The Future Is Here!

I saw this today, and decided I'd sign up for updates:

The Honda FCX is coming

This is Honda's concept of the production hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle they're releasing in 2008. It's not a diesel and it's not a hybrid. In fact, in case you didn't know, it uses no petroleum at all, which is a good thing. We can talk about global warming all we like but it really is in our long-term best interest to begin moving away from petroleum-based technologies. Hybrids and diesels are great in that they use their fuel more efficiently, but ultimately we need to leave it behind. I'm very excited by this and I sincerely hope it does well.

My only concern is how this car and its fueling stations will store and protect the hydrogen, which is much more dangerous than gasoline. It is highly flammable when mixed with oxygen (think the Hindenburg) and it can also spontaneously react with other substances like chlorine and flourine. I know we have similar issues with gasoline, but gasoline isn't as unstable as hydrogen tends to be. Also, hydrogen is not as naturally occuring (at least, not on Earth) as petroleum is, so hydrogen must be produced. It can be derived from subsurface reservoirs near coal, natural gas, or oil shale, but it is most commonly produced from electrolysis, which requires electricity to perform. Obviously, hydrogen could not be used to produce the electricity to make the electrolysis that would then result in more hydrogen; that would potentially be a perpetual motion machine, which is impossible because it violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. So hydrogen is produced by other means, like coal, nuclear, solar, and the like, so that's still an issue with ensuring adequate hydrogen production, should this technology really take off. Look what's happened with ethanol, now that demand is increasing. New technologies have a tendency to have unintended ripple effects in other areas, so we need to watch that closely for those.

Thanks for reading along.