In the last few years there has been a huge increased interest in electric cars. It is caused by ecological trends and interests in renewable energy. Removal of combustion cars is unavoidable. However electric cars are not the only ones with the bright future. There’s a lot of talk about hydrogen cars that may be better alternative for combustion cars.
Vehicles that are powered by H2 are called fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV). Because their only emission is water and warm air. However sourcing H2 produces approximately 830 million tons of CO2 every year, which is equivalent to the emission of the Poland and Indonesia combined. So it is not that ecofriendly as it seems like.
Much Is being said about ecological aspects of electric cars, but it’s rarely spoken about future of the car batteries. There is still some uncertainty, they’re hard to recycle same as solar panels for example. Hydrogen cars offer fuel cells that seems to get rid of that problem.
What about filling time? Here hydrogen cars are crushing electric competitor.
Depending on the power of the charger it takes at least half an hour to give the batteries 80% power, filling a hydrogen fuel tank takes only 5-minutes or less. However, exploitation of the electric car is cheaper because of the prices of the powering and refueling time.
The real problem of this technology is getting hydrogen in its pure from. Although hydrogen is the most common element in the universe it doesn’t exist in its pure form. To get hydrogen in its form to power the car, we need to produce it from the other compounds like natural gas, water or other fossil fuels. To do this energy needs to be used an environmental and economic costs enter the equation.
The European Union struck a deal to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035. In my opinion we need to have some different various types of fuel for the car, to have a choice and not cause a monopoly for electric cars.
That’s why I think that there is very bright future for the hydrogen cars, but we must develop better technologies to produce pure form of the hydrogen, and how to increase the efficiency of it. Also, without the evolution of the infrastructure, there will not be bright future for the hydrogen cars.
Sources:
https://impactful.ninja/the-carbon-footprint-of-hydrogen-fuel/
https://youmatter.world/en/hydrogen-electric-cars-sustainability-28156/
https://www.saga.co.uk/magazine/motoring/cars/buying/are-hydrogen-cars-the-future