which overall is or will be better to power cars: hydrogen, biofuels, or electricity?

Answer 1

Biofuel, as they have to be harvested from a sustainable, renewable sources. Hydrogen and/or electricity does not say much about how the hydrogen or electricity is produced in the first place, so an additional step has to be made to quantify the "cleanliness" of the hydrogen or electricity.
Mind you, someone can produce biofuels by using non clean process as well.
So, it is a matter of looking a the big picture, from the generation of the "fuel" until it is used.
This is from the the point of view of environment.
If, by better, you mean easiest to implement, electricity does not require any additional support infrastructure as you would just plug in your car at home using existing connections.
Then, it is a matter of convenience and range. Hydrogen is delicate to handle, but burns very cleanly. Batteries do not have all the range one may desire yet. Biofuel would be plagued by the relatively poor thermodynamic efficiency of internal combustion engine (same as for current petroleum based fuels).

Answer 2

The automakers are experimenting with them. GM is making some Chevy Equinox hybrid-electrics with fuel cells. However they're a futile technology. You have to make the hydrogen from electricity, which largely still comes from fossil energy sources. Effectively you're using hydrogen to store electricity, in other words as a dreadfully inefficient battery :( Batteries can be made to recharge just as quick as a hydrogen refill, but the real advantage is you can refill a battery anywhere. And think safety, I for one would rather have a car full of batteries than a 10,000 PSI hydrogen tank.

Answer 3

Biofuels are cheapest for vehicle building and running costs and have no global warming impact (as the carbon from the fuels came out of the atmosphere when the fuel was grown).

Hydrogen and electricity have zero emissions from the vehicle but are expensive to build and require lots of electricity which causes worse CO2 emissions than gasolene.

Answer 4

Hydrogen is the obvious favorite. Biofuels give off greenhouse gases when they burn and there is a limited supply (believe it or not) of the raw materials. Electric requires tremendous advances in battery capacity and for lower costs before disposal which nobody seems to be even thinking about now.

Hydrogen can be manufactured by stripping the H off off CH4 methane (natural gas) or by electricity created by wind, solar or nuclear cracking the H2O molecule in two, plus is has a greater energy potential (i.e. "range") in practical use.

Answer 5

Right now, these are three technologies that are underdevelopment--and its hard to see which will prove to be the best in the long run. Personally, my money's on electric. Biofulels can still pollute--and produce CO2. They are better than oil, though--the pollution is less. In addition, they are made from plants that have taken that CO2 out of the air to start with--so the net effect is zero, at least in theory. The big drawback is that it takes a lot of land to grow enough to supply our energy needs--and that has other negative effects on the environmeent.

Hydrogen fuel to me seems to be a non-starter--at least for urban travel (which is about 90% of most peoples driving). The reason is that thetechnology is going to be expensive. right now, if we had a practical way to store enough for acar (we don't) we'd gain nothing--because the hydrogen is made from oil. For it to be a "clean" energy source, we need to have a cost-effective way of extracting the hydrogen directly from water. To me, it seems like if we'e got clean sources of energy for that, we might as well go straight to electric vehicles.

The real key is that electric power--one way or the other that neds to be our source for transportaion (either hydrogen or electric)--and that means a focus on alternatives to using coal and oil to produce electricity. There's a number of possibilities--solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear--and we'll pprobably use all of them.

The reason I talk about this is that the critical thing is : what is the ultimate source of the energy we use. we gain nothing if we're still using oil or coal as the original source of energy.

Answer 6

Hydrogen fuel cell with electric motor drive would be the ultimate. In the country of Iceland they generate cheap electricity from the thermal geysers which can generate hydrogen directly at the existing fuel stations via electricity. At present time all of the government cars in Iceland are burning hydrogen in existing piston engines. I think the rest of the world could do the same thing if they would figure out cheap electricity. Solar,wind,dams,ocean tides, nuclear etc. could do the job, whatever is most available to the area. Thanks for letting Me express My opinion. PS: The exhaust of the autos would water My front lawn as they drive by, thanks.

Answer 7

Biofuel still requires us to create the fuel, or collect it from somewhere. Electricity while renuable and cheap still requires other fules to create it. As well as creating greenhouse gases when being made. Water (H2O = full of hydrogen) is the most plentiful thing on this planet, and requires little expending of other fules or resources to gather. Also there are no exhaust fumes, or bad side effects from using it.

Answer 8

Hydrogen.
We can use wind to generate clean electricity. We can use the electricity to run electrolysis which will separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water. The hydrogen burns clean. The only product is water vapor.

Answer 9

First we need to get off oil, (which is going to be hard because oil companies basically run the world) and to do that electricity is the best bet, but in the future when the tech is cheaper and more advanced, hydrogen is the way to go

Answer 10

Hi. In the long run, hydrogen whose only emission from the vehicle is drinking water.