Kozminski Techblog

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The future of cars is now more uncertain than ever, with the EU banning the production of classic combustion-powered vehicles and more countries incentivizing the usage of renewable sources of energy. There are currently 2 significant substitutes for oil-powered engines, the 1st most prominent being the electric motor, and the 2nd lesser known being hydrogen-powered engines.

While we have all heard of electric cars hydrogen cars have kind of been forgotten. The promise of a car being so eco-friendly that rather than producing fumes all that would come out of the exhaust pipe would be pure water. Also, 75% of the whole universe’s mass is hydrogen so we could never run out. So what’s the deal? Why hasn’t yet this “eco-revolution” dawned upon us?

How does it work?

What we should consider first is how a car can be powered by hydrogen. There are currently 2 options, a combustion engine or a fuel-cell engine. Hydrogen is highly combustible, it has threefold the energy of gasoline so it would be much more efficient. However, due to how difficult it is to obtain pure hydrogen as of now and how dangerous exploding hydrogen is and it isn’t 0 emission for now nobody really pursues that idea. The second method is a bit more complex, it uses hydrogen atoms as a source of electricity. To not get too deep into physics, a reaction is used to rip an electron from a hydrogen atom, and then that electron is used to power an electric motor. Then what is left of the atom combines with oxygen in the air creating the “magical” water that drips from the exhaust pipe.

Efficiency

So how does it compare to other forms of fuel? While powering the car the energy output is as efficient as in a normal EV at about 80%. However, due to the high energy costs of purifying that hydrogen and transporting it, the efficiency falls to only 38%. We can assume that if this form of providing power got more mainstream its efficiency would get better, but it’s just impossible for it to reach the 90% that electric vehicles have. On the other hand, it is still better than a classic petrol engine with an efficiency of about 30%. What this means is that currently, hydrogen is sort of a weird middle ground between petrol and electricity. It will take a lot of research for it to reach the desired efficiency. Another problem is the current cost of fueling stations, to establish a hydrogen fueling station costs about 2 million dollars per unit which is quite problematic given that a petrol pump station costs about 21k dollars.

Refueling

This takes us to hydrogens’ strong side: refueling. Currently, there are too few refueling stations for H2 cars to be convenient, but electric vehicles had the same problem which has now been mostly tackled. What hydrogen cars strive at is the fact that refueling them takes the same amount of time as putting normal gas in your tank, and a full load of hydrogen will give you more range than an average EV. Refueling a hydrogen car costs about 80$ which is 6kg of hydrogen, yes hydrogen is measured by mass rather than by volume, which isn’t so bad and it would get far cheaper in the future with due research and funding. Also, EVs have huge batteries which are not only a hazard to the environment but also take a lot of energy and material to manufacture, hydrogen cars don’t have that problem.

Popularity

Currently, there are 3 companies that have created a hydrogen car and put it on the market: Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai. But other companies like BMW, Mercedes, and Audi are also developing their H2 cars. A lot of cities are starting to operate hydrogen buses, i.e. Warsaw, Frankfurt, and, Budapest, some of these buses are manufactured by a polish company Solaris. The buses in Germany drive off hydrogen that is created as waste from waste plants. To lure new customers Toyota is giving their car owners 15,000 dollars for refueling over 3 years, so you pretty much drive for free for the first 3 years of owning a hydrogen Toyota. 

(Toyota Mirai, source Wikipedia)

Conclusion 

So will we go hydro? Petrol is harmful to the environment, while EVs have a lot of “hidden costs” like the production of batteries and disposing of them. Hydrogen seems like a middle ground that isn’t yet developed enough to be taken into consideration. I think that there are two options, currently, EVs are unsustainable in the long run and H2 cars are uncertain in their feasibility so we will either tackle all the problems of EVs by creating new kinds of batteries that don’t wear down so quickly and go full solar or we will research hydrogen fuel-cells to the point where they are better than electric vehicles. Depending on what will happen first we will either go full electric or full hydrogen.