Question: Do hydrogen cars work in a similar way to electric cars, and which do you believe is the future of sustainable cars

Kat Hunter answered on 21 May 2020: last edited 22 May 2020 8:22 am

Good question! Yes and no. This is a bit complicated but hopefully I can explain!

Yes – Both hydrogen cars and electric cars have electric motors. Both have chemical reactions which create the electricity to power the motors.

No – Hydrogen cars use hydrogen which reacts with oxygen to generate electricity. Hydrogen cars have a tank of hydrogen – so essentially the hydrogen gets used up during the reaction (it turns into steam). technically you could reverse this reaction but this doesn’t actually happen in a hydrogen car. the steam is just released into the air.

Electric cars are powered by a battery. Inside the battery a reversible chemical reaction occurs which produces the electricity to power the electric motor. When the battery is flat it can be recharged – which means the chemicals can be returned to their starting chemicals. I can explain why this chemistry is different to the hydrogen reaction if you are interested.

This is a hot topic for debate!
Both technologies have their advantages and disadvantages but I could see both types doing well down the line. Hydrogen cars tend to be able to drive longer distances than electric cars but the technology is improving.

Realistically, it depends on the infrastructure government decide to invest in – what I mean by this is charging stations or hydrogen fuel stations around the country. From this point of view I imagine electric cars will more likely to be the future as many people can already charge cars from their houses. We just need to work on speeding up the charging time for those longer journeys (without damaging the battery).