# hydrogen powered cars **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 8, 2003, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917 "2003-03-08T15:46:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![county](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce7236/32.png) [@county](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/county)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/1 "2003-03-08T15:46:33Z")
Hey what about using hydorgen powered cars. I’m told that the infrastructure for refueling is not in place. Why don’t we just get the oil companies to sell the hydrogen fuel cells along with their coffee and Sluppees an shit? ---
**Author:** ![Borusa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Borusa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Borusa)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/2 "2003-03-08T16:34:41Z")
The main reason against it is that we don’t have any natural reserves of hydrogen, it has to be manufactured from another energy source such as oil, and no advantage is really gained. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/3 "2003-03-08T17:12:57Z")
IIRC, hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. It can be produced from water. Why we don’t do it? Not a clue… economics and the Hindenberg? ---
**Author:** ![Padeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/4 "2003-03-08T17:15:01Z")
Note too that the fuel cell is not the power source but the power converter that turnes hydrogen fuel into elecetical power. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/5 "2003-03-08T17:15:26Z")
There’s more hydrogen in gasoline than in liquid hydrogen. So I guess you could say almost every car on the road is _already_ hydrogen powered… ---
**Author:** ![Padeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/6 "2003-03-08T17:16:31Z")
Boyo Jim, Hydrogen is abundant but is not found by itself. It can be produced from water but so far it takes more power to separate than the power in the hydrogen is worth. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/7 "2003-03-08T17:18:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Borusa \* > \*\*The main reason against it is that we don’t have any natural reserves of hydrogen, it has to be manufactured from another energy source such as oil, and no advantage is really gained. \*\* Agree. Hydrogen is not a primary fuel source. It is an energy vessel (i.e. battery). Much more energy is expended to produce liquid hydrogen than what you get out of it. ---
**Author:** ![Timothy\_Campbell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/958977/32.png) [@Timothy\_Campbell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Timothy_Campbell)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/8 "2003-03-08T17:31:01Z")
\*\*Crafter\_Man: \*\* _There’s more hydrogen in gasoline than in liquid hydrogen._ There’s more hydrogen in gasoline than in pure hydrogen? Uh … I find that a bit hard to believe. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/9 "2003-03-08T18:11:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Timothy Campbell \* > \*\*\*\*Crafter\_Man: \*\* _There’s more hydrogen in gasoline than in liquid hydrogen._ > > There’s more hydrogen in gasoline than in pure hydrogen? Uh … I find that a bit hard to believe. \*\* Perhaps it was a typo. My guess is, he meant: There’s more energy in Gasoline than in hydrogen. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/10 "2003-03-08T18:29:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Khadaji \* > \*\*Perhaps it was a typo. My guess is, he meant: There’s more energy in Gasoline than in hydrogen. \*\* Considering the GCV and NCV of gasoline are 47.3 MJ/kg and 44.0 MJ/kg respectively, and those of hydrogen are 142 MJ/kg and 120 MJ/kg, respectively, I don’t think so. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/11 "2003-03-08T19:34:19Z")
The best thing about hydrogen as fuel is that it produces no exhaust but water vapor, and how many metropolitan areas would object to a little more moisture in the air? The second-best thing is that the supply is limitless in theory, while there’s only so much unburned petroleum on this planet, and less every year. Hydrogen can be extracted from water, by a simple electrolysis procedure you may have seen your high-school physics or chemistry teacher demonstrate, and it returns to water when it’s burned. The problem is that extracting hydrogen from water, or any other substance, requires a power supply. If we use a coal-fired power plant to run a hydrogen-extraction plant, what have we done to make the air cleaner? Something, I suppose, since it’s probably easier to control smokestack emissions at a single point source such as a power plant than to control the tailpipe emissions of millions of gasoline-burning cars; but it still seems like a half-assed solution. And the world’s supply of coal, like its supply of petroleum, is