Like many other new technologies, early adopters will pay a lot for the product and be restricted in how and where it can be used. If it is a reasonable product, more hydrogen cars and fueling stations will be built. In time, it may replace the internal combustion engine for everyday use. Even if it just replaced commuter cars, that would be a huge step forward. Stick around and we’ll all find out. Hey, James May and Jay Leno like it.
Yea, but how often do we run out of gas? Of course you can always build in a reserve, maybe make it difficult to get to, requiring you to get out of the car open the hood and turn a valve, to wake up those who don’t bother watching their fuel gauge.
At this time the technology is still too young to say. That is why there is and should be any number of possible technologies being researched and developed.
Oh great…millions of “Hindenburgs” on the road waiting to explode. An exaggeration (with liquid hydrogen) I know, but total safety in refueling will never be achieved until wind power is the norm…I mean; lets put a suit of sails on every car and tack up the highway…anything for independence from a “pump”.
And how safe is pumping an explosive fluid like gasoline? You only feel safe because you’ve never had an accident. Safety will be much the same as with current gas stations. No smoking, no sparks. Hydrogen does not need much of a potential to light up, though. Since there are what appear to be commercial stations (Shell in LA in the Top Gear video), grounding issues may have been solved already. Hopefully, you have to lock the filler onto the car before fueling can take place.
Just a little levity to get to to the “independence”…am well aware of gasoline problems. That’s why we use diesel on our sailboats whenever we can as boating with gas in confined quarters is a big safety issue.
On that account,you’re preaching to the choir.
Besides; consider blindness and frostbite, with liquid hydrogen, problems never considered with gasoline…I’ll still take my chances with gas until ALL safety issues are resolved.
It should be a closed loop system. Use pure water at a “station” and use solar power to split out the hydrogen (boosted with all that free oxygen, too). Car’s fill up with hydrogen in a tank, and return the water they created while using it (it’ll be pure water). You return the pure water, so the station doesn’t need constant infusion, and the hydrogen is made available with renewable energy. Battery/electric cars are NOT energy efficient when you include the generation, transmission and recharging losses in the equation.
The nasty fire of the Hindenburg was the fuselage burning, not the hydrogen. Mythbusters proved it. The hydrogen was consumed with the first seconds of the fire.
So burning hydrogen did or did not ignite or support the burning fuselage and was the cause of disaster regardless of the “nasty fire” following ? And a helium filled Hindenburg would still have caught fire and burned the same ?
Am missing your point.
Sorry, realb, you need to watch that Mybusters episode again. They couldn’t get a big fire with just the cloth, they needed to add hydrogen, it took both. The huge fire the got was with an aritificially-combustible sample, not representative of the actual fabric.
As for hydrogen, it is explosive over a much wider range of concentrations than are gasoline fumes, and it’s much better at leaking, so I do worry about its safety more than gasoline.
I have once, in the first tank of gas with a vehicle I had that had a faulty fuel guage. But how many times did I bring a can of gas to my sister or someone else? Many.
Talking to a tow truck driver who is contracted by AAA, his most frequent calls are because of people running out of gas, then flat tires, then everything else.
“As for hydrogen, it is explosive over a much wider range of concentrations than are gasoline fumes, and it’s much better at leaking, so I do worry about its safety more than gasoline.”
And the only way to tell it’s burning is if you feel the heat; the flame is invisible. Or we could all carry a little dust broom to hold near the fuel nozzle. 
Seriously, the interlock system between the pump and the car would have to be even more sophisticated than today’s gasoline delivery system. The Top Gear video hinted at that.
But automotive consumers will have to settle for high-pressure storage tanks full of compressed hydrogen.
Try googling “carbon adsorption” along with hydrogen fuel cell and you’ll find there have been some significant, recent advances in the storage of gaseous hydrogen well beyond simple compression techniques.
Most new technology starts out as a laboratory curiousity. There will always be people who say it can’t be done…some even after it IS being done.
If you have enough money, (like NASA) ANYTHING can be done. But we are talking about mass produced personal transportation that must compete in an open, free, market. Why pay twice as much for a vehicle that can not equal the overall performance and operating cost of a pure electric?? Sure, fuel cells work, but why bother?? What’s the advantage? They are simply not worth the effort to establish the infrastructure needed to support them.
I saw an article in Road and Track today about the FCX Clarity. The fueling system is complex. It won’t start until the system is locked in place correctly and shuts off at 5000 psi. Read about it here:
http://www.roadandtrack.com/article.asp?section_id=3&article_id=7906
BTW, they liked it - as a commuter car.
Exactly right, Caddyman. Think of it this way - take a Prius minus the gas engine/gas tank, and now you have 4 choices - put the gasoline engine/gas tank in, put the gas engine/gas tank in and some extra batteries (plug-in hybrid), replace the engine with lots of batteries (EV), or replace the gas engine/gas tank with a high pressure hydrogen tank and fuel cell array. Just don’t ask how much the last option cost.
The three advatanges are critical IMO; increased range, shorter replenishment time and capacity to rapidly heat the cabin. A battery still takes HOURS to recharge and can only last a short time. Where I live, heating the cabin is imperative in the winter. The fuel cell is better at this aspect too.
Cost? How much did the first hybrids cost? How much did the first computer cost? All things are cost prohibitive when first rolled out. Someone else already pointed out that there will always be those who can afford to ride the crest of the technology wave and help to make it affordable for the rest of us. Perhaps some of the billions being thrown at certain “stimulus” activities would be better spent here??
The Honda Clarity just won the “The World Green Car of the Year” award at the New York Auto show.
Many of the preceding posts claiming superiority of fuel cells over batteries seem to assume that battery technology will not advance. Here’s and article on recent discoveries that might result in major advances in battery power delivery, weight, and, perhaps most important, charging speed:
Part of the problem with charging is using a 120V source. It’s twice as fast with 220V; 4 times as fast with 440V. Not many people should handle 440V lines, but 220V charging could be an option.
Yes, most all houses have 220v available, would be a necessity for an EV or PHEV. 120v won’t cut it.