Using hydrogen as a source of power for vehicles certainly has its drawbacks—among them the cost and the inefficient use of energy—but researchers are now warning against hydrogen for another reason, The Guardian reports: scarcity and a subsequent dependence on fossil fuels.
Hydrogen-based fuels are already expensive, and while there’s also research to suggest that a growing demand could enable cheaper prices, even a large-scale swap isn’t going to create the infrastructure needed to distribute hydrogen on a large scale.
Demand also isn’t going to immediately solve hydrogen’s other main issues: that you get less energy per unit volume than other fuels, that liquefaction (as in, the simple ability to easily refill a fuel tank at a pump) is challenging and costly, and hydrogen’s volatility.
You’re going to face the same exact problems you currently have with the meager electric charging infrastructure, but things are amplified.
But perhaps the biggest issue is the fact that hydrogen could enable us to stick with the same fossil fuels that we’re trying to eradicate. In other words, if hydrogen turns out to be scarce and we still have a combustion engine in our car, we’re likely to just turn back to gasoline.