finite and non-renewable. We could get around this by using nuclear power to run the hydrogen works, but that raises a whole new set of problems. Another problem is that hydrogen, consisting of the simplest possible atoms, just one proton and one electron, is the most corrosive element in the universe; it will bond with ANYTHING. An engineer once explained to me that while research to develop hydrogen-powered cars was going on, every line of approach involved a ceramic engine; a metallic engine wouldn’t last very long, it would (I suppose this is the right word) rust. President Bush did not mention any of these problems in his 2003 State of the Union Address. I was surprised to hear him raise the subject at all, considering his ties to the oil industry. Perhaps even the oil tycoons have realized they’re going to run out of oil someday, and they had better start diversifying. IMHO, if we want to clean up our air and reduce our dangerous dependence on imported oil, the best approach is to ---
**Author:** ![something\_clever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3bc359/32.png) [@something\_clever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/something_clever)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/12 "2003-03-08T19:42:22Z")
how about we use geothermal power and solar power to make hydrogen. those _are_ free. windmills are too, which we are steadily getting more of (and i think we should have a huge amount… why not?) hydroelectric power as well could be used to generate hydrogen. there are free energy sources out there, just think about it for 5 seconds instead of one 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/13 "2003-03-08T19:45:22Z")
Sorry, hit the wrong button. The best approach is to STOP USING CARS SO MUCH. (Not me, of course, you.) Ever since World War II we in America have built the most automobile-dependent society in the world. Every suburban development and all its surrounding infrastructure of strip malls and office parks, all is built around the assumption that people who live, work and shop there will both own their own cars and have access to a limitless supply of cheap gasoline, FOREVER. And we can’t alleviate the problem just by building mass-transit rail lines, although that helps. The 'burbs have been build on such a dispersed scale that mass transit is uneconomical. Wherever you live, you probably can’t walk to the nearest rail stop, you have to drive – and once you’re in your car, why get out? What we need to do is stop building dispersed suburban developmens, and start bulldozing them, and start building pedestrian-scale neighborhoods where you can walk to the corner grocery etc. For more on this, read “Asphalt Nation,” by Jane Holtz Kay. Also the books of James Howard Kunstler, “The Geography of Nowhere,” “Home from Nowhere,” and “The City in Mind”; and check out his website, [www.kunstler.com](http://www.kunstler.com). You might also want to read “How Cities Work,” by Alex Marshall – he describes “smart growth” experiments that have been tried in recent decades, as in Portland, Oregon, and what we’ve learned from them so far. Of course, this kind of talk really pisses off certain kinds of libertarians and Libertarians, because effective action in this field inevitably involves GOVERNMENT telling people how they can and can’t use their property. If you want a contrary view, read “The Vanishing Automobile,” by Randal O’Toole. He has a website, I forget its address, but it’s a subsite of something called the Patrick Henry Foundation. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/14 "2003-03-08T20:29:55Z")
Here’s a good quote from the [Canadian Nuclear FAQ.](http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/cnf_sectionC.htm#hydrogen) > [@](#): > > Nuclear power is therefore a natural match for a process seeking to generate large amounts of hydrogen relatively cleanly. It would be supplemented by hydroelectric plants, plus more intermittent renewable sources like solar and wind power plants. In Canada about 20 CANDU plants – roughly the same number already operating in this country – would be needed to generate the hydrogen fuel for our nation’s transportation needs on an on-going basis. Unlike with petroleum, the fuel would have an inexhaustible supply, and would be generated 100% domestically (from natural resource to user end-product). > > CANDU reactors are further well-suited to a hydrogen-fuel economy because they run on heavy water. Heavy water is a natural material that can be generated on the sidestream of conventional electrolysis plants, using CECE technology developed at AECL (see related FAQ). The heavy water would thus be procured at virtually no extra cost. One then achieves a symbiotic relationship whereby hydrogen fuel is generated cleanly using nuclear-powered electrolysis, which generates heavy water as a byproduct for the operation of the nuclear power plant. Canada has