…with the first US crossing ending up on a trailer.

The cars on the tour across the US involved cars from Honda, GM, Toyota, Ford, BMW, Daimler, Hyundai, Nissan and Volkswagen…almost all of the major car companies. Really, besides showing off the technology, the tour was meant to show the need for hydrogen fueling stations around the country, and I guess they proved their point. Although, I’m not sure that is the best way to promote your hydrogen cars is to show how they run out of fuel on a long trip.

Right now, there are only 60 hydrogen refueling stations around the country, and only two of those are open to the public without prior arrangements. With the still high cost of producing hydrogen fuel now, and the slow acceptance of the public to use (estimate are only 2 million vehicles by the year 2020), maybe the car companies should focus on the electric cars until they can lower costs and increase production.

Retrieved from -Reuters-

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…if it costs so much to produce?

Early yesterday, I read an article in Dvice talking about hydrogen cars being a fraud. Briefly, I will list the points that were made.

1. Hydrogen cars (Honda FCX Clarity) are not for sale, only for lease. Production cost of cars is supposedly in the hundreds of thousands.
2. Hydrogen is not a fuel, but an energy storage medium that is converted back to electricity to power a car.
3. Right now, only oil companies are supplying the hydrogen refilling stations.

When I first read this, it made a lot of sense. Why buy hydrogen that has been produced by electricity to create electricity? Wouldn’t you be better off to just use an electric car?

But then, I read an article that was talking about a cleaner and greener method of producing hydrogen that could really start to make this a smart decision in the future. Gizmodo reported aobut a new of storing solar energy, which essentially breaks up water into hydrogen and oxygen. Once these are broken up, they can be easily stored into a fuel cell to be used as an energy source. This will not use any carbon to provide power and therefore be a big help to the environment. This could really help with points 2 and 3 listed above, since it can start to make more sense. I can’t help point 1, and would hopefully think that the high cost would be due to the research that had to be done, and once people realize that hydrogen can be a viable power source, can start to reduce production costs.

Something to think about for sure!

Retrieved from -Gizmodo-
Retrieved from -Dvice-
Retrieved from -PhysOrg-

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