To paraphrase Mean Girls, “stop trying to make hydrogen happen.”
For some years now, detractors of battery electric vehicles have held up hydrogen as a clean fuel panacea. That sometimes refers to hydrogen combustion engines, but more often, it’s hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles, or FCEVs. Both promise motoring with only water emitted from the vehicles’ exhausts. It’s just that hydrogen actually kinda sucks as a fuel, and automaker Stellantis announced today that it is ending the development of its light-, medium- and heavy-duty FCEVs, which were meant to go into production later this year.
Hydrogen’s main selling point is that it’s faster to fill a tank with the stuff than it is to recharge a lithium-ion battery. So it’s a seductive alternative that suggests a driver can keep all the convenience of their gasoline engine with none of the climate change-causing side effects.
But in reality, that’s pretty far from true.
I’d love to see a source on that.
This Report by the US department of energy says otherwise.
My chemistry lab experiment. 😅
Spicy gas go boom.
I suppose a slow leak wouldn’t be that bad though. A catastrophic failure from a collision would be not great.
I was definitely in the same camp of thinking (I mean Hindenburg etc, duh). But there’s been a bunch of studies where, because hydrogen basically immediately dissappates up and away, unless you’re in an extremely cramped area it’s much safer in collisions and unexpected containment breaches.
Even then, it actually poses less of a threat to life because it doesn’t create smoke or burn for awhile like gasoline does.