Are Hydrogen Fuel Cells Worth the Cost?

Hardman, S., Shiu, E., & Steinberger-Wilckens, R. (2015). Changing the fate of Fuel Cell Vehicles: Can lessons be learnt from Tesla Motors?

The Hydrogen Fuel Cell could revolutionize the world. This ingenious technology, which creates electricity from the chemical reactions of hydrogen and oxygen has, in its 150-year history, passed many of the critical tests along the path from invention to innovation. Recent developments in fuel cell technology and concurrent developments within the energy and automotive industries have brought the world to brink of the fuel cell age and the hydrogen economy.

Another area of technology that the automobile industry is working on is fuel cells. Even though it is predicted that automobiles using fuel cells will not be released until 2010, Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCV), may be the next revolutionary idea in automobiles. FCVs reflect a completely new way of thinking about automobiles. FCVs use electric

Honda has already produced a hydrogen fuel cell concept car they claim is “overall 64% energy efficient”. To put this into perspective in the average gasoline combustion engine “only about 20 percent of the thermal-energy content of the gasoline is converted into mechanical work”, making it 20% energy efficient [5]. This new line of cars could bring about jobs in the automotive industry and all industries that branch from it. As of right now the commercial market for hydrogen gas produced from the use of fossil fuels is at about $100 billion. A majority of this hydrogen goes into producing fertilizers and petrochemicals [1]. All it would take is an inexpensive source of green hydrogen, such as the one recently discovered, to completely change this industry.Overall hydrogen has the ability to bring about jobs and continued advancements in every market and industry touched by it. This could be just about every industry when considering how important transportation and shipping are to the economy; hydrogen would give them an inexpensive fuel for transport. Hydrogen fuel could do this all the while solving our most important problem of finding a renewable energy source.

Electric cars are becoming very popular in today’s world and are becoming more main stream. One reason for this is the need for automobiles that have a lower or a zero carbon footprint. For the majority of the history of the automobile, the propulsion system was a gas or a diesel engine that would run off of fossil fuels. The burning of fossil fuels is very hazardous to our world and also creates much toxic pollution. However, electric cars run off of electricity, which is a very clean and pollution free resource, depending on how the electricity was produced of course. In this paper we are going to examine the history of electric cars, look into modern electric car technology, and peer into the future of electric car technology to see if EVs might be the answer to dramatically reducing our global pollution.

Recent years have shown an increasingly large need for a practical renewable energy source for such reasons as diminishing fossil fuels and increases in greenhouse gasses. Hydrogen appears to be a way out of this gasoline-dug hole, or at least, a way out in the future. Hydrogen fuel cell cars are being engineered as we speak as the technologies to refuel them cleanly are being proposed. Unfortunately, most of the technologies associated with hydrogen are still in the prototype/pre-production stages and require better enhancements before becoming mainstream. This paper assesses the practicality of hydrogen power in cars both now and in the future while explicating the actual process of how a

The human race is in the midst of an energy crisis. The gasoline used around the world is currently a non-renewable resource. As the title suggests, the gasoline will eventually be totally consumed in part by the gas guzzling vehicles common today. For this reason, scientists have spent decades researching and developing alternative sources of fuel in order to power daily life on Earth for many years to come. There is a wide array of renewable fuel sources in use presently. These alternatives vary in efficiency, affordability, and many other aspects. Hydrogen powered and electric powered vehicles are two comparable alternatives that have increased in popularity and functionality in recent years and will continue to do so in the near future (10 Reasons, 2015).

There are several solutions to digress from the modern polluting ways of the car, but one of the easiest and most efficient is the usage of hydrogen to power the insurgent Hare pods.

Renewable energy is usually considered the future of technology and the next large advancement for society. The main reasoning for this, as a use for vehicles’ energy, is because many people believe that renewable energy is necessary to stop climate change. And these people believe this misconception because of green house gases, which are released from the use of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels create most of the world’s power, which leads to the creation of green house gas emissions, which is why they are usually considered to be “bad”. Emissions from vehicles are responsible for only 14.7% of the pollution that is released into the air (The Guardian). A positive for cars that run on renewable energy is that they can be environmentally friendly, under the correct circumstances, due to running on electricity; with the exception of hybrids, which run on fossil fuels (Zumerchik, John). The use of fossil fuels in hybrids then charges the car, which allows for more fuel efficiency than the average vehicle (Zumerchik, John). Some complications that exist for renewable energy vehicles, specifically electric cars, is low energy efficiency, air pollution, fossil fuel use, foreign oil suppliers dependency, lead poisoning, and leaking storage tanks (GERMAN, JOHN M ). Using renewable energy as a source of power for vehicles is ineffective due to the creation of these vehicles harming the environment and an unnecessary change of oil dependency.

It’s so hot! Today, millions of motor vehicles are producing greenhouse gases that are flooding into our atmosphere. At the rate society is going, a theme such as global warming is being considered more and more. Not only is this petroleum addiction hurting our environment, it may also have adverse affects on our independence. The United States imports most of its petroleum from foreign nations which could pose problems in the future. This is why Alternative fuels such as hydrogen should be extensively researched. The motor transportation industry should invest in extensive research and development in hydrogen fuel to help the fuel economy create stronger national energy security, make fuel more efficient and renewable, and more

Many technological improvements have been made to vehicles to reduce their environmental impact. Some of these advances have been imposed by environmental legislation, others have been incentivized by commercial pressure to improve energy efficiency and limit our dependence on fossil fuel. Greening the transportation sector is thus important for meeting global emissions reduction targets. One innovative technology to achieve a green transportation sector is radically changing the design and components from fossil fuel based internal combustion cars to electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles. This technology shift will lead to emergence of new technologies that

For the past three decades Oil dominates the agenda of political discussion. With scares over price volatility, sizes of reserves, international imports and least of which are the environmental impacts due to carbon dioxide and other emissions. Various speculations and educated guesses place our total depletion of crude oil within the next 50 years and there is a general consensus between environmentalists that we steer toward a hydrogen transportation system given the projected work and nonexistent carbon dioxide emissions (Environmental Technologies class lecture, Santa Clara University). However many barriers stand in the way of attaining such a goal, most of which pertaining

Hydrogen Fuel cell is another solution to finding alternative fuel vehicles. This technology has zero emissions, a driving range of 300 miles, and can be refueled and moving again in minutes. Although this technology is more recent, the military has taken a liking to hydrogen powered cars. Initially, electric vehicles were appealing to military because of how quiet they are, but setting up charging locations is extremely difficult and the military doesn’t have time to wait for their electric vehicles to charge while in combat. The hydrogen vehicle was

Therefore, a current solution would unite the characteristics of the hydrogen internal combustion engine, using for improving the burning efficiency, due to high flame speed and higher calorific value during combustion of hydrogen.

As fully electric vehicles are still making their progress, another alternative is hybrid engines. HEV (hybrid electric vehicle) is a hybrid vehicle which combines internal combustion engine (ICE) with electric engine. This way a better fuel economy is reached and the quantity of exhaust fumes is significantly decreased. Moreover,