What about hydrogen? Life? Coverage? Fuel stations? Costs? saving environment? acceptance?

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BMW developed the first hydrogen powered car, with almost the same specifications as a petrol powered car. The BMW Hydrogen 7 uses hydrogen as fuel differently from fuel-cell-type vehicles.

It has the following specifications:

  • The hydrogen is inserted directly into the car’s air intake manifold to be combusted in the engine’s cylinders rather than converting the hydrogen’s energy into electricity to spin electric motors like a fuel cell.
  • The hydrogen fuel is stored in a large, nearly 30-gallon (110 liters), bi-layered and highly insulated tank that stores the fuel as liquid rather than as compressed gas.
  • To stay a liquid, hydrogen must be super-cooled and maintained at cryogenic temperatures of, at warmest, −253 °C (−423.4 °F). When not using fuel, the Hydrogen 7’s hydrogen tank starts to warm and the hydrogen starts to vaporize. Once the tank’s internal pressure reaches 87 PSi, at roughly 17 hours of non-use, the tank will safely vent the building pressure. Over 10-12 days, it will completely lose the contents of the tank because of this.

This example of a hydrogen shows us that the cooling of the hydrogen is important to keep the hydrogen liquid. The coverage on hydrogen is with the current technology limited, the BMW has a coverage of 201 kilometers.

To conclude, the current hydrogen technology is not sufficient to be implemented but the technique works, so when improvements are made this could be the successor of petrol.