Will Hydrogen cars really be the solution?

Question

Will Hydrogen cars really be the solution?

Answer 1

Dana is correct. Hydrogen is just a way of storing energy, it's not a source of energy like fossil fuels or sunlight. With new battery technology we'll never need to use hydrogen as a stopgap along the way. Eventually we'll return to it when we have controllable and portable fusion reactors, but that's probably a century or two away.

Think of it this way. Producing hydrogen always requires more energy than you get back out of it, usually quite a bit less. Then you use that hydrogen to power your car. In the best case scenario, you may get 85% efficiency in making hydrogen from water. Meaning you lose 15% or more of the energy you put into it. With the new lithium-ion batteries that will power the Chevy Volt, you use whatever energy you put into the batteries. Why bother with an intermediate step by making hydrogen and losing 15-35% of your energy? And producing hydrogen from natural gas (the most common method today) produces far more greenhouse gases than just using gasoline does, so there's no benefit there either.

Answer 2

I doubt it.  The only reason hydrogen was ever considered the solution is that potentially it can solve the electric vehicle problems of refueling time and range.

However, battery technology is advancing rapidly to solve those problems first.  For recharge time, you just need businesses to set up high voltage rapid recharge stations.  The technology already exists.  Since everywhere is already connected to the power grid, that's a ton easier than building hydrogen fueling stations everywhere and finding a way to transport the hydrogen gas.

As for range, there are already EVs with ranges over 200 miles per charge.  Lithium ion batteries and potentially ultracapacitor batteries are well on the way to solving this problem.

Meanwhile, hydrogen fuel cell cars are still decades away from practicality.  By the time they get there, electric cars will dominate the market.  Even when hydrogen does become practical, it's automatically less efficient than EVs because you still need to use electricity just to seperate the hydrogen from the fossil fuels or water.  It's much more efficient to use it to directly power an electric motor.

See the link below for further details.

Answer 3

Very doubt full, there are far to many problems with just the infrastructure to support hydrogen that must be overcome first, its just another way to store energy for later use which means you lose efficiency, and it's still not that reliable in extreme weather conditions.

I also agree with Dana1981, but I'd rather be waterboardin', you cannot solve a problem by perpetuating the problem therefore drilling for more oil is not a viable answer. The world has a golden opportunity to switch to knew technologies, secure their futures, grow their economies, and protect our planet.

Answer 4

Yes!

Hydrogen is an extremely impressive source of fuel which is incredible with its renewable system, exhausting it as water vapor.

People "Fear" hydrogen so much, that is why many people say it will never work however it does work, hydrogen is just as impressive as the regular petrol/oil car. It is not the fact it is explosive, it is only explosive when on contact with fire, and most items used to shield the hydrogen are now fire-proof, they are also increasing laws for the average driver in almost every country to increase safety on the roads, these will take place by 2010.

The world needs hydrogen, more than electric cars and the French Air-Compressed cars as the electricity for cars is a lot and the world is already in crisis trying to purify its planet with renewable electricity, as for the air-compressed cars, they are very weak and are probably only okay for small distances.

I work for London Universities in technology developing Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars, I was also present in the creation of the first ever English Hydrogen Station to open on the campus of Birmingham University.

Dan ;>)

Answer 5

It will be an alternative.

Hydrogen cars have the same problems of natural gas cars

so a lot of persons will choose other fuels

Answer 6

no, hydrogen explodes

Answer 7

I don't know we will still have worry about global warming

Answer 8

no thats just putting it off onto another resource to drain out. electric is the way to go.

Answer 9

It could be in the next ten years.

There are some promising experiments done so far in this direction.

Answer 10

No, and No.

None of the solutions we are currently being presented are going to solve our problems.  Most of them are not even feasible.

Answer 11

yes they will

1. Norway already has huge stretches of highways with hydrogen fueling station.

2. Honda is making hydrogen cars

3.hydrogen is the most abundant element in the galaxy

4.the only emissions a hydrogen car emits is drinkable water

5.ITS NOT A HYDROGEN BOMB UNDER THE CAR. ITS EXTREMELY SAFE. Have you ever stopped and thought about your gas car there is a tank of gas under your car you are virtually sitting on a gas bomb!

Answer 12

I've been doing journalism about the environment, on a pretty small scale, for about 40 years now, and I don't know.

I think overall, Americans need to rely on cars a lot less than we do, because cars cause some general environmental problems no matter what their fuel is.  

I think "the solution" is partly for more people to live in big or medium-sized cities where we can use mass transit systems to get around.   Subways, buses etc. can move far more people per hour per mile than automobiles can -- which is very, very important in the case of commuting -- and they don't take up as much space for parking facilities.  Which is important in terms of not destroying a city's tax base.

Also, mass transit systems (and walking, of course) generate far less CO2 per mile per passenger traveled than cars do.

The American suburbs also could become less automobile-dependent and more pedestrian-friendly than they are today, and that would help reduce our nation's dependence on foreign oil while reducing our CO2 footprint.  

