Can hydrogen be used to power cars?

• BMW have already produced the world's first series production hydrogen cars. Details or PDF
  

     What are the advantages?

• Hydrogen is a non-polluting fuel (water is the exhaust).
  
• Hydrogen can be operationally competitive with petrol or diesel .
  
• Hydrogen is a relatively safer fuel than petrol, diesel or LPG.
  
• Hydrogen will prevent the depletion of fossil fuel reserves.
  

• Hydrogen can be made from renewable resources.
  
• Hydrogen is currently made from natural gas (methane), petroleum, and/or coal. It can also be made from water by electrolysis.
  

• Methane is a recycled fuel (and therefore renewable) when made by anaerobic digestion of biomass wastes.
  
• Solar power is a renewable resource and may be used to create the electricity needed for producing hydrogen by electrolysis.
  
• Hydrogen production from hydrocarbons can also produce carbon, which has ten times the strength of steel, for car bodies and structural members.
  

• The technology is now available to convert to a hydrogen-based economy.
  
• Research is advancing on fuel cells, but we need to initiate hydrogen now. We need to begin building infrastructure and implementing existing technology.
  
• We will not immediately dispose of the million cars that are presently being used around the World. Millions of new internal combustion engine vehicles will be produced before the transition to manufacturing totally clean vehicles can be completed. These new and older cars will be on our roads for at least the next 30 years. If they were powered with hydrogen, billions of tons of greenhouse gases would not be thrust into the air.
  
• Converting internal combustion engines in cars can be easily done, with something as simple as a kit that takes three hours for a trained mechanic to install. We have the technology now in place for such a conversion to hydrogen for c.£1400. After conversion, a control dial on the vehicle control panel can vary the hydrogen with petrol from 0-100%, according to availability of refuelling sources. This versatility facilitates uninterrupted travel for people while the country builds or converts necessary infrastructure for self-service refuelling at present petrol/diesel stations. An automatic hydrogen refuelling station has been built at Munich airport. Details
  
• Emissions tests for hydrogen-converted vehicles show that the hydrogen system actually cleans the ambient air of hydrocarbons and increases the nitrous oxides only 1% as much as with petrol. Research is currently underway to reduce this still further.
  
• We will have to rely on petroleum companies for years to come. Converting now depends on working with petroleum companies to incorporate their existing marketing and infrastructure into needed means of producing, transporting, storing, and dispensing hydrogen.
  
• Research is striving to improve natural methods of generating methane from anaerobic digestion of livestock waste or landfill biomass. Harvesting hydrogen from these sources makes it a completely renewable resource.
  
• Converting to the hydrogen economy is a two-step process: first a transition when both conventional fuels and hydrogen will be available and used, and second when hydrogen alone will be used. The complete transition will take at least a decade. It could even take 20 years before we produce hydrogen from completely renewable resources. The transition can be done in a very short period of time if all the people of the world put their collective efforts into it and demand that it be done.