Fuel cell vehicles

Dear MB,

While I agree that fuel cell vehicles produce only water as an exhaust, my electric car produces nothing at all. But, and there will always be a but, someone, somewhere is choking on the pollution or glowing from the radiation the power station is producing to provide the electricity to power my car.

Similarly, although hydrogen is an abundant element, it only occurs naturally in combination with others, most famously, water. Energy, usually electrical, is required to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen, which is released to power the car when they recombine. Other sources of hydrogen are from reactions between methane, natural gas, or coal and steam at high temperatures, which somewhat defeats the object of conserving fossil fuels.

The Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only converted to another form. Energy is lost at each conversion so, from purely energy conservation grounds, it would be better to run the car on methane and cut out all the intervening stages. If we were self-sufficient on renewable electricity, it would be better to run the car on that.

The unpalatable fact is that there are too many vehicles and other energy consumers in the world and the solution is to reduce them. Everything else is re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I enjoy the conspicuous consumption of petrol as much as any of your readers, but enjoy it while you can. The writing is on the wall and eventually it will apply to fuel cell and electric vehicles as well. Nick Crook, Email