The hydrogen car

 The Hydrogen car 

 

Written By: Bruno Esteban, Hugo Medina 

 

The diatomic hydrogen has become a new type of fuel and some of the big car business have started creating some models of hydrogen cars, like the Hyundai Nexo, the Toyota Mirai which and Honda Clariti both have an autonomy of 666 kilometers and the other two 650 kilometers respectively, that is a little less than the gasoline ones and a little more than the electric ones. 

 

These new cars are not popular enough although there are a few car and hydrogen stations, for example in Spain in 2023 there were registered twenty-five hydrogen cars and in 2024 there were eleven hydrogen stations wich only two of them were public, and total in Europe in 2024 there were two hundred and forty-five hydrogen stations. Also, there are very few hydrogen models although businesses like BMW or NamX are going to launch their own models onto the market but if you don’t want to spend money buying a new car there is the option of channeling your motor, you can transform your car from a diesel to a hydrogen car, it  costs between 1 500 € and 2 000€. 

 

The hydrogen car has the best things of the other 2 types, the gasoline/diesel and electric because it charges the hydrogen as fast as the gasoline car, even though you charge it with hydrogen gas, because these cars are charged with hydrogen gas, also it produces the same carbon emissions such as the electric having the same autonomy of an electric and the motor of gasoline one, it doesn’t have a battery like the electric, and is lighter than the other two, in one hand because the fuel is not as heavy as gasoline and the battery, that reduces the spend of the fuel in the car and has a bigger tank of fuel and for the lovers of the sound that a gasoline motor produces, the hydrogen also makes that sound, because both are combustion motors. 

 

After talking about the good things that the hydrogen car has, now the problems or the worst things that this car has. Firstly, the efficiency, between the three types of motor, the hydrogen is the worst talking about efficiency, it only uses the 5% of its energy for driving energy, and with the hydrogen batteries from the 20 to 25 % of the energy, the gasoline cars use around 15 % of the energy to driving energy, and the electric ones use the 85 % of the energy, another problem is the transport, nowadays the hydrogen as a fuel is not popular enough and it causes that there are a very few hydrogen stations. And another controversial problem is the prize and the way it is generated, because it is very difficult and expensive to obtain. There are two ways to obtain it, the green hydrogen, that is obtained by reactions that as a product it don’t create polluting compounds, for example to do an electrolysis with the water. An electrolysis is a process in which we broke water molecules using electricity, in this case the products are hydrogen and oxygen, that are captured and separated, and the other way, the gray hydrogen. This type of hydrogen is obtained by reactions that their product creates polluting compounds or elements. The prizes are very high, because it is very expensive to obtain hydrogen, and it costs between 8 to 10 € per each 100 kilometers that the car can drive, so this makes that a full tank cost around 60 and 80 € and not only the hydrogen is expensive, also the car is expensive, the prize of a hydrogen car goes around 55 000 and 75 000 €.