Death of the Hydrogen Economy
Obama's budget puts hydrogen fuel-cell research out of its misery--almost.
Kevin Bullis 05/08/2009
- 28 Comments
A government program to help develop hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered vehicles--a hallmark of the Bush administration--has been almost completely wiped out in the Obama administration's proposed budget.
In 2008, hydrogen technology research and development at the Department of Energy got over $200 million. That's been scaled down to about $70 million in the current budget, and that's for fuel cells of all sorts--including generating electricity for the grid, and not just hydrogen fuel cells for vehicles.
Major automakers have also recently scaled back their hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicle development, emphasizing hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electric vehicles instead.
Hydrogen fuel cells don't emit pollutants--just water. And the amount of hydrogen that can be stored, by weight, is tremendous. But fuel cells are expensive, hydrogen is hard to come by (there aren't many hydrogen filling stations), and it's difficult to store in a small volume. What's more, the cleanest way to make hydrogen--electrolysis using electricity from renewable sources--is expensive and inefficient.
What do you think? Is it about time we abandon hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles? Or do they still have a place in future transportation?



Shoreliner11
9 Comments
Finally...
Its about time we stopped throwing our money at a solution that isn't economically feasible. Until we find an energy efficient means to split water molecules to get the hydrogen, we shouldn't even be talking about hydrogen fuel cell cars.
Reply
GRLCowan
1 Comment
Re: Finally...
Ding dong, the witch is dead!
It's not as if the past eight years had seen no progress in hydrogen cars, though. Just look at the following numbers!
The Honda Clarity goes 310 km to 320 km on a tankful.
This is fully 10-20 km more than what the BMW 520h was doing, 30 years ago, on hydrogen internal combustion!
(How fire can be domesticated)
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joeeob
2 Comments
Re: Finally...
There can be no hydogen economy without a robust nuclear energy infrastructure.
Reply
matlseng
2 Comments
Re: Finally...
I agree with cutting back the budget for hydrogen fuel cells. They are not economically feasible presently. The catalyst is platinum, which makes them incredibly expensive. In order to even make the hydrogen fuel cell competitive in price, the amount of platinum would have to be reduced by a factor of 5.
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