Quote:
Originally Posted by John Mercier
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We could quickly see blue and green hydrogen become the fuel of choice... with a hybrid electric fuel cell connected to a high torque efficient electric motor.
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The problem with use of hydrogen as a fuel for a fuel cell to generate electric power is much the same as using a battery as a power source (charging the battery). Virtually all of the hydrogen on the planet is tied up chemically in water or hydrocarbons. It takes energy to extract hydrogen from compounds, so we have the same problem as with EVs running off a battery - where does the "original" energy come from? Thus hydrogen may be thought of as a sort of battery, but without the associated costs of mining lithium or other elements used in the battery and ultimate disposal of the aged battery. In place of that, hydrogen has the problem of energy density for transport in a vehicle. It must be compressed substantially to shrink volume, and that takes energy also, although one can imagine recovering much of that energy by expanding high pressure hydrogen through a turbine before use of the discharged low pressure hydrogen in a fuel cell. One good thing about hydrogen as a fuel/battery is that it offers a different "battery" scheme that does not involve mining and extracting things like lithium.