It's a new hydrogen-diesel hybrid engine affectionately known as "baby number two" that could help to decarbonise some of Australia's heaviest industries.

Engineers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) say they have successfully modified a conventional diesel engine to use a mix of hydrogen and a small amount of diesel, claiming their patented technology has cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by more than 85%.

The following submission statement was provided by /u/FDuquesne:

It's a new hydrogen-diesel hybrid engine affectionately known as "baby number two" that could help to decarbonise some of Australia's heaviest industries.

Engineers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) say they have successfully modified a conventional diesel engine to use a mix of hydrogen and a small amount of diesel, claiming their patented technology has cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by more than 85%.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/10gquk6/the_race_to_make_diesel_engines_run_on_hydrogen/j548yd8/

For these large machines hydrogen makes more sense then lithium ion as these machines work 24 hours a day and there is simply no time to charge the batteries, especially given just how many batteries would be needed for these beasts.

A greener way of exhausting the world's resources for meaningless economic growth... The prostitution of tech and science :'(

There is no such thing as meaningless economic growth. If you believe that, go move to a cave.

For these massive machines, dont they often use overhead pantographs?

You would need a much smaller battery to go from line to line.

That's one I haven't seen before... Makes sense for relatively fixed routes though, provided there is a large enough reliable electricity supply available

The USA is the country with the most economic growth in history and its overall quality of life in every indicator is lower than most developed countries with less economic growth, even lower than some underdeveloped countries such as Costa Rica, where life expectancy, healthcare, education and homelessness amongst other indicators all surpass that of the USA.

There you go, there's meaningless economic growth.

It is strange that the focus is on making a diesel engine run with some hydrogen when hydrogen fuel cells would be a better fit for this type of truck. A company in Seattle has already demonstrated the effectiveness of this technology. Countries like Australia, which have abundant solar potential and mature mining industries, would be well-suited for this technology. The main issue with fuel cell technology is the high cost of platinum. While this is a significant concern for cars that are sold for a few thousand dollars, it is less of an issue for mining trucks like the electric drive Liebherr t282b, which has a price tag of $5 million and requires a similar amount of platinum. This situation is similar to when the Mythbusters program converted an older diesel car to run on cooking oil without significant modifications. While it is interesting, it begs the question of why we are focusing on preserving diesel engines instead.

https://firstmode.com/

The power-plant that power electricity through those pantographs run off coal.

Most commercial hydrogen is also fossil fuel.

It may be meaningless to you, but there are elements such as military and economic influence.

It's not all about your QoL.

Seems like a strange concept to direct inejct hydrogen into a diesel motor when fuel cells will always have a higher efficiency without the need for diesel. Hydrogen isn't cheap, and it's made from either fossil fuels or from electrolysis. Even with electrolysis you are now losing so much energy that it's not very green(Even renewables emit co2).

Why not just replace with fuel cells?

When you burn hydrogen, which is a fossil fuel, what does it spit out?

The byproduct of steam reformed hydrogen production is C02. You get about the exact same amount by volume consumed, you just produce the carbon exhaust at a different location.

Interesting, and the exhaust would be water vapor and clean air?

FMG here in aus bought out the Williams F1 team battery division last year. They've just delivered a 240 tonne 1.4MWhr battery for use in haul trucks. To my understanding they will be swappable so instead of waiting for charge times they just change out the packs.

https://www.fmgl.com.au/in-the-news/media-releases/2023/01/16/fortescue-welcomes-the-arrival-of-australia%E2%80%99s-first-prototype-battery-system-designed-for-a-zero-emission-battery-electric-mining-haul-truck

Australia already invented a powerful 90% hydrogen 10% diesel engine.

More powerful than current combustion engines.

> Rio Tinto has officially opened a technologically advanced mine in Western Australia. The Gudai-Darri iron ore mine features a 34 MW solar farm capable of meeting one-third of the facility's energy needs.22 Jun 2022

> Together with a new lithium-ion battery energy storage system in Tom Price, the solar plant is estimated to reduce annual carbon dioxide emissions by about 90,000 t compared with conventional gas powered generation, equivalent to taking about 28,000 cars off the road.

The thing with these studies though is they often just look at the end result but not the whole thing.

Maybe the engine itself produce less CO2 emission, but you have to produce that Hydrogen in the first place. It requires a lot of energy to do so and depending of how it is produced, your 85% will be way less when you take that factor into consideration.

