completely diferent than fire used in a piston engine or the slower chemical reaction is a fuel cell.

Answer 3

Well, hydrogen powered cars are dangerous but Nagasaki and Hiroshima were destroyed by a nuclear reaction which is quite a bit different from a chemical reaction (combustion).

My biggest concern is that the hydrogen flame is invisible which makes it very dangerous.  Anyone that doesn't think hydrogen cars are dangerous should tell it to any of the surviviors of the Hindenburg.

Answer 4

No! Consider that gasoline is flammable, and why do you think you call it a "combustion" engine! What we drive now is a rolling metal bomb. *laughs*

Answer 5

A hydrogen powered car is different than a hydrogen bomb.  ( I knew this would start up. )  The worst that can happen is a hydrogen powered car will explode and take out another car, but that's an extreme example.  There will never be thermonuclear blasts taking out entire cities just because someone got into a fender bender with a hydrogen powered car.  The reactions are entirely different and even if that were a remote possibility, hydrogen cars would never have been invented.

Answer 6

The bomb that destroyed those Japanese cities did not depend on a reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. and a hydrogen powered car is not dangerous.

Answer 7

There are probably safer arrangements than cars containing both drunken drivers and bottles of compressed hydrogen, but we're pretty good at handling compressed gases by now, and hydrogen is no more explosive than a lot of things.  The hydrogen bomb that's scaring you isn't remotely similar to the explosion you can get with hydrogen plus oxygen, and in general it's not all that easy to get hydrogen to explode.  It'll burn, but in order for it to explode with any violence you have to have just the right amount of hydrogen and just the right amount of air.  

Try not to get your impressions of science and technology from television or even the Internet.  There are far too many documentary producers who substituted film-making in college for their science requirement, and lots more of them just slept through chemistry class.  So they get their information second- or third-hand, and then they make their TV programs.  And that's what you've been watching.