This episode of DNews is brought to you by
Toyota’s Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, Leave
your mark.
Toyota, let’s go places.
It's 2015, Hollywood prophecy says we should
have flying cars, and though we don't have
those… how about hydrogen cars?
Fueling your car with hydrogen is weird.
Hydrogen, number 1 on the periodic table.
It's a powerful combustible element, it blew
up the Hindenburg after all!
But it's also part of water, and carbohydrates,
and so many other things in nature.
The thing is… hydrogen is a lot of things,
and IN a lot of things, because it's a super
simple element; one proton, one electron and
it makes up SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT of the universe.
Yeah, three quarters of everything is hydrogen.
Hydrogen is used for food processing, petroleum
refining and in a variety of industrial applications.
The U.S. already creates more than 9 million
metric tons of hydrogen annually!
So I say again, fueling your car with hydrogen
is weird, but not THAT weird.
You've probably heard of hydrogen fuel cells,
they've been around for a while.
They were first invented in 1839.
They use oxygen and hydrogen to power a car
with no moving parts, and only emit clean
water vapor when burned.
And according to many car companies, 2015
might be the year the rubber meets the road
for hydrogen as a fuel.
When you think of creating hydrogen, you probably
think of this[a] but 95 percent of America's
hydrogen is produced using natural gas steam
reformation.
Factories use high temperatures and pressures
to break the natural gas into hydrogen (YAY!)
and carbon oxides (BOO!).
You can also make it using electrolysis -- essentially
running electricity through water to split
the hydrogen from the oxygen!
Two great things!
But something has to GENERATE that electricity,
and in the U.S., that's usually coal power.
But if we used wind, or solar -- then we'd
be onto something.
Once it's made, it has to be cooled and stored,
which uses MORE fossil fuel energy; and then
you have to ship it to pumping stations using
trucks and trains… you get it.
The HYDROGEN is great, but we suck at making
it and moving it around.
For now we're stuck making hydrogen using
fossil fuels, which might not be ideal, but
that could all change once hydrogen vehicles
get on the roads!
Why buy a hydrogen car if there's nowhere
to fill it up!
The government and private companies are partnering
to get fuel stations out there…
California has a goal in place to have more
than 15 percent of all cars in the state be
zero-emissions vehicles by 2025 -- and to
hit that goal they've pledged 200 million
dollars to build 100 more fueling stations
before then.
There are already 10, though I don't imagine
they're very busy since there aren't too many
cars on the road yet, but that'll change soon
too.
In tandem with this momentum, a bunch of auto
companies have pledged to release hydrogen
fuel cell cars this year, and with 100 more
stations coming too, filling them up should
be a cinch!
According to research from the University
of California Davis, those 100 stations should
be able to make fuel cell vehicles cost-competitive
with gasoline!
We'd like to take a second and give a shout
out to Toyota for supporting DNews.
They were at CES this week and released their
patents for new fuel-cell technology, and
revealed THEIR fuel cell car to the world,
the Mirai.
They’re hoping these royalty-free patents
will spurn a hydrogen-fuel-based future and
spent the last decade reducing the cost of
fuel cell production 95 percent.
Have you ever seen a hydrogen fuel station?
Would you want a 
hydrogen car?
