Why the Hydrogen Cell Car Will Never Be A Viable Alternative to the Combustion Engine

Comment by karl jeffery on February 4, 2010 at 9:59am

Hi Sylvio,

I'm trying to answer these questions the same as you are (even though I set up this site I try not to be biased, and I also run a magazine about IT in oil and gas) but a few things are worth noting -

First 'who killed the electric car' was produced in 2006 - so is talking about technology as it was in say 2005..?

Secondly what do you mean by 'viable'? Do you mean combustion engine cars today..? Or combustion engine cars in a few years (or maybe a couple of decades) when a combination of high oil prices and maybe also carbon regulations substantialy damages the viability of combustion engine cars?

On the basis that there's more gas than oil, there could be vehicles running on natural gas which prove more viable than hydrogen vehicles (although hydrogen vehicles will themselves be running on natural gas since this is where most of the hydrogen will probably come from).

I think it is too early to make a firm bet on electric cars vs hydrogen cars but there are plenty of reasons why electric cars might not be viable - battery technology doesn't develop as fast as it needs to, people find the low range, battery anxiety, overnight charging and lack of power for auxiliaries (A/C, radio) inconvenient, lack of electric grid power to charge them, lack of raw materials to make batteries, environmental claims are proven incorrect (I have seen numbers from reputable sources showing that emissions in g / km2, including emissions from vehicle and battery manufacturing, are similar to combustion engines - it really depends if the electricity comes from coal or gas)

Comment