Hydrogen Cars – The Next Big Thing in Automobile Industry
Have heard about hydrogen cars? You probably have not! In fact most of us have no idea about hydrogen cars. Hydrogen car is type of car that out places today’s gasoline-electric hybrid cars in keeping the environment clean and reducing the country’s dependence on oil. Hydrogen cars are not seen in showrooms today but automakers expect to have them in showrooms in the next 5 – 10 years.
Why are the automakers switching to hydrogen? There are several reasons for this; Hydrogen is the most abundant element present on earth. It is so much abundant in quantity that there remains no fear of running out as with fossil fuels. How do you get hydrogen? Very easy! Just repeat your high school chemistry lesson on properties of water i.e. H2O (two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen). So, this means that hydrogen can be created by splitting water through electrolysis. This is how it will happen: by using fuel cells to power hydrogen cars, hydrogen and oxygen will be run through a cell, thus generating electricity and heat as result, and then joined together at the end of the process to produce its only by product, water.
Thus, we learn that all what hydrogen cars will dispense are a small amount of steam and no pollution. Such a zero pollution car will help deal with problems like air pollution, greenhouse gases and global warming. Another benefit of hydrogen cars is that it reduces the country’s dependence on oil imports. Hydrogen fuel cell powered car is the best alternative to oil fueled cars and even hybrid cars. However, hydrogen cars are not using the best of technologies today due to which they are way too expensive. Apart from that, infrastructure to support a proper hydrogen highway network is also missing. So, what needs to be done is establish a strong infrastructure with countrywide hydrogen fuel stations and develop technology to lower the prices.
It may take some years to reach this point where showrooms are filled with hydrogen cars but it is certainly ‘the next big thing’ the automobile industry is going to experience in this century.
Comments(0)