Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Hydrogen Cars

We have all come to know that cars powered by combustion technology is getting too expensive with adverse environmental effects. There are other alternatives such as electric hybrids, corn oil and so forth. Hydrogen powered cars are another one.




Liquid hydrogen is combined with oxygen to generate electricity. The electricity is used to power the engine of the car. The energy produced by this reaction powers the car. The byproduct of the combustion is water, so it does not harm the environment at all. President Bush has allocated $2 billion dollars to research hydrogen technology. This is simply another way to lessen our dependence on oil in general no matter its origin.

There are currently many drawbacks to this idea. For one, the technology is still very expensive. Honda introduced the CFX, a car that gets 45% efficiency and costs $3 million. Regular cars that have hydrogen technology are generally more expensive because they require metals like platinum. A simple 134 hp fuel cell would be $3000. There also many concerns that productions costs for hydrogen could be vastly expensive.

Lastly, a concern is that hydrogen is very flammable. Tanks would have to be reinforced very much in order to avoid a disaster should a collision occur.

Sources: Hydrogen Car Difficulties
Hydrogen Car Vehicles
Hydrogen Powered Vehicles

3 comments:

kwiley said...

I found your post about hydrogen cars to be very interesting. The idea of fueling cars with hydrogen seems to be good for American consumers as well as the environment.

While looking around the Elmhurst College databases, I found an article about hydrogen cars that I think you would appreciate.

The article was written in October of 2002 and published in Science News. It is accompanied by a picture of a hydrogen car prototype that Toyota had already created at the time.

Here's the link!

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4013904?&Search=yes&term=car&term=hydrogen&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dhydrogen%2Bcar%26x%3D0%26y%3D0&item=5&ttl=3198&returnArticleService=showArticle

Drivers Ed Online Georgia said...

The idea of powering the cars with hydrogen is one of the best way as of we know, which is only one promising fuel which can be found widely in our nature and able power all of world vehicles & power requirement,
off-course still their is much development need to take place before it appearance in any vehicle.

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