Over the past few years there has been a movement for car companies to create a car of the future. A car that doesn't run on the ever diminishing source of petrol.
Over the past few years there has been a movement for car companies to create a car of the future. A car that doesn't run on the ever diminishing source of petrol. Manufacturers came to the realisation they had to find another source of energy to keep the car industry alive. Many obscure ideas circulate, from cars run on manure to cars being powered by the sun. In the mid to late nineties it seemed general motors had found an answer in the battery powered car, but its impracticality led people to look to the future, hydrogen.
Since the nineties car companies have worked tirelessly on building a car that could blend in with the traditional petrol powered cars but at the same time cause no damage to the environment. This movement was spurred on by generous government incentives, particularly in the US. After about a decade of work brands began to produce hydrogen powered cars as good as any that are on the road today. The Honda Clarity, released in 2008 was one of the first of these, Nissan, Renault and Lotus soon followed with their own attempts.
You would think if these cars were at a very acceptable standard four years ago we would be seeing them on the roads by now. But the government is yet to take the initiative. No matter how smoothly these cars run they have to have hydrogen to go, but there is virtually nowhere it can be bought. Hydrogen fuel cells, at present, are by no means cheap, more worryingly there is little being done to change this. Production, storage and distribution have been labelled the three main challenges in making hydrogen the fuel of the future and they are obstacles that need to be tackled.
Hydrogen is the future, though perhaps it should be the present. We can only hope that plenty will be invested in hydrogen before petrol becomes unaffordable.