If the goal is really to produce less pollution, you can't just look at the last link of your chain, you have to take the whole thing into consideration.

> When you burn hydrogen, which is a fossil fuel, what does it spit out?

NOx

Sure, but perhaps you can use local green energy to make hydrogen, say in a location where there is ample supply of water, sun and wind, and transport the gas using existing methods/infrastructure. It's still not as good as if you could use electricity more directly, but it's at least easier to distribute, and better than keep using fossile fuel.

Yeah, I quite like living in the most peaceful, educated, and prosperous period in human history

because these kinds of engines already exist, made in the 90s early 00's by BMW as a study, they require 1,5 times the amount of resources to make than regular engines. However when dealing with heavy machinery like this that is less of a concern since they are not made in the same number as regular cars.

JCB actually go fairly deeply in depth about this https://youtu.be/bfS012FC8yM

Essentially batteries just aren’t viable within the usage scenario & weight requirements of plant equipment. As well as the capital expenditure.

The capital expenditure for fuel cells just doesn’t work in the current market.

On site hydrogen production works well with many site power grids and JCB project it being fairly plentiful in the future.

Include the increased resources from still using gasoline, and the reduced effiency meaning more hydrogen needed, surely the environment and even economical aspect would favor fuel cells?

yeah possibly. I don't know the numbers for that, it's just that some companies see this and go: oh neat the R&D was already done for us together with oh neat we can say it's greener* and add to that some interest groups and we get this.

The vehicle will have a reduced CO2 output tho. if you don't factor in how most of the current H2 is made...

If the economy doesn't serve humanity quality of life what's the point?

prosperous for who and for how many people and at what price, taking into consideration that we are generating a civilisation-ending event for our precious infinite growth in a finite planet.

Maybe your QoL measure does not measure things like not being under threat of being invaded or having a space programme.

How many times has Costa Rica been invaded?

Regarding a space program, yeah cool, but priorities no? Maybe you'd rather explore space while most humanity lives in misery, I'd rather explore the universe with humanity's needs met, we might all enjoy the space exploration way more, don't you think?

Also... planetary limits and tipping points... if we surpass them we might never be able to explore space ever again, either because we've depleted key materials and resources, or because we've gone extinct.

Are we aiming for short-term gains or long-term civilisation? Is this Futurology or Presentology?

> Is this Futurology or Presentology?

Exactly. Your shortemism does not apply.

Yeah, because pretending we can keep indefinitely growing in a finite planet is soooo longtermist... Good luck with your cancerous economy.

> in a finite planet

There's your problem right there lol. What are you even doing on r/futurology?

You totally over look that in option 1 you're retrofitting to an existing truck and option 2 requires a new truck. Replacing all trucks is not only a huge cost for businesses but also a huge contribution to GHG.

It's expected the price will drop. Also, building all new trucks to be green is not going to help reduce GHG.

prosperous for basically the whole of mankind:

Consider that in 1800, by a $1.90 per day standard, 81 percent of people worldwide were in poverty. One-hundred-ninety years later, only 44 percent were in poverty — a reduction of less than one-fifth of a percentage point per year. By contrast, in the 28 years since 1990, the rate of $1.90 per day poverty fell by more than 1.2 percentage points per year to less than 10 percent.

Economic growth is paying for the R&D and investment in renewability/sustainability tech that will keep civilization going indefinitely.

wait, you think that we can extract resources faster than their regeneration cycles with no consequences at all? lol

Correct. Bmw had 50 7 series prototypes built like this in 2000. You could switch between h2 and diesel.

Costa Rica? Remind me what happens when they get hit by a hurricane?

What a dump idea. Either go battery, fuel cell or synthetic.

Anything else is just crazy.

You don't need a new truck you need a new engine.

> faster than their regeneration cycles

I hope you are not one of those crackpots who think oil comes from deep carbon deposits close to the centre of the earth, right?

> no consequences at all

The consequence will be that we will be motivated to expand beyond this rock for more resources, which is a major advantage for humanity.

Cooking oil and diesel aren't that different. Lots of diesels can run on bio oil. The main issue is seals and hoses and nothing else.

Hydrogen on the other hand most definitely is.

Also a lot of big engines really benefit form a hybrid approach because at that size a lot of power goes into auxiliary systems and those dont run well of diesel engines.

I agree 1.90 per day is poverty, but so is 10 per day, to how much have the 1.90 increased to exactly? because it sounds bloody convenient that 1.90 is the chosen amount for these statistics, when you can be poor with ten times as much than 1.90 per day, don't you think? Quite easy to decrease poverty, when your poverty line is an inch above the floor...

