Cars using gasoline are responsible for air pollution (carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons) and lead to global warming (greenhouse effect). Due to the gasoline's toxicity to the environment and the scarcity (thus increase in price) of fossil fuels, companies' interest in substitutions for gasoline is increasing.
The first substitution for gasoline is electric cars. In the 1990s, Toyota created the Prius, an hybrid car (electric-gasoline) and then from the 2000s companies started to invest in full electric cars and hybrid cars. Huge progress has been made since then but still, electric cars cannot travel long distance and the infrastructure for electric cars is not well-developed. Furthermore, electricity production come mostly from coal or natural gas which means no carbon monoxide but carbon dioxide that also left a footprint on our dear Earth. This video is worth watching it, it explains in 5 minutes why electric cars are not so green.
Then, the question is "Will we be able to create a 100% blue technology for cars?".
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| Figure 1 |
Another substitute is the hydrogen fuel cell technology, hydrogen powered vehicles. How does it work? Hydrogen will be mix in the engine with oxygen that will create a combustion in order to create electricity (Figure 1)
Hydrogen is a 100% free emission however the problem that remain will be the use of water and electricity. Hydrogen can be created by using water and electricity or reforming fossil fuels. Companies are still mainly extracting hydrogens from oil and natural gas so if they want to be completely green they should start to use soon electricity and water to extract the product. However they should use sustainable energy in order to be 100% green (such as wind energy technology).
Some countries already implemented (Switzerland) or planned to implement (USA) hydrogen powered vehicles and it is likely to become trendy on the following years.
Several companies are still working on the new vehicles and in order to accelerate the innovation they could share information on their own progress (for instance, big data). Also, there is few or no infrastructure in most countries for the hydrogen powered vehicles so companies could help the car users to find a hydrogen station by implementing in the GPS car where to find stations to fill their tank.
