The automotive world continuously pushes towards innovation with the advancement of different types of engines. While electric engines have grown increasingly popular, the hydrogen engine is serving to be so promising that even the high-end car brand Ferrari has recently filed a patent application for this state-of-the-art machine. Find out its details!
How do hydrogen engines work? Goodbye to EVs (and fossil fuels, of course)
While fuel-based engines have dominated the auto industry for years, the long-term reliance on them has contributed to various environmental issues. Thus many car companies are looking to make the switch to hydrogen-powered engines to keep combustion engines as key players in a world that is moving more towards electric engines.
Hydrogen is a natural gas that can be used as an alternative to methane. It is also used to power engines through way of hydrogen fuel. Traditionally fuel cells generate electricity to give motors power, but the hydrogen combustion engine burns hydrogen instead of gasoline. A great advantage of this is that it can immensely reduce emissions.
Important considerations of this innovative engine
There are many a of a hydrogen engine when it’s in use, but there are other concerns when it comes to its production. There are two sides to making hydrogen. One aspect uses electrolysis that comes from the electricity of renewable sources. However other sides of production use fossil fuels such as coal.
Additionally, the hydrogen needs a bigger fuel tank to run as far as a gasoline-powered car. Because this is so, in Ferrari’s patent, they acknowledge that the hydrogen engine car would be heavier and longer than the gasoline car.
Other interested car brands
Although it’s big news that Ferrari has applied to patent the hydrogen engine they are not the first to try out this design. The world’s first commercially produced fuel cell electric vehicle, that was available in select markets was the Toyota Mirai and the Hyundai Nexo.
In the early 2000s BMW built a hydrogen-powered 7-Series. In 2021 Toyota along with Yamaha, fielded a hydrogen-powered Corolla race car. Also in 2022 they showed a hydrogen-powered V-8 based on the engine used in the Lexus RC F.
Although the luxury car brand Ferrari, doesn’t seem to be head-running the production of hydrogen combustion engines, they seem to making steps towards more efficient fuel use by investing in synthetic fuels. By doing so the car makers can help reduce environmental problems while also helping to keep internal combustion engines around.
Hydrogen isn’t the only thing they’re testing: watch out for these fuels
The truth is that it is not only convenient to innovate with fuel and adopt hydrogen in sustainable mobility, did you know that it also matters the color you choose? Very few people know this, but this detail depends on whether it is efficient or not:
- Green: it is obtained from renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind power, and is 100% clean and environmentally friendly, with no emissions that harm the atmosphere.
- Blue: it is produced with fossil fuels, but without polluting. How is this possible? Simply by capturing the CO2 that is emitted so that it does not escape into the atmosphere.
- Red, pink and purple: they depend on nuclear energy, so they are not a good option, since it is not a clean or even a safe source (although many governments insist on the contrary).
- Orange: it is generated by electrolysis of wastewater, so it has the benefit of being cleaned to avoid discharges into the sea that destroy entire ecosystems.
- White: it is obtained mainly from rock or subsoil deposits, and is one of the sources that is being explored the most in America in recent years.
- Black: it is generated by burning fossil fuels, and generates polluting emissions that make this color the most counterproductive of all.
As you can see, hydrogen engines are here to stay and, above all, to take sustainable mobility to a new level. In fact, tax credits and subsidies to manufacturers are already on the table, with figures that could reach a billion dollars, according to the federal government. Let’s hope, though, that we don’t end up buying them from China, as is happening with EVs.