Prezentace A Way to Cut Fuel Consumption_Hybrid Vehicles_Pohlreich Martin

, a process that uses electricity as a catalyst to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen in the water.
Currently, though, the most common way to produce hydrogen is from natural gas.
One possibility is extracting hydrogen from some of the fuel sources we use in vehicles now, such as gasoline. This can be done at a manufacturing facility, much the way we see with gasoline today, or it can be done onboard the vehicle, by running the source fuel through a unit called a reformer.
Producing hydrogen is also more expensive than producing the same amount of gasoline in terms of driving range. New research, however, suggests that using ethanol, which comes from corn, as the source could be the cheapest production method yet. The catch is that at least 40 percent of all of the United States' crops would be needed to produce enough ethanol to support Americans' driving habits.

Storage Problems Mean Short Range
Another issue facing the industry is how to store enough hydrogen within a vehicle to provide a cruising range similar to the 300- to 350-mile range we see on today's cars. At best, the driving range of any fuel cell vehicle in existence today is about 150 miles.
The fuel cell vehicles store hydrogen at 5,000 psi, and automakers are experimenting with going up to 10,000 psi. The higher pressure can allow a driving range of around 300 miles. Housing the hydrogen in these tanks, however, is still extraordinarily expensive, with tanks running $20,000 each and more.

A Hydrogen Fueling Station on the Corner
The final challenge along the path to fuel cell vehicles is the infrastructure that would allow fuel cell vehicles to be refueled conveniently and quickly. The good news is that the refueling process for fuel cell vehicles is already comparable to refueling a gasoline-powered car today.
The bad news is that putting a fueling station that dispenses hydrogen on every corner is no simple task. What may make all of this come together are two things: one, that many cities already have hydrogen pipelines underground which deliver hydrogen for industrial use and, two, that many gas stations are already set up to dispense compressed natural gas using a system that could be easily modified to dispense pressurized hydrogen.
The key to the infrastructure issue, at least initially, is natural gas. Natural gas is already piped into most gasoline stations, and it's a very straightforward procedure to put hydrogen through those pipelines. On-site generation would likely only be in areas that were remote or couldn't be placed along a pipeline.
While on-site production of hydrogen could be done a myriad of ways, size of the generation facility is a concern. The hydrogen generation machine currently in development by H2Gen Innovations is an encouraging first step. The company's prototype machine can produce enough hydrogen to fill 160 fuel cell cars a day. That's pretty close to the 175 vehicles the average gasoline station supplies daily. As with most new technologies, the cost of the system is high — about $375,000 per machine.

Real-World Experience
Driving is shockingly similar to driving today's gasoline internal combustion cars with two notable exceptions — these vehicles have no engine noise (which takes a bit getting used to) and, all had a surprising amount of low-end torque, making them quite fun to drive.

Next Steps
We must also be remembered that gasoline will not disappear overnight, and gasoline cars can be thanks to new technologies very clean.
Oil and gas are likely to remain the dominant energy sources until somewhere around 2040, according to a study conducted by Royal Dutch/Shell, although the study did indicate that fuel cell vehicles could account for 25 percent of new auto sales in industrialized nations as early as 2020.

Sources:
 HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vehicles" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vehicles
 HYPERLINK "http://www.edmunds.com/advice/fueleconomy/articles/102059/article.html" http://www.edmunds.com/advice/fueleconomy/articles/102059/article.html