There usually is lots of downtime where is stops for loading and unloading.

However even if that doesn't work a synthetic fuel would be far easier to handle.

Especially since having hydrogen around isn't necessary without problems in itself.

That they get universal public health care and robust public services to rebuild, please check the homelessness rate of Costa Rica.

You obviously haven't thought this through. You every looked under the hood of a Toyota mirai? You would need to replace all electrical and mechanical ancillary equipment. All the looms. Even the wheel hubs if you want regen braking. The entire drive train basically needs to be replaced. Different heaters, AC compressors, radiators and cooling systems. Then you need to find extra space for the battery. Yes that fuel cell needs to power a battery which then powers the motor. You would be left with the chassey and the cab basically. The amount of labour cost would be higher then a new truck. But heaps more GHG

Right. I tried to source a fuel cell for a project just to see how practical it would be...no fucking way at the moment. It's ~40-60k to get a reasonable amount of power out of them right now.

A simple 1kw fuel cell is sitting at like ~6k.

So don't do it all at one time? Just replace them as they age out

>I hope you are not one of those crackpots who think oil comes from deep carbon deposits close to the centre of the earth, right?

No, I hope you are not one of those crackpots who think cheap, easily extractable oil is infinite, and that it doesn't get harder and more expensive (not only money, but energy-wise) to extract the more it is extracted.

>The consequence will be that we will be motivated to expand beyond this rock for more resources, which is a major advantage for humanity.

Do you know anything about planetary tipping points? The earth's climate could turn to something more resembling Mercury if we surpass certain warming tipping points, and same can be said regarding acidification of oceans, biodiversity reduction, and many other tipping points which, if surpassed, it'll be impossible to come back from, and we require as a species. The world and life in general could survive climate catastrophe, humans won't.

Earth is doomed in the long term in any case. The only option is to expand, and if we don't do it now, we may never in the future.

A bird does not try and preserve their egg shell.

What the actual fuck

Then you keep burning diesel in the old trucks. That's what this solution is meant to resolve.

Or you could do it cheaper by retrofitting trucks you own.

There's a truck like this working with batteries that almost doesn't need charging because it charges going full downhill and empty uphill.

You can't do that with hydrogen.

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You also can't do that anywhere that doesn't have the mine at the top of a mountain.

If you replace them, you lower diesel emissions over time. This isn't going to be an overnight thing.

WOAH! Stop having reasonable outlooks and opinions man. Thats not allowed on Reddit. Only instant gratification and change is allowed here /s

Yeah, in the video I linked he actually goes into the life cycle costs, fuel cells & batteries just don’t make sense in their current state vs hydrogen combustion, even if it is some 30-40% less efficient.

Personally I can see this carrying forward into other alternative fuel situations such as transportation, with budget & enthusiast markets, where efficiency plays second fiddle to cap ex or method of operation, alternative/carbon free fuel (hydrogen ultimately) ICE is here to stay.

While true in itself, there still is a difference: a modern coal or other fossil fuel plant will emit basically only CO2. In contrast, cars or trucks - even with the very best the industry has to offer - simply lack the space to run more than a soot trap and a catalytic converter.

> It is strange that the focus is on making a diesel engine run with some hydrogen when hydrogen fuel cells would be a better fit for this type of truck.

Interesting thought, but you answer your own concern right here:

> less of an issue for mining trucks like the electric drive Liebherr t282b, which has a price tag of $5 million

The main point being:

> say they have successfully modified a conventional diesel engine to use a mix of hydrogen and a small amount of diesel,

Meaning you wouldn’t need to replace, just modify existing, expensive, equipment.

It’s a transition technology not an end-state.

These trucks can last a very long time. Why not do both?

Haha, apparently lol. I'm all for more environmentally friendly solutions, but it's also just not financially feasible to do it all at once.

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That will not be a diesel engine anymore it would be a hydrogen engine

Yes but many of them are in mountains, so it works.

And considering how tumultuous a situation we are in we need as many answers possible to minimize the situation we are headed towards. The technology that comes out of this could also make a huge dent in agriculture and logistics as well. Cutting diesel with green hydrogen from solar and wind would be a boon for all heavy equipment, not just mining.

It might be just a cost cutting measure. Same reason why future airliners are projected to use hydrogen or methane jet engines instead of fuel cells, there's just more expertise, know-how and established cheap technology in the existing field.

