How viable are hydrogen cars?
There are two types of hydrogen cars. Fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) are EVs, but instead of getting their electricity from batteries charged from the grid, they get their power from fuels cells using hydrogen as the energy carrier. FCVs use four times as much electricity on a per mile basis as a battery EV if the hydrogen is obtained through the process called electrolysis. So you would need four times the number of solar panels to go the same distance as you would in a battery EV. Hydrogen obtained through reformation of hydrocarbon fuels releases massive quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere, and even that dirty process uses more energy than merely charging a battery. FCVs have many seriously difficult and expensive engineering challenges to solve before they will ever be widely available, and even then, the energy required per mile will probably still be substantially higher than with battery EVs. Internal combustion engines (ICE) can be made to burn hydrogen instead of gasoline. Even t
