Outside of the cesspool that is New York City, regular folk drive cars to and fro’. And while New Yorkers may get a bad rap for being “mean” or “high-strung” or “fancy,” by relying on public transportation (7 train~!) and our well-muscled legs to get around, we’re doing Mother Earth a big favor. As the rest of the country pumps CO2 and other fun elements into the atmosphere, we’re doing our damnedest to keep our carbon footprints as low as possible. (Never mind that China and India throw CO2 into the atmosphere like nobody’s business… yes, I think going green is 100 percent worthless when taking other, less environmentally sensitive countries into account.) But what if y’all drove a car that, instead of producing noxious, Earth-destroying fumes as waste, you produced clean water? Magic? Wizzzzardry? Only kind of!
Hydrogen-powered cars, friends. Hydrogen-powered cars. I saw a documentary on them once when I was still young and idealistic (let’s say something like 2004) and was totally blown away. By using a fuel-cell (I leave the other, combustion-type engines out of this post; the combustion engine is old hat at this point), hydrogen-powered cars mix hydrogen (of all things!) with oxygen to produce electricity (which powers the car) and water (the only exhaust). That, seemingly, would solve one of the bigger “omg we’re killing the planet with the burning of fossil fuels” problems, right?
Depends on who you talk to. Figures.
For starters, you’re still technically burning fossil fuels when you drive a hydrogen-powered car. That’s because, unlike sweet, life-giving oil, hydrogen isn’t actually a fuel, but rather a conduit for energy. That means you can’t simply burn it and go vroooom. You need to generate that hydrogen somehow, and that’s typically done by burning fossil fuels at specialized plants. Much of this hydrogen is already used to keep America Strong. Who’s gonna pay for increased hydrogen production, and in a fashionably environmentally friendly manner? Not me. I’ve got, what, 50-60 years left on this dumb planet? Not my problem. Granted, as Popular Mechanics noted some time ago, hydrogen contains more than three times as much energy as natural gas, so once you’re able to produce enough in a cost-effective manner, maybe then we’ll all get along.
Another issue—how to transport hydrogen. Y’all may have heard of the Hindenburg, the lighter-than-air zeplin that exploded quite spectacularly over New Jersey. Who wants to drive around with a tank full of that stuff? Try convincing the average American to drive around in a car that’s filled with hydrogen. (Never mind that they already drive around with a tank full of petrol.)
As for the cars themselves, there’s a few reasons why we’re not driving them en masse just yet. The biggest reason right now is that they’re still to expensive for car manufactures to produce. What’s Detroit’s incentive to produce a car that only a small number of people can buy (like the Tesla)? Fuel-cell technology is quite “there” yet, so to speak, not at the scale and sophistication that we’d need it yet. While there’s plenty of researching going into fuel-cells, we’re still a few years away from being able to walk into the local car dealership and test drive a hydrogen-powered car.
Bottom line is, hydrogen-powered cars simply aren’t practical right now. Maybe it’ll take something $10/gallon gasoline before we start looking for alternative fuels.
Gee, just because oil is sitting underground for millions of years makes it a fuel while hydrogen bound to oxygen isn’t! Well where did the oil come from, eh? Ultimately from the sun and gravity of compression. Where does the hydrogen come from, eh? Ultimately from the sun via direct photovoltics or wind. If you use oil to produce hydrogen you are doing a double down efficiency loss.
Its time to get off the bandwagon of ‘carrier’ vs ‘fuel’. All chemicals that react are carriers. They store the energy in there bonds and release it during reactions. The best candidates for ‘carriers’ are those that are very difficult to separate out of their stable state. Why? Because they hold more energy than those that are easier to separate.
Its also time to get off the, gee, its not here now so it never will be, bandstand. Centralized oil by big business has had its day. Now the little guys with multiple distributed energy capture devices will lead the way. Have you bought a wind generator yet? Have you installed solar panels? You need to ‘get off the grid’ and start producing energy for your home AND your car.
Stop griping, get moving.
My father in law is an engineer who did some work for Honda on their planned hydrogen feul cell vehicles. Seems the tricky part no one can get right is refilling the hydrogen tank. Something about hydrogen being extrmemely combustable and having to maintinain high levels of pressure….
That said, I’m willing to take my life in my hands everytime I stop at the pump, after all if someone pulls up to the station now and decides to answer their cell phoen, I could be lookign into the abyss
Hydrogens a dead end. Look, we already have two perfectly good generation and distribution systems for energy, the electric grid, and the existing petrol distribution systems.
If the electric grid becomes the primary distributions system and the existing petrol system becomes a distant secondary system then things will be better.
Charge your car during off peak hours and have an on board generator for the three or four times a year you want to travel. For those with a house that has some space, make your own electricity during the day and sell it back to the grid.
Building hydrogen generating plants, designing hydrogen distribution and dispensing systems is all just stupid and should hit the ash can of bad ideas along with bio diesel, ethanol made food that we could be feeding people with, and other lame brained lobbiest driven ideas.
But I could be wrong.
The question no one seems to ask is what all this extra water vapor will do to our environment. Let’s take greater LA for an example. There are about 17,000,000 people and at least 5,000,000 cars. What happens when a large number of them are pumping water vapor into the air? Would that change sunny LA to muggy LA? rainy LA? What happens when this water vapor filled air has to go over the mountains to the north, east or south? Floods, anyone?
If I’ve made an error in my deductions please tell me where because if I’m right this could be a ecological disaster of its own.
People! fossil fuels are running out, we need to do something about it. This is the start of a new beginning.