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I don’t understand (well I do) why we haven’t made the push for hydrogen at least 20 years ago. We already have the infrastructure in place for refueling, just have to convert active gas stations (I know, I know, the cost associated are not minuscule). But I feel like hydrogen is a better system than electric vehicles, the lithium mining, electricity production, and disposal/ longevity of the battery systems are issues we don’t have an infrastructure to support. I’m just some random dude with a couple drinks in me, but hydrogen fuel cells to supplement mileage on farm trucks have been around for decades and because of big oil it was something that never caught on. Now there’s a push for electric vehicles and while that’s at least a moderate improvement, it has a host of its own issues associated. Hydrogen does as well, but I feel that it’s a better long term solution.

it may be a lot more financially (and environmentally) feasible to retrofit existing motors and trucks. There may also be an environmental case for using these kind of engines in the future, depending on the ecological and financial cost of manufacture for a fully hydrogen version

The problem with hydrogen is it requires a ton of electricity to produce cleanly. Most hydrogen today is produced using hydrocarbons which obviously just shifting carbon from fuel to production. If you want clean hydrogen it will need to be produced by nuclear plants. Hydrogen is also difficult to store as it must be contained under pressure and is highly explosive.

I think we should skip hydrogen as a storage medium and just skip right to electric vehicles.

The issue with scaling up fuel cells is that they require even more rarified metals, as I understand it, the amount of platinum (and other metals) you need doesn't scale up in a linear fashion. Once you get to heavy machinery, from large trucks to super-panamax ships, you're talking about a significant expense on precious metals alone, not to mention the extra engineering that goes in to storing a useful amount of hydrogen.

Combustion, especially in a medium that allows you to control the burn rate, is a much better option. It gives you more power at higher density without the downsides of hydrogen storage. Mixing hydrogen with diesel is one option, but there are some cool things being done with Ammonia (NH3), including mixing it with diesel, or cracking off some of those Hs in liquid ammonia solution and using that as fuel. The great thing about these fuels is that, much like biodiesel, existing diesel/bunker engines can be adapted to burn these fuels.

Do you have more source on this article? "it consumes no energy doing it" and "eDumper produces 200 kwh of surplus energy every day" is impossible.

Why use hydrogen instead of synthetic diesel? Hydrogen has a lot of downsides and I'm not sure the relative upsides outweigh them

I don't think that surplus calculation is correct but that article gets the source from the CNN article which doesn't mention that surplus.

Either way, it's way more efficient than any other type of fuel.

This is my world.

And yes for a traditional diesel engine with a jerk pump you are right. Hydrogen wouldn't work.

However for newer larger diesel engines that operate on a common rail with electronic controlled injection switching to any compressed gas is quite simple.

Some changes to the injectors are about all that is required. Since gas can be injected at a much lower pressure to get a good flame front from the compression.

There are also changes to the fuel mapping for injection duration and timing.

If you're curious and have specific questions fire away.

I thought they were already switching to EVs for large construction and mining equipment. Caterpillar just released a model I think. The weight of the batteries are of no concern then they usually add counter weights for those vehicles anyway.

99% of hydrogen is cracked from hydrocarbons. Hydrogen is not green.

There isn't enough platinum and iridium in the world to make any significant number of fuel cells.

Who's "projecting" this? I don't believe you can pack enough hydrogen into an airliner to equal the range available from jet fuel...not to mention the tanks would be massively heavy.

Where are these fuel cells? They don't exist.

Well, Airbus has a large hydrogen program going right now. You can pack enough hydrogen or methane if you make the plane physically larger (which is why a lot of concepts are either flying wings or have a "hump"), and unfortunately there isn't really another way to make airliners CO2-neutral until we invent some really good synthetic fuels or improve batteries 10x.

The price will not drop. It will increase.

And they dropped it as pointless, since there's no hydrogen infrastructure, and hydrogen is cracked from hydrocarbons. Hydrogen has poor energy density, it's way cheaper and more efficient to just burn the hydrocarbon.

Only in your imagination. There's no infrastructure to support large electric vehicles, and no economic incentive to buy them. Like a lot of people, you see one article about some prototype somebody built, and you assume a million cash-strapped construction companies running on narrow margins are suddenly borrowing billions of dollars to buy fleets of vehicles that don't exist that have no support infrastructure.

You're not totally wrong, but I bet most every technology you depend on in your day to day life was developed and marketed in the USA originally.

