Hacker News Reader

What happened to the Hydrogen option? A few years ago, everybody was talking about how it would be the best possible fuel and how much better than batteries it is, but I haven't heard much about it after.

From a distribution point of view, it seems like both batteries and hydrogen are pretty much equally bad. Is there something holding back the powertrain technology with hydrogen?

View on HN

Hydrogen is difficult to store and transport safely, as it has to be highly compressed to get a useful amount into a fuel tank, and is obviously highly flammable. It also requires a lot of energy to extract (via electrolysis), which I imagine makes it, at best, of comparable energy efficiency to battery power.

ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle#Storage

It's energy density is pathetic. And there might be a problem marketing the idea of driving about with hundreds of litres of hydrogen in the boot.

Safer than gasoline. It just burns with a pretty blue flame.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com