I total agree. I used to be all excited about hydrogen, but it's DECADES away. there are relatively simple things we could do right now to slow global warming -like plug-in hybrids. The thing about electric cars is that they are very close to making people self sufficient. A person can have some solar panels, an electric car, and they are set except for the batteries.

With hydrogen it's a much more complicated process. Hydrogen is a scam that won't do anything for us in the short term, and could very well be a BAD solution in the long term.

I didn't find the debate very informative. Part of the problem is that hydrogen power cannot be considered in isolation. Instead we have to compare the various alternatives for powering vehicles in a future post-oil era. Dinging or praising hydrogen in itself is irrelevant; all that matters is how it compares with the other possibilities.

It started off promisingly enough: Sperling laid out the three main candidates: hydrogen; battery powered cars; or biofuels to maintain the current gas/diesel regime. But that was it! That was the last we heard of the alternatives. Everything else was just pros and cons of hydrogen.

Particularly useless were efforts to compare the impact of hydrogen to what we have today. Who cares if hydrogen has higher or lower emissions than one of today's hybrids? A 2004 Prius is not going to be practical if oil hits $1000/bbl. We'll need something else, whether biofuels or plug-in electrical vehicles (not plug in hybrids!) or hydrogen fuel cells. Those are the relevant alternatives to compare and contrast. That's what any such debate should be focused on.

I was disappointed that Romm, the anti-hydrogen, did not commit himself to one of the other alternatives. In some places he talked about the virtues of electricity and the waste of generating it and then trying to convert it to hydrogen, but it did not appear that he was advocating an all-electrical vehicle infrastructure. His job was to play critic, I guess, not to give his own views of the best approach.

A meaningful debate would bring together advocates for all three possibilites (and any other ones, if they exist) and let each one promote his favorite while bringing out the limitations of the other two. That would provide the most useful and relevant information to the public.

Typical seawater contains between 140 and 250 ppb of lithium.  If an electric car requires 100 kg of lithium, a cubic kilometer of seawater has enough lithium for at least 1400 cars.

The oceans contain about 5.2 billion cubic kilometers of water.  Grab 10% of the lithium and you've got enough for about 730 billion cars.  I think that will do for a little while.

I agree with Bob, the means of energy production is in the hands of the few. Hydrogen energy production and storage promises a way to decentralize and democratize energy production. Sure there are technical hurdles to this vision, but also political ones as well. If there is a hydrogen future would energy companies want to give up the means of production and monopoly profits they currently enjoy?

The more I learn about hydrogen technology the more I'm convinced that it is a dead end. There are simply too many non-trivial pitfalls regarding the thermodynamics, economics, and engineering to make this technology the winner in the race to become petroleum independent. I think we are more likely to see a steady (hopefully rapid!) evolution of the gas/electric hybrid into an electric/gas hybrid and finally into a "pure" electric vehicle as battery and motor technology improve.

You'll feel differently when you get past high-school level work and start doing real analyses, wintermane.  Or should I say, if you get past it; you have not even read the analyses that are out there.

When they were saying it after an analysis of the thermodynamics, they were usually right.

Hydrogen is not simple, period.  Converting electricity to hydrogen and back imposes a further 50% in losses over batteries, and consequently doubles the required electric generation.  On top of that, the 100 kW PEM fuel cells used in typical FC cars run about $500,000 apiece, and the fuel is difficult to store and expensive to compress.

Hydrogen is the wrong tool for this job.

Batteries are the enabling technology for everything, it seems. Think of all the devices you already use today that rely on batteries, then imagine how much better it would be if they'd last 4 times as long for the same cost, and how many more things they could be used for. Why don't we have an Apollo-sized battery R&D program?

The designs I have seen for a real production hydrogen car poet call for a smaller fuel cell and a larger battery pack and a supercapacitor bank.

The result is the thing realy is an electric car in every respect its just the battery pack is small.. prolly a bit bigger then current prius packs.


The hydrogen is only there to increase max range and keep that battery within its best charge zone to keep its lifespan up.

Why stuff 1000lb of costly batteries in a car if you can shove 150 lb and a 5 lb cell stack and a 50lb hydrogen tank and get the same range and better milage and lower costs.

The small cell stacks are alot cheaper and are even going into production products now.. still a bit spendy tho a hydrogen fuel cell bike is 6k...

Now you may wonder but then why do they keep touting 125 kw cell stacks.... becsause the military the ones who actauly PAID for all this in the first place want a 250 kw stack and a 1.5 mw stack. For humvees and tanks.

Dont get me wrong if they do manage to make a set of batteries that dont cost too much and do have a REAL range thats good enough without dipping into the damage zone then im sure everyone will be all over it in an instant. But just in case that doesnt actauly pan out full scale... im glad hydrogen work is still going on.

Besides dont forget a fuel cell car isnt just about the fuel cell. Thats just a small component AND as you keep missing there are military reasons they are working on the fuel cell so EVEN if it doesnt pan out for cars its still a money maker... and we still benifit from the motor and various other design works fuel cell cars entail.

Actauly that leak rate has gone down alot since they started investing in the tech its right now down fairly low and going lower.

One storage method being looked at is in fact treated ice. It seems ice when treated in a certain way can store hydrogen inside it at quite a good level and at low pressure... then when you want the hydrogen just melt the ice and the trapped hydrogen comes out.