If hydrogen (H2) gas becomes as cheap/cheaper than petrol, would you choose to use it as an alternative fuel?

Corey Rohleder: Depends if it'll be affordable and efficient.

Coleman Ocegueda: No, as it is much less efficient than petrol, AND requires major changes to the engine.

Shawn Lelis: Given the choice I would decline to pick hydrogen as an alternative fuel. Presently hydrogen is an alternative fossil fuel not an alternative TO fossil fuels as 96% of industrial hydrogen is made from fossil fuels. The cheapest method is through the reforming of natural gas. http://peswiki.com/index.php/PowerPedia:Hydrogen There is a common misconception that hydrogen would be made from water but with cheaper alternatives available how could this possibly be regulated without promoting a bootleg industry.Putting aside the concerns that hydrogen is an unusual fuel that burns mostly in the ultraviolet spectrum so cannot be seen or felt until it burns and tends to leak through most substances, it has the lowest energy density by volume (highest by weight,) and further has to be c! ompressed or liquefied to be practical on a vehicle. This casts hydrogen as a dangerous and inefficient fuel that would mostly benefit oil interests rather than consumer interests.But lets give oil companies their due and assume, with our heads in the sand, that:-- the fossil fuel supply is inexhaustible-- there is no such thing as global warming-- there is no such thing as peak oil...Even under these extreme assumptions there is the choice to pursue the internal combustion engine or the electric vehicle. The internal combustion engine is a dinosaur that requires a complex transmission to even be practical. The combination of engine and drive train makes the vehicle likely to be less than 15% efficient at the wheels. $ .85 of every dollar I put in the tank is wasted to inefficiency. The electric vehicle is an old idea that has new promise with the latest design in batteries and the potential for wireless electrical transmission through tuned capacitors. The EV can ! be over 90% efficient and has such tremendous torque from a st! art so that it does not even require a transmission. When you combine the loser hydrogen with the loser internal combustion engine there is nothing positive in the result....Show more

Seema Hosfeld: If you can use that to power a GTO, I'd say yes...

Rodolfo Merel: If we can extract hydrogen from natural gas cheaply.Since natural gas is cheaper than petrol, so if the hydrogen gas extracted from natural gas is also cheaper than petrol.Yes, i will choose hydrogen as fuel.Not necessary by using fuel cells, because fuel cells is still very expensive and no sign of fuel cells cost decreasing.We can use hydrogen to run internal combustion engine, just like the natural gas can be used to run the current petrol engine.But unfortunately with current "Steam reforming" technology, hydrogen extracted from natural gas cost about four times as expensive as gasoline at the pump....Show more

Joan Stavropoulos: yes, if all or most petrol stations also offered H2. Alternati! ve fuels are great in theory, but the infrastructure would need to first be built

Mitsuko Manne: The problem is that hydrogen is a much more difficult fuel to use than petroleum, and that doesn't have anything to do with its source or cost. Yes, it burns without generating CO2, but its very difficult stuff to handle on the wasteful scale we use petroleum.Hydrogen cannot be liquified at room temperature, so any mobile uses will have to use heavy compressed H2 tanks or solid state storage (hydrides, which are very difficult to keep dry), both of which will severely limit vehicle range compared to gasoline or diesel. Compressing gas into a tank generates a lot of heat, so tanks cannot be refilled quickly. Plus, it has the greatest range of explosive concentration of any flammable gas, making any leaks extremely dangerous, especially in enclosed structures.Hydrogen will require an entire new infrastructure that will take decades to build, and it is unlikely that consum! er acceptance will warrant that after the first few explosions. I woul! d rather see any hydrogen used to hydrogenate vegetable oils, which makes a fuel similar to diesel, and propane as a byproduct. However, since biofuels are constrained by land and solar input, this is not a replacement for petroleum either.The main problem is petroleum is such an ideal fuel that we have built an infrastructure around it that is unsustainable with anything else. We move far too much stuff, far too far, and far too fast. Without serious conservation and efficiency measures, no alternative fuels will be viable replacements for petroleum.DK...Show more

Boris Hadsall: The answer is obvious. Yes, why not?

Jasper Mangel: The problem with Hydrogen fuel cells is not about efficiency. They are very efficient. It's about infrastructure and the by-product. Water. For instance, where I live, there are almost 3 million cars in and around my city, at all times of the day. If every one of those cars ran on hydrogen fuel cells, the amount of water produced wo! uld have to be dealt with by building run-off drainage dtches and that water would be polluted from asphalt driving surfaces. Special treatment plants would have to be built and as much as I hate to say, " It's not in the best interests of our politicians"....Show more