a document somewhere which I can’t find offhand, which describes a proposed way to create enough power to generate hydrogen for all the transportation needs of the U.S. The plan involved a ring of 165-200 CANDU nuclear plants in Nevada, near Yucca mountain. The plants would take in water from Lake Meade, generate hydrogen, and pump it in pipelines east and west. The CANDU reactors can burn spent fuel from other reactors, and the output waste from the reactors is much safer than the original waste used to fuel them. So, the idea is that the CANDU hydrogen production facility would also be used as a reprocessing facility to reduce waste going into Yucca. The output would be stored in Yucca mountain, and hydrogen is created for the economy. Unfortunately, such a facility is probably not feasible politically until people get over their irrational fear of nuclear power. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/15 "2003-03-08T20:39:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by something clever \* > \*\*how about we use geothermal power and solar power to make hydrogen. > > those _are_ free. windmills are too \*\* Well, if they’re giving out free windmills and solar panels, where do I send my order? ---
**Author:** ![FranticMad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c68b51/32.png) [@FranticMad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FranticMad)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/16 "2003-03-08T21:42:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sam Stone \* > \*\*The plan involved a ring of 165-200 CANDU nuclear plants in Nevada…such a facility is probably not feasible politically until people get over their irrational fear of nuclear power. \*\* Except that people would have to get over their rational fear of nuclear power too. ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/17 "2003-03-08T21:52:41Z")
> [@](#): > > Considering the GCV and NCV of gasoline are 47.3 MJ/kg and 44.0 MJ/kg respectively, and those of hydrogen are 142 MJ/kg and 120 MJ/kg, respectively, I don’t think so. Yes, but how much energy is required to prepare a gallon of gas vs. a gallon of hydrogen? ---
**Author:** ![DreadCthulhu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/db5fbb/32.png) [@DreadCthulhu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DreadCthulhu)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/18 "2003-03-08T22:38:41Z")
Right now, geothermal only works in limited areas, and solar and windpower are too dispersed to generate enough hydrogen to replace gasoline. That and they are too expensive for large scale power production, with the exception of certain high wind areas. Right now only nuclear fission can produce enough electricity cheaply enough to extract the hydrogen required to replace gasoline. Even, then, as \*\* Sam Stone \*\* mentioned, it would take about 200 or more nuclear plants to do so. Of course, if we started building 8 a year for the next 25 years this wouldn’t be a problem. As to the original post, what you have with hydrogen powered car is a chicken and the egg problem. There are no hydrogen powered cars, so no one is going to build a hydrogen fuel stations. Of course, no one is going buy a hydrogen car if their is no place to fill it up. Also, \*\* Anthracite \*\* while gasoline does store less energy per mass than hydrogen, gasoline is denser than hydrogen, and I believe you can store more energy per volume, even with compressed hydrogen. If I am wrong on that someone please correct me. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/19 "2003-03-08T22:43:39Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by something clever \* > \*\*how about we use geothermal power and solar power to make hydrogen. > > those _are_ free. windmills are too, which we are steadily getting more of (and i think we should have a huge amount… why not?) > > hydroelectric power as well could be used to generate hydrogen. > > there are free energy sources out there, just think about it for 5 seconds instead of one 🙂 \*\* Free energy? So you have a windmill, solar cells, or geothermal supplying all the power of your house? And it’s free? Can you post pictures? > [@](#): > > \*\*just think about it for 5 seconds instead of one 🙂 \*\* Yeah…thought about it for both my engineering degrees, and my 10+ years of experience in energy. ---
**Author:** ![barbitu8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/839c29/32.png) [@barbitu8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barbitu8)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917/20 "2003-03-08T22:51:05Z")
_Consumer Reports_, April 2003: “Honda, Mercedes-Benz, and Toyota now have very limited sales or leasing programs for a few early-production fuel-cell models, but affordable versions for everyday use are still at least a decade away.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydrogen-powered-cars/159917.md?page=2)