Hydrogen Fueled cars.

Probably every major car manufacturer in the world has made a hydrogen fueled car. But why aren't we all driving around in cars that has water vapour for exhaust gas instead of carbon dioxide...?

There are two ways to power your car using hydrogen.

The one is using a Hydrogen Fuel Cell to produce electricity and then use that to power your car. In this case the Hydrogen Fuel Cell will work like a conventional battery minus the pollution.

Find out how a Hydrogen Fuel cell Works.

The other way you can fuel your car with hydrogen is to burn the hydrogen in the internal combustion engine like normal gasoline or natural gas.In this case the Hydrogen will act as the fuel.

Most vehicle manufacturers that decide to build a hydrogen fueled car take the first option - the Hydrogen Fuel Cells. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Both of these options still have a lot of hurdles to overcome before we will be driving around in hydrogen fueled cars. If you ask me it is taking way to long.

Have we made so little progress from 1807 when Franscois Isaac de Rivaz, powered the first internal combustion engine on a mixture of Hydrogen and Oxygen. Or from 1838 when Christian Friedrich Schoenbein, discovered the hydrogen fuel cell effect. This is a long time ago...

Visit the History of Hydrogen to find out more... 

One of the Hurdles that must be overcome with Hydrogen fueled cars is safety. When you want to burn Hydrogen in an internal combustion engine you can either store it on board in a pressurized tank or make the Hydrogen on demand.

Making Hydrogen on demand can only work if you can make a lot of it or if you have a very small engine capacity.

Driving around with a pressurized tank of hydrogen is not more dangerous than driving around with a tank full of gasoline. Accidents do happen unfortunately and this hurts the reputation of Hydrogen fueled cars.

The benefits of using hydrogen in an internal combustion engine as opposed to a hydrogen fuel cell is that you can modify any car with an ICE engine (not diesel or compression ignition engine) to run on a mixture of hydrogen gas and oxygen. This is a huge benefit and can everyone a lot of money and make the whole transition from fossil fuel to hydrogen fuel much easier.