Toyota is offering some amazing deals for its hydrogen fuel cell-powered Mirai. That is, if customers can find the hydrogen to power it.
Toyota wants hydrogen to succeed so bad it’s paying people to buy the Mirai::Toyota is offering some amazing deals for its hydrogen fuel cell-powered Mirai. That is, if customers can find the hydrogen to power it.
Not really. Hindenburg had hydrogen at air pressure.
Pressurised hydrogen tends to fail in a much safer way (or just not fail). A regular fossil fuel car fire is much worse.
The thing is you're not just burning hydrogen (or gas). You're also burning oxygen in the atmosphere and how bad the fire is depends how the gas mixes with the oxygen. The mix has to be just right or it won't burn at all (Hindenburg was just right).
Gasoline tends to burn quite slowly which is particularly catastrophic as it generates heat over a long time which causes everything else in the car to also catch fire, while still burning fast enough that you might not be able to escape the car before it the fire gets dangerous.
As someone who works in the hydrogen space, this is something we're always considering too. We're very aware that hydrogen explodes, and it's a core facet of our safety analyses.
I read somewhere that with the Hindinburg, the hydrogen pretty much just went straight up, while most of the deaths and burns were caused by the fuel for the engines.
At least gasoline is not stored under immense pressure. Gasoline may burn due to a crash, but it's unlikely to explode just from a rupture to the tank from the crash.