Hydrogen-powered cars

Hydrogen powered cars need to hold enough fuel to get the 300 mile driving range of today s IC cars. Hydrogen service stations are few, so refueling becomes a problem. About 12,000 fuel stations in the hundred largest cities in the U.S. would put 70% of the population within 2 miles of fuel. At a cost of one million dollars per station, 12 billion would be needed to provide a fuel infrastructure. This is less than half of what it would cost to build the Alaska pipeline in today s dollars. 

DaimlerChrysler has been working on hybrid cars while Opel General Motors has built a hydrogen-powered car, HydroGen 1. Ford plans to make its SUVs lighter and more aerodynamic and had plans to introduce an electric version of its Escape SUV. Pininfarina s Metrocubo of 1999 is a hybrid car. 

Ford manufactured a Ford Focus C-max hydrogen powered car that consumed 250 litres/min of from a tank. 

The path set by the current energy policy of the United States and the developing world will dramatically increase greenhouse gas emissions over the next few decades, which will force sharper and more painful reductions in the future when we finally do act. In the United States, the transportation sector alone is projected to generate nearly half of the 40 percent rise in co2 emissions forecast for 2025, which is long before hydrogen-powered cars could have a positive effect on greenhouse gas emissions (see Chapter 8). 

During the 2008 Hydrogen Road Tour, hydrogen-powered cars traveled the roads of 18 states. 

As already pointed out, the advent of hydrogen-powered cars would increase natural gas consumption significantly. 

Various automobile companies have researched and created prototypes of hydrogen-powered vehicles. Although a few companies dropped their plans to build such cars in 2009, other corporations announced their intentions to continue such efforts. At that time, most of the hydrogen-powered cars in use in the United States were in California. And more than 60 hydrogen fueling stations were in operation in the country. 

Many car manufacturers are researching ways to mass produce vehicles that are powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Some hydrogen-powered cars that manufacturers have already developed can reach speeds of over 150 km/h (90 mi/h). These types of cars will also travel 400 to 640 km (250 to 400 mi) before refueling. 

The United States (U.S.) is in the process of embracing the hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicle as the answer to the nation s transportation needs, at least for the second half of the twenty-first century, and perhaps before then as well. The scientific, engineering, social, consumer acceptance, economic, and policy hurdles that must be overcome to enable this technology to succeed are unprecedented. This chapter analyzes past deployments of alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) by DaimlerChrysler Corporation to reveal the lessons learned so that potential stumbling blocks or inconsistent policies can be avoided in the deployment of hydrogen powered cars and light duty trucks. 

Hydrogen-powered cars are based on fuel cells that store hydrogen, or H2 gas, inside a material called a polymer exchange membrane. The fuel cell contains two electrodes an anode (negative side) and a cathode (positive side). At the anode, the H2 molecules are split into protons and electrons. The protons pass through a polymer exchange membrane, while the electrons are unable to pass through this membrane and thus have to flow in a different direction. This creates a current of electricity by which the car is powered. 

Hydrogen powered cars are assessed similarly to transport units. In fact for a mobile unit, credit factors of releases caused by crash accidents can be considered at least an order of magnitude more probable than operative failures. Overall indices for a single vehicle are reported in Table 4. The analysis of both the potential index (PI) and the hazard index (HI) immediately reveals that the innovative technology of metal hydrides yields safer storages by the application of the moderation principle of inherent safety (CCPS, 1996). 

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