Why Hydrogen Sucks

OK, folks, I’ve been taking some flak at work for opposing hydrogen-powered cars. For a thorough look at why hydrogen is currently an awful choice to drive your car around, I refer you to here:

http://mb-soft.com/public2/hydrogen.html

To sum up:

• It costs seven times as much power to generate the hydrogen — usually via coal-fired power plants — as you can get out of it driving around.
• Without substantial investment in energy-producing infrastructure (read: solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear), a hydrogen economy is not possible.
• The storage requirements for hydrogen are awful and extremely heavy. Smart people are working on this via hydrogen gels, but at present, it’s still a pipe-dream.
• Methane (natural gas) is a better choice for the short-term, and we have abundant resources to create it in a renewable fashion, unlike gasoline.
• Hydrogen, ultimately, is an immensely expensive, dangerous, and inefficient method of producing power for cars. The only net benefit versus alternative powering systems is cleaner air around cities… which may be a useful goal in itself, but is not the goal being pitched to the American public.