Hi guys! Saw this article on BMW saying, hydrogen is the next best thing – from electric cars.
Can anyone ova here, explain in a nutshell how hydrogen cars work? How it’s stored? How it’s made / refined heard its (h2o something)?
The safety of it, in case of an accident?
The transportation of the liquid?
Also, can hydrogen cars accelerate as quick as the Tesla’s? 😯
Thanks!
In: Engineering
As Xelo mentioned, the hydrogen fuel cell is essentially a battery that works by reacting hydrogen with oxygen. It’s a very interesting technology, and theoretically shows promise for the future, but with the current development of straight electric vehicles it’s unlikely to become a practical option for typical vehicles.
Currently, we make the majority of our hydrogen out of natural gas, so it doesn’t really solve the issue of dependence on fossil fuels. It is possible to make it from water through electrolysis, but this is currently very inefficient. You lose roughly 1/3 of the energy you use in the process, so straight electric vehicles are much more efficient on that front. There are companies working on improving this process, so that may change in the future.
Storing and transporting hydrogen is highly complex. It requires cryogenics and/or high pressures to store. It is also not a very dense fuel, so it’s much cheaper to transport the natural gas from which it is made, even without taking the high pressures into account.
In case of an accident, it’s not particularly dangerous. The Hindenburg went up in flames because they painted it with what was essentially thermite. A crashed hydrogen car isn’t likely to explode in a firey mess. But hydrogen is a very effective greenhouse gas, so leaking it into the atmosphere is very bad for global warming.
Being essentially an electric car with a fancy battery that weighs less than normal batteries, performance should be slightly better than electric, all else being equal.
But, even if we solve the inefficiencies, it would be much more expensive to develop the infrastructure for hydrogen cars than for electric, so it’s pretty much a non starter at this point.
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