Originally Posted by altiain
There is an interesting editorial on hydrogen power in the new issue of Car & Driver (I think it's Bedard's column). According to the column, when you look at the energy cycle from "plant-to-pipe" of hydrogen versus conventional gasoline, using typical efficiencies, hydrogen is actually two to four times less efficient than gasoline.
What's that mean to the layman? It means that in order for us to use hydrogen power at the current rate we use gasoline, coal-fired power plant emissions would more than double... or we could dam up every river on the continent for hydroelectricity, and turn the entire Midwest into one gigantic windfarm.
Sure, technological advances would improve that efficiency to a degree, but the reality is that hydrogen will probably never be as efficient a fuel as gasoline, because it takes tremendous amounts of energy to convert free hydrogen into a readily transportable fuel medium (liquefy it and store it a really low temperatures, compress it to 4000, 5000, or 10,000 psi, or convert it to a solid form).
The irony is that, if we happened to currently live in a hydrogen-powered transportation network today, the advent of gasoline powered engines would probably be seen as a major environmental miracle, because they are much more energy efficient. :lol:
Not to mention the fact that we'd have to build a hydrogen-based infrastructure form the ground up.
Personally, I believe that we'd be much better served by taking the money we're currently using on hydrogen research and instead investing it into high-efficiency, lean-burn, direct-injection diesel and gasoline engine research.