Several city planners with basically libertarian, anti-government views, who adocate what's called the "new urbanism," have written a book called "Suburban Nation" on how the relaxation of excessively tight zoning regulations  is one strategy that could improve suburban life in many places while also helping the environment.

Advocates of the "new urbanism," by making it easier for small cities and suburbs to place different kinds of land uses in close proximity to one another, instead of rigidly insuring that these land uses are separate, want to make it easier for people in the 'burbs to walk to the grocery store, or church, or the corner drugstore, bar or coffee shop, say.  

If zoning rules can be relaxed a little so that "light commercial" land uses can be placed closer to residential housing, the "new urbanism" planners say,  then people in many suburbs could enjoy much more diversity in their communities, which also would become easier to walk around and less dependent on automobiles.  

That could improve the real quality of life in the suburbs while also reducing the amount of CO2 that their residents pour in to the air each day by driving everywhere for everything.

I think Americans need to look more into the new urbanism, and into other plans for reducing our society's overall dependence on the automobile, before we decide whether we want the cars of tomorrow to be powered by hydrogen, electricity or old vegetable oil that's been converted into "biodiesel" fuels.

But supposing we do want to keep our cars around for some uses, we need to realize that "electric cars" or "hydrogen cars" are not the complete answer to auto-related CO2 generation - not by themselves.

UNLESS we know what energy source is going to generate the electricity, or produce the hydrogen fuel, we don't know what either hydrogen fuels or electric cars will mean for American CO2 output and for global warming.  Or for the environment in general.

Hydrogen fuel doesn't just lie around the environment waiting for people to tap it.  It has to be extracted from water or from some other source of hydrogen, using either a chemical or an electrical process, and some kind of energy is required to power the process.

Similarly with "clean" electrical current, present either in a wire or in a car battery, that we might use to power an electric vehicle.

Does the energy that produces the hydrogen fuel or that puts the current into the battery originally come from burning coal, say, in a big electric generating station?  

Is so, the process is going to generate just as much CO2 as any other kind of electricity generated from coal-burning will.

Does the energy that produces the hydrogen or that juices up the car battery ultimately come from a nuclear power plant?  Then our "clean" automobile fuel is going to have the same kinds of environmental impacts as any other kind of electricity that comes from nuclear power generation.

OTOH - If the hydrogen or the electricity used in tomorrow's cars ultimately is produced through the capturing of solar energy or wind energy, that could be really clean.

I recommend that people look at some of the books below if they're interested in real solutions to the problems caused by  automobile-centered transportation in the USA.  

I don't totally agree with the optimism of the "Natural Capitalism" book listed below, because I'm not sure that capitalism is totally compatible with environmental sustainability in the long run.   I actually think it isn't.

But there are a lot of smart engineering and design choices that could be made to make our society less destructive than it is to nature, and to ourselves, without changing around our entire economic system.  These 3 books outline what some of those choices might be.

Answer 13

No. Hydrogen is made commercially from natural gas. It requires a complicated plant with reformers, etc., with a very  high process pressure. It would require a new global infrastructure to manufacture and distribute it. It would take decades and cost trillions and we still wouldn't know how to stop it exploding whenever it was exposed to the tiniest incendiary spark (a static spark, for instance).

Answer 14

No it takes about 300% more energy to generate the hydrogen than U could get from a gasoline engine in the first place....

Answer 15

It's a way to save us from this fuckery of oil.  Honestly, YES it does work. I have done this to my 96 Saturn and currently get about 50 miles per gallon.

I wrote a blog review about it here:

http://www.freewebs.com/isitworthmytime/...

It's very simple. You don't change your engine or computer. A quart-size (95O cc) container is placed somewhere under the hood. You fill it with DISTILLED WATER and a little bit of BAKING SODA. The device gets vacuum and electricity (12 Volts) from the engine, and produces HHO gas (Hydrogen+Oxygen). The HHO gas is supplied to the engine's intake manifold or carburetor as shown below.

Hope this helps.

King

Answer 16

No.

Drilling for more oil is the solution.  The infrastructure is already set up for gasoline.

Maybe someday hydrogen cars will rule, but until we run out of oil, let's keep using it.  Besides, there are trillions of barrels of oil known about in the US alone.  Let's tell congress to let us get it and lower the costs some.

Answer 17

No.

I like to call it (GGPPM) Global Green Personal Power Machines an energy system that uses rechargeable batteries to stop and start, an a air powered, self-propelled, mobile power plant, to power the electric engine. Giving us clean unlimited energy production, be it for a car, plane, semi, suv, truck, or train! GGPPM will make power to run anything, anywhere, any day or night as long as you can keep it charged up by moving faster than 26 mile per hour, longer than you are stopped and using power. The hard idea is to get the manufacturers to make them! Not showing the world how to turn there old gas powered - into an electric powered.

Answer 18

i think it will help because it lowers emissions but that pro is kinda canceled out by the amount of energy required to make them and the fact that when those batteries die they have to be disposed of somehow. also, for the plug in cars, you're still using energy to charge it back up. is it really worth it? I dont know. but i think we should all work closer to home so we don't have to commute as far. heck lets walk to work (I'm kind of joking about that because that isnt always feasible.)

Answer 19

no,never