It seems like you can't turn on the television or open a paper
without seeing or reading a report where some automotive journalist,
politician, or bureaucrat swoons over the possibilities of the hydrogen
powered cars roaming your nearby shopping centers with glee filled
green shoppers smiling widely as they step on the hydrogen.
Inevitably
the first thing the amazed reporter points to is the water dripping out
of the tailpipe. "You can almost drink it," the reporter says as he or
she mugs for the camera bent down next to the dripping wet exhaust.
And
yes indeed what comes out of the tailpipe when you use a hydrogen fuel
cell to power a car like Honda's brilliant new Clarity is indeed only
H20.
Check out this interesting Top Gear review of what is certainly Honda's (and perhaps this decades) most revolutionary car.
By all accounts Honda has built a brilliant car using the newest "green" technology.
But
nobody (not the reporters, or the politicians, or the bureaucrat) seem
to wonder where all of that hydrogen to power the new fleet of hydrogen
cars come from?
Do happy pixies pluck it from the air or water on California's pristine Northern coast?
Is it sucked from the ground like oil, or does it just bubble up?
The
simple fact is that hydrogen has to be produced, and it take lots of
energy to produce hydrogen. In fact using current technology and
production costs, hydrogen is by far the most expensive way to power a
car.
And of course since the vast majority of our energy comes
from burning fossil fuels the simple problem is not just the cost of
hydrogen, but all of the pollution (read carbon as well) that's spewed
into the environment to get the energy to produce the hydrogen to power
the fuel cell to power the car.
Recently Popular Mechanics
calculated what it would cost to drive existing alternative fuel cars
from New York to California at today's real energy costs. They used a
variety of cars from the last decade that are powered by a variety of
different alternative fuels.
The cars and the results are below and both may surprise you.
2006 Honda Civic
Fuel: Gasoline
MPG: 33.0
Fuel Cost: $212.70
2005 Taurus FFV
Fuel: E85 Ethanol
MPG: 17
Fuel Cost: $425
2006 Golf TDI
Fuel: Biodiesel
MPG: 44
Fuel Cost: $231
2005 Civic GX
Fuel: Compressed Natural Gas
MPG: 34
Fuel Cost: $110
1997 Honda EV Plus
Fuel: Electricity
MPG: 202
Fuel Cost: $60
GM Hy-Wire Concept
Fuel: Hydrogen Fuel Cell
MPG: 41
Fuel Cost: $804
Now obviously this comparison is a bit like comparing apples and
oranges, but it does demonstrate the current economics of the various
types of fuels.
Honda is currently leasing the new Clarity to
a few lucky drivers in California—many of whom seem to love the car
according to recent reports.
But that does not change the fact
that hydrogen is extremely expensive in both dollars and carbon to
manufacture. Nor does it change the fact that it will cost billions of
additional dollars, and let's face it, dozens of years, to build a
nation infrastructure to provide real word distribution hydrogen
facilities.
Ad you know there are no local hydrogen stations in the Costco parking lot.
The drivers who currently lease the Clarity in California have only a
few industrial parks in Los Angles where they can actually fill the
cars up.
So that's why, at least in the short term, hydrogen powered cars are a bad joke.
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