Just When You THOUGHT Hydrogen Was Dead...

I dont think hydrogen was ever ruled out completely, its just that hybrids and eletric vehicles are a lot easier and cost effective. I think we can agree that the green tech we see in production are seen as the immediate solution, though not the final. hybrids are the bridge

Hydrogen as car fuel *is* dead for those who have talked to engineers and cracked their science books. It's alive only to those who can maka profit from selling this dream to those who still believe in it.

In spite of hydrogen's abundance, the primary obstacle is, and always has been, finding an economical and clean way to convert it into a form that is usable as auto fuel. Today's solution is to burn fossil fuel to generate "clean" electricity to accomplish this. To spell this out to laymen: ya gotta burn a mountain of garbage to produce a bucket of hydrogen fuel, which has as much "car movement energy" in it as a quart of gasoline. Not smart economics, nor good for the planet.

The best scientists around the globe tell us the have no way of doing this, and there isn't even anything remotely feasible in sight. But the dream lives on that maybe, some day, we'll find a cheap, clean way to convert the abundant H2 into hydrogen auto field.

I respectfully acknowledge your right to choose what you believe. Unfortunately, you don't get to choose the facts.

Deboost. Flame. Repeat.

Dang typos. Sorry.

Spot on, Steve. In addition, one of the important driving forces for electric propulsion (from the consumer's perspective) is the absolute simplicity of electric motors. Not so with hydrogen engines. Automotive parts manufacturers for ICEs will do everything in their power to push for continued complexity as they could probably retool for other combustion technologies and hope to survive. Peddling the dream of hydrogen and denigrating electric vehicles will be a major part of their survival strategy.

Steve, your point is spot on, but they don't use electrolysis to produce the vast majority of the worlds hydrogen. They use a process called hydrogen cracking, where they take fuel and split the hydrogen molecules off of it. It takes less energy then trying to make the highly stable water molecule into the unstable hydrogen molecule. Still, your point remains, they have to use more fuel to produce hydrogen then it saves being burnt.

In then end you're still left with something that looks like this.

http://www.hahastop.com/pictures/Clean_Car.jpg

Joe_Limon wrote "...but they don't use electrolysis to produce the vast majority of the worlds hydrogen..."

I agree. My understanding is that the process of "hydrogen cracking" requires an external energy source, which is typically electrical, the majority of which comes from fossil fuel burning generating stations.

solar power? seriously? solar simply isn't an economical choice for 90% of the worlds populations. Same goes for wind power.

My solution is filling desert fields with algae ponds to act as giant natural solar panels, and converting all that grown biomass into bio fuel.

best of all, it works with salt water.

Joe, you must love changing filters, plugs, hoses, gaskets, fluids, etc.