Hydrogen Powered Passenger Vehicles? What Changed

Hydrogen has been next years technology for 25 years, so why should anyone thing that is going to change now.  There have been several breakthroughs that make hydrogen a real option for passenger cars in the very near future.

Proton Technologies of Calgary has patented a simple way of extracting hydrogen from EXISTING hydrocarbon reservoirs (think old oil and gas wells). Proton’s solution keeps ALL of the CO2 and other Green House Gases in the ground making it the most “green hydrogen” solution ever conceived. That means there is no need for expensive and complex systems to separate, capture and store CO2 (think Carbon Capture and Storage CCS). Their process is so simple that it reduces the cost of producing a unit of Hydrogen by 90%.

Further Hydrogen can be made the old fashioned way by applying large amounts of electricity to natural gas but now, the twist is that the electricity can come from spare wind and solar. This makes so called “blue hydrogen” and “green hydrogen“.

Auto parts giants like Linamar are developing fuel cell packs that fit into the same slots as batteries do in modern battery electric vehicles. That one design change allows automobile manufacturers to replace batteries with hydrogen solutions, much like you can get the many ICE vehicle today with either gasoline or diesel engines. That keeps costs down, opens new markets and makes hydrogen passenger cars and trucks winners.

Hydrogen generated electricity still best used in heavy industry but as you have heard Hydrogen is now set to move from just city bus experiments to big rig trucks and high utilization fleet passenger vehicles, like taxies and shared mobility.

Beyond those uses, H2 will find a comfortable home in a smaller number of some cities, states and countries like Iceland and California where a real hydrogen fueling infrastructure is already well past prototype scale.

Hydrogen is now ultra cheap, ultra green, and reduces western societies like the US, Germany and Canada dependence on unreliable and often adversarial governments like China and The Congo.

Its always a good idea to have at least two competing vendors on two competing technologies on critical systems like transportation.

Battery Electric and Hydrogen Electric are two easy solutions to the problem like making inexpensive and reliable EV’s.

In the last hundred years the options to power a vehicle has largely been between gasoline and diesel. In the next hundred years it appears you will have a choice between battery electric and hydrogen electric.

Introduction 0:00
Hydrogen Tipping Point: Bryan Pivovar, NREL 0:34
Proton Technologies Hydrogen Breakthroughs Reduces Cost 90% 0:51
Hydrogen without Natural Gas 1:10
Real Green Hydrogen 1:15
Electrolysis With Solar & Wind to Make Blue Hydrogen 1:45
Hydrogen Breakthroughs Now Drive Fuel Cell Industry: Bryan Pivovar, NREL 2:01
Compliance Vehicles by Honda and Toyota Use Hydrogen 2:13
Linamar and Ballard Powerr 2:39
Linda Hasenfratz Linamar 3:06
Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles vs Battery Electric Vehicles: Linda Hasenfratz 4:03
Light Duty Vehicles: Bryan Pivovar, NREL 5:17
Why have BEV & Fuel Cell Vehicles 5:51
Why Fuel Cell Hydrogen Electric Vehicles Better than BEVs: 6:04
Hydrogen Vehicles Are Going to Replace Diesel Vehicles 7:22
From Gas & Diesel to BEV and Hydrogen 8:24