Hydrogen Powered Shelby Cobra

Hydrogen is a useless concept for a fuel. The fuel costs a fortune, the cars are ticking timebombs. Everytime a hydrogen or even a propane powered vehicle springs a leak (often) they have to shut down entire city blocks because of the risk of explosion.

-Rich

Bullshit. The level of your stupidity is astounding.

Any city that shuts down a street for hydrogen release must do the same for gasoline. Vaporous gasoline is just as dangerous since it is heavy and can remain in suspension for some time. And this is assuming that the hydrogen was stored in gaseous or liquid form. Some systems right now use hydrides to store the H, which is very safe and reliable.

According to every safety analysis I've seen hydrogen, in an accidental release, is no more dangerous than gasoline. The worst cases are systems that use high pressure vessels to store the hydrogen in gaseous or liquid form. But even these systems use simple and effective methods to protect the storage containers.

Note, while hydrogen was the *fuel* involved in the Hidenburg and Challenger tragedies, it presence was not the root cause of the explosions. External events unrelated to the hydrogen were the true causes. This is the most common misunderstanding that causes folks to shy away from it's use as an alternative fuel.

As for it costing a fortune, that's not quite true. The real expense will be public distribution since nothing that exists now will work. A new infrastructure will have to be created and that's the biggest cost and that can easily be amortized over a long period of time. Further, especially with the hydride-based systems, it's possible for folks to buy and even create their own inexpensive H generators and replenish their systems using their own water supply. Several prototypes exist that do this, including the systems that United Nuclear uses to refill their H-converted 1994 C4 Corvette (which is actually a gas-H2 hybrid, not a true conversion ;) ).

The *real* issues involved with hydrogen use is where we will get it in massive quantities. Everyone talks about cracking it from water with electricity but you can also get it from petroleum processes and natural gas. The last two pretty much defeat the purpose but they are actually largest source of the hyrdogen produced today. Electricity in this country is still mostly produced by fossil fuel plants.

So, converting cars is just a baby step to fossil fuel independence. It's a baby step towards better air quality. But it's a pretty good step in both directions and would at least allow the Feds to focus emissions and fuel regulation on the big energy companies and reduce the pressure on the automotive manufacturers.

Dan

City block hahaha, that is so wrong, hydrogen will explode the same as a Gasoline car would. The Hydrogen is in a small special tank that fits in a car.