WHY ELON IS WRONG ABOUT HYDROGEN VEHICLES!

First, the question is, how do hydrogen cars work? Well, a fuel cell converts chemical energy through fuel which is hydrogen, and using an oxidizing agent which is oxygen into electricity through a series of chemical reactions.

There are positive and negative ends, anode and cathode respectively in which the moment of electrons creates electricity, now when the electricity is created there is some waste product and in this case, the waste product is water, how cool is that, no harmful fumes, no black smoke coming out of the exhaust of your car, just water vapors.

Now a single fuel cell produces less than 1V which isn’t very helpful in powering the car, but when you can stack them in a combination of series and parallel they produce enough voltage together to power the whole car easily, this all might be sounding very similar to EVs as they have batteries stacked in different configurations as well, but here is the thing, hydrogen cars don’t need to be recharged.

Now hydrogen is the most abundant element in the world but you can’t just get a fuel hose and fill up your tank with hydrogen there are a couple of ways through which hydrogen can be made and 2 of the most common ways are natural gas reforming and electrolysis.

Natural gas reforming is a process in which we ultimately end up releasing carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, which neglects the whole idea of an alternative fuel like hydrogen and thus we move to the second process, electrolysis in which we take water and separate the individual component hydrogen and oxygen, this can be done using solar, wind, geothermal nuclear and lots of other ways. Companies consider this as a viable method of producing hydrogen because there is no release of CO2 or CO involved in this and this all happens inside an electrolysis machine.

Now electrolysis machine can range from the size of your kitchen oven to giant truck-size containers, that what’s these companies making hydrogen car use as storing the hydrogen in high-pressure metals tanks.

Just like we have petrol stations for ICE vehicles we also have specialized pressurized hydrogen refueling stations and the process usually takes less than 4 minutes which we all are accustomed to.

One of the most asked questions regarding hydrogen cars is that can they be as fast as Petrol cars or even EVs, well if have some not so fast cars like the Toyota Mirai which does 0 to 100 kmph in about 9.1 seconds, that’s not very fast but still faster than the typical commuter cars we drive.

So, the question is, is there any fast hydrogen car? Well, the Hyperion hydrogen car, the XP-1 is currently in development and its aim is to show the real potential of hydrogen cars.

The company is claiming that the car can get from 0 to 100 kmph in just 2.2 seconds and can go to top speed upwards of 221 mph, which is around 360kmph, that’s not the only cool thing about it though, it has a range of 1000 miles, about 1600 kms to be precise.

Recently, I saw a clip of a Hydrogen car being tested by Toyota, the car sounded pretty loud and good, like a diesel car, also I am quite happy if cars like these are the future because we will get some kind of sound, instead of no sound because I always believed that something is better than nothing.

Now if the safety factor with which hydrogen cars suffer has been resolved then we can conduct more tests and ultimately give them a green pass for production.

For those of you who aren’t aware of the safety issue that hydrogen cars suffer with is, it’s the risk of them exploding when they are at rest or motion due to the stored hydrogen acting volatile.

Now talking about the car on which the exhaust system was seen testing looked like a hatchback, so it’s probably a prototype of the GR Yaris which has been modified in a way to have a hydrogen engine and thus the exhaust.

So, there might be a hydrogen car being the works by Toyota that Toyota us yet to unveil and it might take the world by storm because while releasing this video, Toyota confirmed that the engine is being tested for a 24 hour of Le-man race and not just for normal road use.

And that’s why if a car that performs in track conditions where it is tested to its best, it will surely perform great on the road where only 50 percent of its potential might be tested.

In a conference which was held over the fuel of the future, more than 68 percent of people agreed that hydrogen fuel cell is the future of alternative fuels and it might very well be more sustainable than EVs in the longer run.

The future is exciting that’s all I am going to say!

So, everyone, that will be all for this time, I trust you liked this one, if you did then do share it with your friends and do consider subscribing to Motordrift for more such content in the future.

Till then

Ciao