[henrikschroder]

A plastic bucket of gas contains more hydrogen than a bucket of liquid hydrogen, and if you put a lid on it the gas will happily stay in the bucket, whereas for the hydrogen you need a pressurized corrosive-resistant container.

Hydrogen is not the future, because it's incredibly difficult to handle, we don't have the infrastructure for it (unlike gas and electricity), and the energy density of hydrogen is really bad compared to gas and batteries.

The engine is a part of the puzzle, but infrastructure is a much larger piece that has to be solved in a reasonable way.

[dancesdrunk]

Actually - Hydrogen storage isn't that much of a step above the precautions already needed for LPG; which is now incredibly popular in developing countries. Shanghai, if I remember correctly, made it illegal in 2000 or 2001 to sell petrol scooters in the city - they all run on LPG.

Regarding energy density - definitely agree, my own research showed me a 2 fold increase in consumption compared to LPG, which in turn increases consumption by 15% over regular petrol (note that these were estimates based on my data).

The lab had a "Hydrogen maker" - obviously it ran off electricity and in about 6 hours provided roughly 500 milliliters of compressed hydrogen (kept at 350 bar if I remember correctly) literally from air.

My concept was to be able to have a clean water tank (pure H2O) and electrolysis providing the Hydrogen to run the engine, and continue on in a closed loop; literally a car running on water. Obviously energy transfer, efficiencies etc make this almost impossible - but one can dream.

[henrikschroder]

> literally a car running on water.

No, your car would run on electricity.

But why would you want a car that takes electricity and charges up an internal hydrogen fuel tank, then uses that to fuel a combustion engine, when you might as well have an electric car where you fill up the battery, then use that to power an electric engine.

The fundamentals of a car don't change. You need to store energy in the car somehow, and you need to convert that energy into movement somehow.

The benefits of a regular car is that the "store energy in car" part is very easy. You just fill it up at the gas station. The benefits of an electric car is that "convert to movement" is very easy, because electrical engines are very simple.

I completely understand that if you have a fueled up hydrogen-powered vehice, it's awesome - it runs on water!!! - but what do you need to do to get there? And how much energy is lost in conversions along the way? It simply doesn't solve any problems in a better way.