Hydrogen-powered vehicles: An idea whose time has come?

Electric and hybrid vehicles are gaining traction in the car market. But what about hydrogen-powered cars? They produce zero emissions and don’t need charging — you just drive up to a station and refill your tank like you would with a gasoline-powered vehicle. They’ve been promised for years — so where are they?

Nicole Mortillaro did an email interview with Brant Peppley, a professor in the department of chemical engineering at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., as well as a former Canada Research Chair in Fuel Cells and former director of the Queen’s-RMC Fuel Cell Research Centre. Peppley shed some light on — and busted some myths about — these potential cars of the future.

How does a hydrogen fuel cell work in cars?

A fuel cell [FC] car is an electric vehicle where the electricity is generated by the conversion of hydrogen and oxygen (from air) directly to electricity with a byproduct of pure water. The difference is that instead of having to change lithium ions from one state to another in order to recharge the battery pack in a battery electrical vehicle, you simply refill the hydrogen tank with pressurized hydrogen — a process that takes about three minutes for a passenger car with a range in excess of 480 kilometres on a full tank.

Is this clean energy?

Depends on the source of the hydrogen. Most hydrogen used in the chemical industry today is produced by reacting natural gas with steam. This hydrogen results in CO2 emissions. The other way of making hydrogen is by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using an electricity-powered electrolyzer. When that electricity is produced from excess renewable energy such as wind, solar or hydroelectric or from excess nuclear energy (that is often available in Ontario), FC cars are zero-carbon. By the way, when battery-powered vehicles are charged using coal power, they are not zero-carbon.

If this is so clean, why hasn’t it caught on yet?

There are approximately 10,000 FC passenger vehicles being driven by regular consumers in the world today.

The reason they are not more commonly seen in Canada (other than Vancouver) is the lack of hydrogen refuelling stations. (Editor’s note: There are also some in Quebec.) The only place you can buy or lease a fuel cell vehicle is where the refuelling infrastructure is available. California has a network of refuelling stations, as do Japan, Norway, Germany and the other countries in specific regions. The Hydrogen Council, a global consortium of 60 member companies including many of the major car manufacturers, has made a substantial financial commitment to have hydrogen refuelling infrastructure available worldwide by 2030.

Are hydrogen-powered cars any more dangerous than gasoline-fuelled cars?

No! In fact, there are many reasons to consider hydrogen-powered cars less dangerous than gasoline-fuelled vehicles, and battery-powered vehicles for that matter. Hydrogen dissipates extremely quickly…. If an FC vehicle is in a collision, the hydrogen is quickly vented and dissipates into thin air, so to speak, leaving a completely inert vehicle. On the other hand, when a gasoline-fuelled vehicle is in a collision, the gas tank filled with liquid fuel is extremely dangerous, and if it ignites can be extremely lethal.

Likewise, when a battery-powered vehicle is in a collision, the lithium batteries that are on board still contain the equivalent of several sticks of dynamite worth of energy that can result in electrocution or explosions. It can be extremely dangerous for first responders to use the “jaws of life” on electrical vehicles due to the hazard of accidentally cutting a 300-volt cable.