hybrids &
alt-fuel autos
hydrogen–fueled cars: the dream of zero emissions
You may have heard about hydrogen cars from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Think what you may about the Governator, but he is on a mission to make hydrogen-fueled cars a reality in California. Many environmentalists share his hope for a day when we may not have to burn fossil fuels at all--- we could run our autos on hydrogen. But the technology and vehicles are still in their infancy. There are some exciting hydrogen demo vehicles in the field, but many challenges remain to be overcome before the dream of the hydrogen car is fully realized.
One of the main benefits of hydrogen as a fuel is that its only byproduct of combustion is water vapor, thus producing no harmful pollutants that contribute to global warming. Hydrogen can be obtained from a number of sources: decomposing methane, coal (through coal gasification), biomass, or from water (via electrolysis). There are two main types of hydrogen cars: fuel-cell and combustion. In the fuel-cell type, hydrogen is turned into electricity through fuel-cells which then power the car’s electric motor. In the combustion type the hydrogen is burned in the car’s engine much as it is in traditional autos. Standard internal combustion engines can be converted to run on gaseous hydrogen.
Most experts think we are not likely to see mass-produced hydrogen vehicles until 2015. Toyota, Honda, Daimler-Chrysler, GM and several other car companies have demonstration models in the works.
Another challenge to the adoption of the hydrogen car is that there are very few hydrogen fueling stations. There are currently ~35 stations in the U.S., with California leading the pack. There are many more stations in the planning stage. But for the hydrogen car to really take off there will need to be a major national build-out of fueling stations.
To see a collection of the demo models under development please visit
http://www.cafcp.org/fuel-vehl_cars.html or
http://www.h2mobility.org/index.html
To learn more about the California Hydrogen Highway program, please visit:
http://www.hydrogenhighway.ca.gov
To learn more about a variety of hydrogen issues and initiatives, please visit the American Hydrogen Association at http://www.clean-air.org
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