Why Hydrogen Cars Won't Work!

Bush goes on about hydrogen being the fuel of the future.

I think that there is every reason why it may be possible to create affordable hydrogen-powered cars.

But there are two major problems.

1. Creating the infra-structure will not be so easy, as this will need large number of power stations to create the hydrogen by the electrolysis of water. There is the point that as hydrogen can be stored fairly easily, it could actually be created by erratic wind farms or using excess night-time energy.

2. But the safety is the major problem. On Tuesday, a van containing an acetylene gas cylinder caught fire and exploded on the M25. The road was closed for about 36 hours. How often would that happen, with thousands of hydrogen-powered cars running about?

The best solution for cars is to reduce weight and improve shape and structure, so that the required consumption for a given performance is reduced significantly. I'm not sure about hybrid cars, as the extra weight penalty may mitigate the fuel savings.

Anyway it would all be much more fun, if we rode around in efficient, light and strong cars. Especially, if they were all like the Lotus Elise, which is perhaps the only car built to the correct scientific specification.