The automotive industry is as important to modern day life as the very air we breathe. OK, perhaps that was an exaggeration, but it’s hard to understate the importance of the modern day automobile. In fact, they’re so important that as of 2012 the auto industry in the U.S. accounted for 3.5 percent of the countries total gross domestic product, not to mention all of the money the U.S. has invested into infrastructure such as roads, fueling stations and bridges.
Cars are a huge industry, not just in the United States but also in the whole world. Billions of people depend on cars, trucks and vans every day to get them to school, work and home safely and dependably. Not to mention the enormous car cultures that have sprouted up in many parts of the world. Car culture has gotten so big that until recently, the most viewed television program in the world was a British car show called “Top Gear.” Clearly cars have their place in this world and it seems as though they are here to stay. But there is a problem -- a big one.
The environment, a place where animals play and trees grow. Our planet is an incredibly beautiful and wondrous place. Everything seems to work in harmony; there is a natural balance to the way our planet works. Humans however, seem to be throwing that balance off kilter.
Now, before you angrily exit out of this article because you came here to read about cars and not about “environmental problems” hear me out. Factually speaking, the air quality in major cities around the world is poor, mostly due to the air pollution caused by cars, vans and buses. There are less trees growing due to forestation, and consequently, less animals playing. Earth's health is deteriorating.
A big contributor to this problem is our seemingly inescapable dependence on oil. Oil is a finite resource that brings death upon anyone who uses it. Don’t believe me? Try sitting in your garage while your car is running; you won’t enjoy the experience because you’ll be too dead. Also, do not sit in a closed garage with a running car.
If you’re a billionaire oil tycoon, you may not care about the environment and that’s fine. However, you simply cannot escape the fact that oil is indeed a limited resource. This is a big deal, especially to carmakers. Cars run on refined oil which is widely known as gasoline or petroleum. Cars need oil to run properly; humans need cars to run properly so we can function as a society. It seems as though we’ve built our entire modern way of life around this unsustainable resource. Thankfully, we have the brainpower and the time to correct this problem before its too late. You’ll be glad to hear that the process has already begun.
Most of the large car companies have already begun to make cars that run on alternative fuel. As you may have noticed, hybrid cars are becoming all the rage. Celebrities drive them, athletes endorse them and everyone seems to be buying them. Nearly every car company has a line of eco-friendly hybrid models that will give you a warm tingly feeling inside every time you drive them because you feel as though you are saving the world one mile at a time.
There is also an emerging all-electric car market. Tesla, an American electric car company, is leading the way in electric automobile technology. They’ve done really well, so well, in fact, that they’re releasing the astonishingly cheap Tesla model 3, which has a starting price of $35,000. This is incredibly cheap for an all-electric car. Problem solved then, electric cars are the way to go, right?
Wrong – the answer is wrong. In order to charge our new environmentally friendly hybrid and electric cars we need electricity... a lot of it. At first glance, this may not seem like it’s a big deal. However, if you dig deeper into the issue, you’ll find this is a huge problem. Firstly, batteries are extremely inefficient and unreliable. You may think I’m being unfair, but lets make this point relatable. Have you ever had a phone with the battery life of approximately 10 minutes? Or perhaps your laptop is now more like a desktop because it constantly has to be plugged into the wall. Did you know that in order to fully charge an electric car it takes around eight hours? Tesla is developing “super charging stations” where your battery will charge in around 30 minutes, but who want to wait at a glorified gas station for 30 minutes?
Our second problem is how do we actually generate all of this electricity? Solar power? Wind power? Waterpower? Perhaps we have a managed to find a way to harness electricity from the sass generated by teenagers? No, unfortunately we generate most of our electricity by burning coal, oil's ugly brother. Our situation with coal is very similar to our situation with oil; the dependence we have on coal is unsustainable and will cause certain death. If we find can’t find an efficient way to generate clean electricity, what is the answer to our automobile energy needs?
Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, has the potential to become earth’s next energy superpower. The idea of hydrogen-powered cars isn’t anything new; it’s been around for decades. Yet, for some reason, the development and commercialization of this potentially earth-saving technology has been neglected. At this point you are maybe wondering as to how hydrogen fuel cell technology actually works, and, luckily, it’s really a fairly simple process.
Lets break down hydrogen fuel cell technology to its simplest form. To fuel your car, you would take your hydrogen-powered automobile to the “gas station.” Instead of filling up with gasoline or petroleum, you would fill up with liquid hydrogen. The hydrogen fuel mixes with the oxygen in the air in an electrochemical cell. The combination of these two elements creates electricity. As you may know, the chemical makeup of water is hydrogen and oxygen, so the only byproduct of a hydrogen-powered car is water. This technology is ideal for our constantly on-the-go world. There is no waiting for your batteries to charge, it takes minutes to fill up, there is no oil and no damage to our planet.
This technology exists and is a very real alternative to fossil fuel powered cars. It’s not a flawless plan. We would need to find an efficient way of mass liquefying and storing hydrogen. We would need to build billions of dollars of new infrastructure. And we would need the entire automobile industry to buy into and invest into this technology.
All of this is possible. Think of all the work that it took to set up our modern day cell phone networks, think of the progress airplanes have made in the past 100 years. It took work and will power. I strongly believe that this technology is worth investing in. There is no doubt it will take a lot of work, but it will be well worth the effort. We should act soon; our future generations are counting on it.
