What is happening with hydrogen fueled cars? It should be more cost effective now.?

Answer 1

All the car companies are working on getting ready to release them.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/autos/0705/gallery.honda_fcx/index.html

The problem still remains how to produce, and distribute that hydrogen. Solar cells the size of a parking lot can make hydrogen, but it takes a whole week to make enough hydrogen for a compact car to go 150 miles.

Big problem!

There's still tons of work to do.

Answer 2

There have been a lot of good answers to this question already. As has been stated, the main technological problems are how to produce the hydrogen and how to store it. The only reasonably efficient way we can currently get hydrogen is from natural gas, and this method produces just as much CO2 as burning gasoline, so there's no benefit. Even after you produce it, you need the infrastructure to store it, which would be an extremely expensive undertaking.

As was stated in the very first answer, there is the possibility of getting the hydrogen from aluminum alloys. This could potentially solve the problems of transportation and storage, as aluminum is cheap and abundant in the US, and the aluminum alloy pellets would be easy to store. The current projection is that this technology could produce hydrogen at an equivalent of $3/gallon of gas, so it would be cost competetive, and it would solve the CO2 emissions problem.

However, there's no telling how far away this technology is from mass production in cars. They're only talking about using it in small engines like chainsaws and lawnmowers at first. The bottom line is that hydrogen fuel technology for cars is still several decades away, and in the meantime we should be concentrating on the technologies which are already viable, such as hybrids, electric cars, and biodiesel.

Answer 3

Hydrogen fueled cars for the masses are still a way off. 2 companies, BMW and Honda, claim they will sell hydrogen powered vehicles in the next couple of years. The Bimmer is a modified 5 or 7 series (I forget which) that is powered by combusting either hydrogen or gasoline, making it a high-tech flex-fuel car. The Honda FCX is a fuel cell vehicle, making it essentially an electric car that gets its power from a fuel cell instead of a battery.

The problem is getting the hydrogen. Right now almost all of our hydrogen comes from fossil fuels (we separate the HYDRO from the CARBON). The other method of getting hydrogen is to electrolyze water. There are issues with both methods. The first method does nothing to lessen our emissions or free us from fossil fuels. Nor is it a renewable source. The electrolysis method shows more promise, because if we use renewable power such as solar or wind to perform the electrolysis, we have an emission-free energy source.

However, there is an environmental problem with this: water use. Fresh water shortages are rapidly becoming a problem even more serious then global warming. We will need to get creative here, perhaps by desalinizing seawater or using water unfit for drinking. BOTH methods suffer a huge energy penalty. That is, you get 30-50% less energy out in the form of hydrogen then you put in, meaning that if we can find a way to skip the hydrogen middleman and store the energy directly in a battery or capacitor we are better off by far. BTW, the energy penalty is even more severe for corn ethanol, making it the biggest energy joke ever played on the American people.

Fuel cells will most likely find uses in the small storage field before the automotive field. In other words, you are far more likely to use a hydrogen powered laptop or cell phone in the next 10 years then you are to drive a hydrogen powered car. In fact, you probably stand a better chance of getting blown up by a missile from a hydrogen-powered unmanned military aircraft.

But all is not lost! Plug-in hybrid cars such as the modified Prius built by CalCars (100 mpg for most of our driving needs) or the proposed Chevrolet Volt can drastically reduce our dependence on oil, cut our auto emissions by more then half (not accounting for power plant emissions), and virtually eliminate the crippling power that OPEC has over Western economies.

Answer 4

They're coming, the problem is infrastructure, there's not enough filling stations.

BMW has a great solution for this actually, a car that runs on hydrogen or gasoline at the switch of a button. So you can have the car run on hydrogen if you live somewhere with the filling stations, or gas if you find yourself in places without them. The cars aren't being sold on the open market yet, but instead to celebrities and such.

Though you can go to certain companies in the USA that will convert your car to hydrogen if you want too, but again you'd have the fueling station problem, so you'd need a dual fuel car still.

http://www.bmwworld.com/hydrogen/stragegy.htm

http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/bmw-hydrogen-7-production/

Answer 5

My brother is going for a Master's degree, specializing in alternate fuel sources. There have been tremendous advances in creating hydrogen fuel cells. However, the problem still remains of a viable and cost-effective way of actually producing and storing the hydrogen itself. The most recent breakthrough plan consists of creating an aluminum-galium alloy that oxidizes with water to create hydrogen. Other ideas consist of large "batteries" that would store chemically manufactured hydrogen. Once again though, the issue comes with the cost-effectiveness and practicality of these applications. On top of all of this, there is little incentive in such a profit-driven market sector to develop things that do not work the bottom line.

Answer 6

Technically, fuel cell cars can work. As in, you fuel them up somewhere, and drive from point A to point B.

However, the concept of fuel cells is VERY deceiving. Electricity is used to extract hydrogen from water. In a fuel cell, the hydrogen is consumed to produce electricity and water. The problem is the energy lost during both reactions. Essentially you are powering the cars with electricity, only at less than half efficiency. Plus fuel cells are large and heavy. There is absolutely NO advantage to fuel cells compared to electric vehicles.

Answer 7

It is easy to make any regular car run on hydrogen. The modifications are minor. But making a fuel tank that can hold enough hydrogen is not so easy. And where will we get all that hydrogen to burn? Commercial quantities of hydrogen come from petroleum. So we are still using oil if we do that. Using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen takes electric generators, most of which burn coal, which is even worse than oil for global warming purposes. And the recently mentioned method of using aluminum and gallium to make extract hydrogen from water is no different. Making the aluminum (which gets used up to make the hydrogen) takes lots of electricity.

Answer 8

Hydrogen has been promised for the last 10 years.

the storage & infrastructure is still a huge unaddressed problem.

On the other hand battery electric, without the support of big oil or car companies, has come up with a viable personal transport solution,.
http://www.altairnano.com/markets_amps.html 20+year life, 10 minute recharge, existing distribution network to home and work and a variety of adaptable generator technology available

http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/ 5 seater 90mph SUT, or www.teslamotors.com 250 miles per charge
simple to make & maintain, few moving parts, once mass production starts it should be very cost effetive.

But they are taking on some of the biggest & most profitable companies in the world, so it may all go the way of the GM EV1 and be crushed, www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com

Answer 9

It takes massive amounts of electricity to extract hydrogen for use in fuel cells, and electricity ain't cheap, nor clean. Most areas are fighting the development of more coal-fired plants; and there is a fairly strong movement to tear down hydro-electric damns because they interfere with the environment. Until Americans wake up and start building nuclear power plants, hydrogen won't make economical sense. Unfortunately we are mis-informed about nuclear power and fight these harder than we fight coal plants. What percentage of Americans realize that France gets 85 to 90% of it's electricity from nuclear power plants? There are something like 500 reactors in use today. When was the last time there was an accident? It's much safer than we've been led to believe.

Answer 10

Lester Brown and a few other guys are still pushing for using hydrogen technology as a way to store wind-power overnight. The main problems...hydrogen is extremely explosive; also and as tough....they have pretty short range because the storage tanks are just huge. It's a huge investment and it will have to compete with other ideas before any investment is made in supply and infrastructure like filling stations...