As a fan of electric cars, I’ve spent much time talking down hydrogen cars. However lately I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a future for hydrogen cars, but that we have going about hydrogen cars the entirely wrong way.
First let me talk about what in my mind is wrong with hydrogen cars, and why that has made me against them for a long time.
The Problem with Hydrogen Cars Today
Detractors of electric vehicles will often claim that the car isn’t clean because that electricity has to come from somewhere and that may be from burning coal.
The problem with that argument is that most countries don’t get electricity from coal alone. In fact most of the growth in power production around the world today is from renewable and natural gas power plants. Both give lower CO2 emissions when powering an electric car than even diesel.
However for hydrogen then problem is significantly worse. Most hydrogen on the market today is made from natural gas reforming. That means a hydrogen car running on hydrogen today will indirectly produce 3x as much CO2 emissions despite only having water come out of the tail pipe.