Hydrogen will definitely drop. When they make it at scale it'll be heaps cheaper.

You can also crack it from water. Using free replaceable electricity. So if there's no waste product to make it, and no waste product to burn it, is it really inefficient?

hey dummy. battery powered mining equipment has already made inroad for underground work. (though no very large yet) most indoor PITs are already electrical in nature and it's not a huge leap for manufactures to move onto mining and construction.

If you even bothered to do a bit of searching you will see that several companies are already moving forward in electrically powered mining equipment. China is especially prominent in this field.

Hydrogen requires much more energy to extract from water than you get from it...which makes it inefficient by definition. There is no infrastructure to power huge cracking operations. The vast majority of hydrogen is currently extracted from methane, which emits more carbon than just burning the methane. Solar/wind infrastructure is going to be needed for the general use grid. Hydrogen requires massively thick tanks and huge compressors to compress it. It's extremely explosive and burns with no flame. It's far more dangerous to handle and store than liquid fuels like gas or diesel.

You have no clue how markets work. As soon as there's demand, the price will increase, not go down...in the same way the price of electricity is increasing even as more and more wind and solar comes online. "Make it at scale"...how? By cracking it from hydrocarbon? This is not only not green, it creates more carbon than just burning the natural gas. This is the only "at scale" method that currently exists. Increasing the scale doesn't decrease the refining cost, because the energy cost doesn't change. It takes around 33kwh per kilogram using electrolysis. A kilogram of hydrogen is like a gallon of gas. Hydrogen is currently around 5-6 times the cost of gasoline here in the US, without even beginning to delve into the difficulties of storing, transporting, and figuring out how to actually get it into a car. It's a red herring.

That's all correct. But none of it is a show stopper.

You are so confident and so wrong. I am not going to waste any more time on this conversation. Look up Dunning Kruger effect.

Obviously its possible...my grandfather run tests on hydrogen combustion right after the second world war for Mercedes.

The question here is why...this doesn't increase range, makes handling easier, reduces cost or removes the issue with combustion and exhaust management. An ice engine also isn't all that great for a lot of big machinery simply because you need to power so many different things that only badly works with ice.

Plus.. its hilariously inefficiency to burn hydrogen.

You either go fuel cell to work with hydrogen or battery so you can get rid of that high pressure hydrogen or stay with synthetic fuels that will just like that run on any old engine and still are more or less co2 neutral.

Fuel cells don't exist? what are you on about?

Thats an interesting claim. Considering that known reserves are estimated to be in the region of 70,000 metric tons and a fuel cell needs between 30 and 60 grams. that would mean we could produce between 4.167 million and 8.333 million fuel cells using 70,000 tons of platinum. granted this would be all of the platinum on earth but it should be noted that with materials as valuble as platnium we can consider mining asteroids. Davida is estimated to be worth 27 quintillion (26,990,000,000,000,000,000) U.S. dollars a lot of which is likely to be rare earth metals. but even at 4.1 million, these are powerplants that handle thigns like huge work trucks. they could easily handle hydrogen backups used when the wind does not blow and the sun is not shining.

but diesel work trucks are not free? The point was that a fuel cell was less significnat component of cost in something that costs 5 million vs 50,000

> minimize the situation we are headed towards

agreed but the roll out of hybrids was the kind of distraction that slows this stuff down more than saves overall. The first hybrid was 1997 and it never took over because it was surpassed by full electric, obviating the technology from an enviromental perspective.

if this tech can be quickly spread and integrated for mining, agriculture and logistics in 2-5 years, great. but if its going to take 15 years to get to first production then it makes sense to hold out for higher standards.

> but diesel work trucks are not free?

But the diesel work truck has already been built and purchased in this instance.

The why comes down to inertia both in the flywheel and corporate thinking.

I can show you all sorts of cost benefit analysis done in industry and if you get the tech right you'll come out ahead. But no one wants to guess wrong and be left holding the HD-DVD bag. While high pressure storage and sourcing hydrogen in bulk can be an issue. The simple changes to run a diesel in hydrogen allows a safety blanket for the MBA types making the call. Since they can be reversed easily.

Also the amount of rotational momentum in a ICE is quite useful in starting large hydraulic pumps etc. Totally can be overcome as well but just a point.

