An Electric Car Fuel Cell And The Future
The electric car fuel cell is one source of power for today's electric vehicles. In cars with fuel-cell conversion, hydrogen and water react to produce water and electricity. The electricity, then, powers the car.
One potential advantage to using hydrogen in vehicles is that hydrogen could be produced and consumed continuously. Yet, while hydrogen has long been considered an alternative to fuel based cars, there are difficulties in implementing it in a wide scale.
First, hydrogen has a low volumetric energy as compared to gasoline. This lowers the well-to-tank efficiency. Some have suggested extracting hydrogen from fuels like methane or gasoline, but this would continue the dependence on fossil fuels for energy.
Second, fuel cells are expensive to produce and are damaged easily. The cells need to be able to stand up to normal wear and tear on cars. Experts are studying ways of lowering the cost and making electric car fuel cells hardier under normal conditions. Third, there are political concerns about how to implement this technology on a large scale. Some nuclear reactors could produce hydrogen and electricity at the same time. However, the costs of hydrogen storage and transportation are currently higher than electricity. Developing electric vehicles may be easier than having to change the infrastructure for hydrogen based vehicles. Finally, hydrogen is expensive to produce. One method of producing hydrogen is to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water. Another is to separate hydrogen from methane or natural gas. Although there are many drawbacks to hydrogen fuel cells, including those listed above, many companies are working on electric cars using fuel cells. Companies such as General Motors, Honda, DaimlerChrysler, and Volkswagen have fuel cell cars in development. In addition to cars, some companies are looking at how fuel cells can power other vehicles like buses. Trials are going on with experimental vehicles in various cities around the world such as Chicago, London, Barcelona, Beijing, and Perth. The buses are costly to run and operate but they provide valuable insight into the potential of hydrogen based vehicles. Bus drivers in Iceland trials find the hydrogen powered buses similar to traditional buses to drive. Yet, the hydrogen buses are less noisy. If the technology is to move to consumer cars, however, producing hydrogen will have to become less costly. The future of electric car fuel cells will depend on these trials and subsequent development. In the meantime, scientists will continue to work on alternative-fuel vehicles in addition to hydrogen.
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