HYDROGEN & ELECTRIC CARS
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| Hydrogen |
Electric vehicles have spread their charisma all over the world. The fans of
Tesla and
Elon Musk are very enthusiastic about
EVs on various social media platforms and now the Indian car makers are also shifting towards electric vehicles. In the era of
EVs, road and transport minister has introduced
Hydrogen cars so, what are these Hydrogen cars? Before the mass utilization of EVs, can Hydrogen cars replace them?
History of Hydrogen fuel
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| Hindenburg Aircraft |
It is not the first time that Hydrogen is being used as fuel in the year 1937, Hydrogen was used as a fuel in the Hindenburg Aircraft but unfortunately, it got ruptured in its flight and 35 people out of 100 died due to the arson, but Hydrogen continued as a fuel. NASA also uses hydrogen gas as a fuel to shift its Crew and Cargo from one place to other. In the year 1960, general Motors invented an Electro Van which was an FCEV.
What is FCEV...?
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| FCEV |
FCEV stands for Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle, Hydrogen is filled in its tank and Oxygen is obtained from the surrounding air so, there exists a fuel cell where Hydrogen and Oxygen interact and produces water, heat and electricity. Heat escapes into the atmosphere, water gets evaporated and the electricity generated runs the electric motor and accelerates the car.
Benefits of Hydrogen Cars
This type of EV has advantages of both Normal fuel based vehicles and electric vehicles. It does not need to be recharged via electricity fill the hydrogen tank of the vehicle and travel anywhere, Electric Vehicle in FCEV is the use of Electric Motors which doesn't cause any type of pollution. The FCEV don't even have the issues of Range of Charging, there is generally a range of 250-300 km in an electric vehicle and the charging time ranges from 6-8 hours in FCEV's, the up range is around 600km and for this, you only have to get your hydrogen tank full which takes a meager 5 minutes. One problem with Electric Vehicles is less taken care off the optimum temperature for an Electric Vehicle to perform better is 21 degrees, The batteries of EVs exhaust fastly in order regions, But there is no such issue in the hydrogen-based vehicles there are no batteries FCEV use Hydrogen gas acceleration depends on the burning of Hydrogen gas.
Problem with Hydrogen Cars
The first problem is that these are very expensive a normal car is available at a price of Rs 10 lacs a similar vehicle under the EVs is available at 12-13 lacs, But hydrogen cars would cost you around 24 lacs. The charging stations of electric vehicles if costs around $50000 for its development then the development of a hydrogen station requires $20 lacs. If the hydrogen is stored at a high pressure a lot of expertise is required and that's why it is not at all cost-effective.
The second reason is the issue of Psychological Safety everybody has watched the video of the Hindenburg Disaster But Toyota Company is determinant they tells that these vehicle are safe they even fired a bullet at the car to show that it does not catch fire, But Psychologically many people doubt the safety of FCEVs so, safety is major concern.
Hydrogen Cars vs Electric vehicle
If we keep the cost and safety aside but still, FCEVs have many technical disadvantages. There is no point in comparing these with the conventional fuel-based vehicles as the are already less in demand So, EVs which is the replacement for the conventional cars.
The first one is low energy efficiency Hydrogen gas is required to run a Hydrogen based vehicle it will be extracted from somewhere suppose you extract it from water For an instance, you took 100 Watts of electricity and supplied it in the water 25 watts of electricity was consumed and Hydrogen was extracted now you would transport this hydrogen gas it would require compression 10 watts of electricity will be used for this, When this hydrogen will be filled in the vehicle and then it will react with the oxygen to produce electricity 25 watts will be consumed in this process so your 60 watts of electricity has already been consumed 40 watts of electricity is left, this means the efficiency of Hydrogen based vehicle is around 40%. If we compare it with EVs then EVs have an efficiency of around 80% so, Hydrogen should not be used in cars but hydrogen can be used in industries where natural gas is being used.
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| Toyota Mirai |
The second one is Performance a cars should have good pick-up and acceleration and EVs are far ahead of FCEVs in this criteria also, If we compare Toyota Mirai and Tesla Model 3 these two vehicles have similar costs. Mirai takes around 9 second to reach 60kmph from 0kmph and top speed of 170kmph but Tesla requires meager 3 seconds, top speed of more than 230kmph.
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| Tesla Model 3 |
So, the performance of Hydrogen cars is poor than the performance of EVs
