How Hydrogen Cars Work

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Ron Cogan with greencar.com. Today we're going to talk about how hydrogen cars work. To start out we have to define what is a hydrogen car. There are two distinct types. One would be like BMW's Hydrogen 7 that uses hydrogen in an internal combustion engine and burns it just as it would burn gasoline. The other would be a Hydrogen fuel cell vehicle which works much more like a battery and produces electricity for electric drive motors. There are proponents for each type of hydrogen use. People might ask which one is better. You know, at this point in time there's no way of knowing. More automakers and developers are working on fuel cells than internal combustion hydrogen, but that doesn't mean one is better than the other. A fuel cell operates a lot like a battery, but a a battery needs to be recharged or it goes dead. A fuel cell gets a continuous supply of fuel as needed on board a vehicle. In this case hydrogen and oxygen are introduced into the fuel cell where there are two electrodes and an electrolyte between them. The hydrogen goes along one path. The oxygen goes along the other. They create water in the end, so the emission is water droplets. Along the way they create electricity. That's the beauty of a fuel cell. No emissions, no greenhouse gases, highly efficient. It creates an abundance of electricity for electric drive motors in a vehicle. Hydrogen transportation looms large on the minds of major automakers, their technology developers and also the government. The reasons are simple: extremely low emissions, using a fuel source other than petroleum which of course creates big issues for this country. It's also very efficient. A fuel cell is much more efficient at creating mode of power through its process than an internal combustion engine. Clearly hydrogen plays a big part in our future."