Are Hydrogen cars the future of motoring?

The UK creates it first hydrogen fuel station today

Aside from the obvious geo-political implications of switching from petrol to hydrogen. Is it really feasible to have hydrogen powered cars? I mean, in Germany, they worked out that it would cost about £1billion to put the infrastructure in place.

Dutch Lesbian

Well it be a good step away from relying on petrol which not only have enviromental issues but reliance on it may cause political chaos as noted with the wars over oil.

I’m a lumberjack and I’m ok. I sleep all night and work all day.

Not just feasible, inevitable. There was once a time in human history where petroleum was thought to be an infeasible energy source little more than a novelty or fad, especially compared to the established infrastructure of coal. Look how that changed since then.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

No, electric batteries are much more feasible and proven technology as well.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

^

They cause much more waste, however, because they are hard to dispose of when it comes time to get rid of them.

I'm all for hydrogen personally.

I see it as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If everyone thinks it is infeasible and not worth setting up the infrastructure for, then of course it will never take off. But if enough people thinks that it is feasible, if there are enough investment to reach a critical mass, then eventually economy of scale will make it feasible.

One of the myths of hydrogen cars is that they are mini tankers waiting to go off. This is as true as normal petrol cars are the same and as we know cars do not tend to go "boom" as the movies try to tell us to belive. The difference is that hydrogen fueled cars are new...

I’m a lumberjack and I’m ok. I sleep all night and work all day.

Bacteria could produce a limitless source of Hydrogen

Dutch Lesbian

^

So I can't clear traffic ala parting the red sea by going down a hill and yelling "NO BRAKES!" at the top of my lungs in my bomb-car?

No.

Dutch Lesbian

I wonder...

If we can get the hydrogen engines advance enough... could hydrogen plains be a option?

I’m a lumberjack and I’m ok. I sleep all night and work all day.

The problem is that Hydrogen is difficult to store at sufficient densities.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

Hydrogen is iffy. Electric cars are safer and we've technology on the horizon where it costs mostly carbon to produce high-capacity batteries. Hydrogen on the other hand is highly explosive, difficult to handle and we've no place to get it from except offshore drilling. However, if the bacteria thing works out, we have a clean way to produce hydrogen. We'd still have to deal with the infrastructure problem though.

Both are viable if we want to put in money into it. Hydrogen requires safer handling (the equivalent to the invention of dynamite in making it safe to handle) and clean production (current production methods of hydrogen create more pollution than dirty coal). Electric requires energy storage at "gas" stations to circumvent both smart-metering problems (electricity costs different at different times of day) and to quickly fill up your car (we need the super-capacitors to make electric cars as convenient as gas-cars).

Overall however, electric cars have a much higher theoretical efficiency and therefore should be the option we tend toward over the long-term.

What Breadloaf said.

Hydrogen takes energy to produce, energy which at this point or in the near future would come from fossil fuels; hydrogen requires an all new, highly complex piping, pumping and refining infrastructure that is both costly and prone to leaks (leaks which are very dangerous, mind, hydrogen is incredibly flammable, and leaks which could accelerate global warming) due to the fact that hydrogen is an extremely difficult to contain gas/compressed liquid and existing fuels are normal liquids; and finally, the money and technology just isn't there yet to make a viable hydrogen fuel cell car competitive in the car market.

Batteries are advancing much more quickly than hydrogen, and with less steps of conversion *

there's generally less energy wasted. The infrastructure is much simpler *

^{hey, look at those power lines that are already everywhere. Boy that was easy.}

and therefore cheaper, requiring only upgrades to existing systems *

^{that the electric grid desperately needs anyways, many of the blackouts these days are systemic rather than shortage based}

rather than designing a new one from the ground up

Hydrogen planes, you say? Ridiculous, could never happen.

edited 20th Sep '11 9:20:03 AM by deathjavu

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

@storyyeller: I don't think electric cars count as proven technology, until they can actually drive between cities and back.

Well, Tesla makes electric cars with a 200+ mile range, so that's something, right? I mean I could get to Lincoln on that and then return to Omaha without recharging.

We need nuclear reactors in our cars.

I admit to no logic behind this, but man would it be badass.

Please.

If the electrolysis process can be made faster, cheaper, with sufficient miniaturization and more direct, there wouldn't need to be any need to store the hydrogen...it'd directly go to combustion. In short, we're more likely to have a water powered car than a hydrogen powered one, due to hydrogen's problems.

Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...

What ever the case the problems assocaited with hydrogen and electric cars can be challanged with the development of the techology via continued testing. Eventually we may design a better engine to ensure further uses.

I’m a lumberjack and I’m ok. I sleep all night and work all day.

It's my understanding that batteries are a lot closer to viability and generally more efficient than hydrogen, so yeah, that's where we should be aiming.

Plus, we're developing more efficient batteries anyways, for portable devices. Why not apply that same research to cars?

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

This would be one of the biggest changes to the history of energy, and would be a huge step forward for us.

And then there are fuel cells, but as they get byproducts like carbon dioxide, they are not as kosher.

[edit]

hey... wait a minute...

[edit bis]

...okay... never mind?

edited 20th Sep '11 10:34:25 AM by lordGacek

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

Eh, it's a tossup of inconveniences between hydrogen needing massive infrastructure and needing to get a decent source of it, and electric still having shit distance and being horribly toxic when they break.

IIRC one of the rechargeable battery models (I think...vanadium boride?) manages to have a higher energy density than gasoline, so the latter isn't completely out of the question.

edited 20th Sep '11 12:34:55 PM by Pykrete

Hydrogen has terrible range too with current technology. So you might as well work on the one that's cheaper and more efficient.

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Its gonna get to the point where we might not have a choice. Better to get people used to it early and ease our way in instead of the inevitable "OH SHIT WE HAVE NO MORE OIL LEFT"