What Happened To Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Cars?
Photo by ThisIsEngineering from Pexels (What Happened To Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Cars?)
For many years now, it’s been clear that the world has been looking for an alternative to the combustion engine car. A lot of potential replacements have come and gone over the years, like solar-powered cars, hybrid vehicles, and the ever-popular all-electric vehicle. Still, many people forget that hydrogen fuel-cell cars were touted as a promising replacement once upon a time. So what happened to that concept?
Hydrogen vehicles were once a promising replacement for conventional combustion engine vehicles. These cars promised higher mileage with no dirty emissions that would hurt the planet. Unfortunately, hydrogen cars, in reality, came with plenty of drawbacks. Those drawbacks made it a less popular solution and allowed electric vehicles to overtake them as the preferred choice quickly.
In the following sections, we’ll recap what hydrogen fuel-cell cars and how they work. Then, we’ll look at the reasons why these vehicles aren’t the mainstream, everyday choice for most people. Lastly, we’ll look at the vehicles you can find in some parts of the world that still rely on hydrogen fuel cells.
How Do Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Cars Work?
To make sure that we’re all on the same page, let’s do a quick recap and explore how hydrogen fuel-cell (or HFC) cars work.
In some ways, HFCs work in the same way as all-electric vehicles. The vehicle will have one or more electric motors on board, which are powered by electricity. Here’s the difference: unlike all-electric vehicles, the power doesn’t just come from an onboard battery. Instead, electricity is generated right onboard!
How? Well, that’s where the hydrogen comes into play. The hydrogen mixes with oxygen from the air to produce electricity. Unlike with a combustion-engine vehicle, there are no harmful emissions that come out of this process. The only thing a hydrogen vehicle produces is harmless water.
What Benefits Do Hydrogen Fuel-cell Cars Offer?
Hydrogen fuel-cell cars were a very promising replacement for combustion-engine vehicles because of the benefits they offered. Here are a few of them.
Not Much New Infrastructure Needed
For starters, there would be very little new infrastructure that needed to be built. A hydrogen refuelling station would work quite similarly to regular petrol stations today. The difference would be that drivers would fill their cars at the pump with hydrogen instead of petrol or diesel.
Better Mileage
Besides that, HFCs also promised to take you further than any combustion engine or all-electric vehicle.
Long-Lasting
The hydrogen fuel cells themselves also held a lot of potentials. You see, they were thought to last much longer than regular EV batteries. With that, the car owner wouldn’t have to worry about having to replace them so often.
Cleaner Solution
Lastly, hydrogen-powered cars are also known to produce no emissions other than water. That water is a harmless byproduct that comes from the electricity-generating process using hydrogen and oxygen. Simply put, hydrogen fuel-cell cars promised to be the most environmentally-friendly vehicles on the road.
Why Hydrogen Cars Aren’t Mainstream Today
When we look around today, one thing is clear: the dream of hydrogen fuel-cell cars becoming the mainstream choice did not become a reality. Instead, the automotive industry is dominated by all-electric vehicles and hybrids. So, why didn’t hydrogen have the same experience?
Well, here are a few top reasons for that:
Hard To Supply Hydrogen Fuel
First and foremost, when it comes to hydrogen fuel is the issue of supply and distribution.
For starters, the extraction process is incredibly expensive. Ironically, that process also involves using fossil fuels, which undermines the environmental-friendliness of hydrogen cars.
On top of that, getting the fuel to where it’s needed is another challenge that adds to the cost and effort needed to do so.
Mileage Isn’t As Good As Assumed
According to some experts, the amount of hydrogen that you can safely carry in a car at any one given time will not be able to give you the long-range that you’re expecting with an HFC.
Fuel Cells Are Expensive
As it turns out, producing fuel cells is also incredibly expensive. Part of that is because of the raw materials that need to be used to produce them. As it turns out, fuel cells would be more expensive when compared to the batteries that you can find in EVs today.
Support Systems
Unlike combustion-engine vehicles or even all-electric cars, hydrogen fuel-cell cars rely on many more support systems to function correctly. That can be pretty problematic in several ways, including the fact that many more problems emerge when trying to use the car.
Like Electric Cars, But With None Of The Benefits
Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles are essentially electric cars. The significant difference here is that they use hydrogen to generate the electricity onboard instead of plugging it into a power source.
Therein lies another reason why HFCs aren’t as popular as electric cars. You see, with an EV, you could plug it into almost any compatible power source. That means you can recharge an EV at home or even on the go at a charging station.
That’s not the case with hydrogen fuel-cell cars. No matter what, you’d still need to drive to a hydrogen fuel station to fill up your car. Compared to EVs, that’s a lot more of a hassle.
What Vehicles Still Use Hydrogen Fuel-Cells?
As time goes on, the dream of seeing nothing but hydrogen fuel-cell cars on the road continues to fade. For now, at least, it’s clear that all-electric vehicles from brands like Tesla and others are going to dominate that sector of the automotive market.
Still, that doesn’t mean that hydrogen fuel cells have disappeared altogether. Around the world, there are some places where hydrogen fuel cells are used in vehicles other than cars.
You can find hydrogen fuel cells being used in vehicles like:
Busses.
Trains.
Heavy trucks.
Rockets.
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