Let me tell you why this doesn't make sense, either economically or environmentally. Nearly all of these "green" ideas are just robbing Pete to pay Paul. Carbon-neutral is a pipe dream. Humans haven't been carbon-neutral since they learned how to use fire. Nearly all of human technological development has been based around one fact: that we live on a planet where there's enough oxygen to support combustion non-explosively, and where there's substantial amounts of heavy metals available on the surface. This has made it possible to develop literally every single technological artifact you take for granted, from the zipper in your pants, to the hinges in your eyeglasses, to the tiny screws that hold your iPhone together, to the massive turbine shafts in the generators that provide your power, to the shiny stainless steel Elon Musk uses on his yet-to-fly-anywhere Starship. And it all requires heat, most of which derives from combusting carbon and oxygen at some stage. This is reality, and ignoring it just ignores the point.

The reality is that there probably isn't enough lithium available to power a fully electrified planet in any realistic near-term scenario, we haven't hit that wall yet, but will soon. This will cause prices to spike and possibly upend a developing market. Hydrogen and fuel cells are even more un-leverageable. Cracking hydrogen either requires vast amounts of electricity, which we don't have available (and most of what is available creates carbon dioxide), or you can crack it from natural gas, which actually creates more carbon dioxide than simply burning the natural gas, and natural gas has a much better energy density to start with.

Fuel cells aren't an answer to any large-scale need, they're extremely expensive, require significant amounts of precious metals that are already in high demand for other industrial processes, and don't work well in cold weather, requiring additional outside energy sources to keep them heated. And here you seem to be suggesting the solution is to build a vast fleet of rockets to haul infrastructure to the asteroid belt looking for more platinum and iridium, when the fact is launching rockets is one of the most polluting and carbon-unfriendly things we do. One launch produces more pollution and carbon dioxide than a thousand jet flights or a million car trips. It's absurd. It reminds me of the articles I used to read in old Popular Science magazines, about how we could have nuclear-powered cars by the 1980's, as the technology was "perfectly feasible". They weren't wrong, the technology was perfectly feasible, just completely impractical. We've had miniature nuclear reactors for 60 years. But they were expensive then and they're more expensive now. And nobody wants a nuclear reactor in their garage. Mining asteroids isn't infeasible, just impractical. Hydrogen fusion isn't infeasible, just impractical. My shitty old Nissan isn't carbon-neutral, but it's way more carbon neutral than building a new EV, or cracking hydrogen which costs six times as much as gasoline, or launching rockets to the asteroid belt looking for platinum, which may or may not be there.

Now, if you'll excuse me, my car is warmed up and I'm going to be driving down to a non-carbon neutral restaurant to have a non-carbon neutral sandwich.

I suspect you're leaving the conversation because you can't prove me wrong. Here's what I suggest: go buy yourself a tank of hydrogen, hook it up to your car and get it to run, and then devise a method to refill this quickly and conveniently. Do this, and then come back here and continue the discussion about the practicality of hydrogen as a combustion fuel.

But before you go to all that trouble, let me give you just a little fyi. You see, unlike you, I've actually worked with this shit in the past doing plastic brushing. I've actually handled hydrogen. The stuff is violently explosive, extremely flammable and completely odorless and colorless. It also burns with no visible flame. Leaks are about impossible to detect. A standard size 300 steel compressed gas tank is about 5 ft tall and about 10 inches in diameter and weighs about 132 lb. At 300 bar (4500 PSI) this tank will hold maybe a kilogram of hydrogen. A kilogram of hydrogen is equal to about a gallon of gasoline in pure energy. So you can start to get some kind of idea just how much hydrogen you would actually need to drive your car even a short distance assuming you could devise a system to deliver it... Which I'm assuming wouldn't be too difficult because it would be similar to the natural gas delivery systems which are in fairly wide use in the trucking industry right now, and which have been around for decades. I actually had a van years ago with a dual-fuel CNG conversion. Total pain in the ass. Huge tank hanging underneath gave a range of maybe 120 miles. Only one place in town to fill it, 20 miles away. Took it all off and threw it away. So there you go. There's your Dunning-Kruger epic.

They don't exist in any meaningful quantity.

So are methane and propane and butane. But hydrogen has an advantage in that it instantly evaporates instead of sinking. It's actually less of a fire hazard than other hydrocarbons

The life expectancy in the US dropped because of gun violence, car centered cities and poor lifestyle choices

Yeah, and privatised health care, and overworking, and crap retirement, pollution from overproduction, and many others... All great for economic growth.

Tell it to the Hindenburg.

Which was built poorly