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California Drivers Can Tank Up WIth Hydrogen
Country_hacker writes "News site TBO.com is reporting ChevronTexaco has opened a hydrogen fuel station in Chino, California, and has plans to open five more. Servicing three (or more) Hyundai SUVs, these prototype fueling stations are a part of a five-year cost-sharing program put on by the Department of Energy. Could this be the 'egg' in the alternate fuels 'chicken or egg?' scenario?"
We've had hydrogen refueling in Washington, DC for months.
Now I can buy the 6 figure Hydrogen powered BMW supercar!!!!!
...Isn't it more cost effective to grow your own hydrogen with electrolysis and a solar panel back home?
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Africus aut Europaeus?
hmm.. it's easy for me to run outta gas (Never actually done it) but how easy is it for tow-trucks to retrofit to fuel up vehichles on the road-
Hey! no more sucking on the hose when I siphon gas!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Something like this could be really good for Korea (Hyundai is a Korean company) if it took off. This country desperately needs to look at alternate fuel sources. Air pollution here is pretty bad. If this was commercially successful, it could mean some improvements over here.
Unfortunately, nobody's trying to hatch it. The "egg", of course, is the electrical grid, and despite the previous programs to promote electric vehicles there appears to be little support for plug-in hybrids which could "refuel" on non-petroleum energy almost anywhere for little additional trouble or expense.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Besides, why Chino, of all places... why not somewhere people might actually care to buy it, like say The People's Republic of Berkeley, of SF central?
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The 'egg' in this whole thing is demand. I'm totally for hydrogen powered vehicles but companies aren't going to invest the money in the infrastructure until there is a market for it. A refueling station is great, but there are only three cars that are going to be able to use it.
What needs to be done is some kind of joint effort between auto makers and fuel companies to simultaneously release H fueling stations and H powered cars. This is a nice first step, but it's not going anywhere until there is widespread adoption.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
With any luck, these hydrogen stations will mark the beginning of the end for Islamic tyranny from the Middle East. For too long, we have essentially financed terrorist operations by paying money for gasoline. They money goes to, for example, Saudi Arabia. The Arabs then secretly funnel a bit of that money to anti-American groups in the Middle East.
We end up financing the terrorists. Only a hydrogen-based economy will put an end to this nonsense.
Next question is "Can we build jet fighters and bombers that run off hydrogen?"
It makes its own hydrogen, though, from natural gas.
For the idiot with a gas powered car to refill at the station, and the frivilous lawsuit that will follow. Assuming they survive the explosion, of course...
UTF-8: There and Back Again
While I was in Brazil I noticed something unique. Ethanol AND Gasoline are both available at every gas station (I guess it should be called a fueling station). Here's an extremely informative website that shows some charts of ethanol.
0 04 .html
http://www.distill.com/World-Fuel-Ethanol-A&O-2
Why is the US going with Hydrogen instead of ethanol? I know that ethonal is more like "diesel fuel" so it requires the engine to heatup before starting the car in colder areas, but it seems that ethanol is already widely in use in other countries. Seems odd the US goes with hydrogen and everyone else is using ethanol.
Did you see who put up and OWN those stations? That's right, Fossil Fuel Companies(tm). As has been repeated many times here on /., the oil companies are going to control this From the Git-Go(tm).
*bursts CompotatoJ's bubble reluctantly*
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
I remember watching something on TV where they were saying that producing Hydrogen requires just as much energy from different sources (like oil) as it is required to run a regular car with oil. Like at the end it would create just as much pollution.
I just hope I'm right out of it!
This is not part of a 'chicken and egg' situation. Lack of fueling stations is not what's holding back hydrogen cars. What's holding them back is: (1) lack of range (due to the low energy density of compressed hydrogen gas, and lack of practical alternatives), (2) cost of hydrogen itself, and (3) the still very high cost of fuel cells. The last point is important, since hydrogen as a fuel makes very little sense for internal combustion engines -- since the hydrogen is made from natural gas, you might as well just burn natural gas in the vehicle, or a liquid fuel derived from gas.
BTW, if it's oil independence you want, Fischer-Tropsch diesel fuel is already very competitive at today's oil price (it would be competitive with oil at $25/barrel.) Expect many more synfuel plants to be built if oil stays expensive.
Disadvantages:
- short range (only about 180 to 185 miles)
- higher purchase price (about $5000 more for a new car)
- limited number of CNG refueling stations (have to plan refueling stops ahead)
- cannot use the car for cross-country trips due to insufficient network of CNG stations
- There is the occasional moron who thinks I'm a carpool lane violator and turns on the high beams behind me
- There is the occasional dumb cop who thinks I'm a carpool lane violator and pulls me over, only to let me go 2 minutes later
I expect a hydrogen car to have similar advantages and similar disadvantages.
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Just where do you think the hydrogen comes from? The cheapest way to get hydrogen is by cracking natural gas. So much for getting away from fossil fuels. Also, anyone who thinks that only water (vapor) comes out of the exhaust is wrong. That would be true if all that went into the engine were hydrogen and oxygen. Guess what? The air is 80% nitrogen. NOx formation can be a problem with hydrogen engines. The hydrogen itself also has properties that make for a bad fuel: it has such a low density that it is hard to carry much fuel and hydrogen can find the smallest holes to escape from that other gases would not.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
don't the idiots in chino read popsci? URL:http://www.popsci.com/popsci/generaltech/artic le/0,20967,927469,00.html
This article adequetly explains with multiple reasons why the hydrogen community is lagging behind the ICE(internal combustion)
Ask not what you can do for your country, ask whats for lunch.
While much of the masses have been hoodwinked into believing hydrogen fuel is alternative, an important detail few realize is that hydrogen is NOT an energy source ... it's only a tranport medium.
... yep, "big oil"/energy producing companies, as some others have already pointed out.
Where is most of that hydrogen going to come from?
In the end, folks will pay more for more complicated vehicles which cost more to operate - and there will likely be about the same, if not more pollution than now when factoring in the production of the hydrogen fuel; producing energy is still a messy business - even solar and wind power create pollution, though admittedly much less than say coal, but I digress.
In a nutshell, "hydrogen" is NOT a energy source, but rather only a transport medium - the way to truly reduce pollution from energy production/use is less consumption and/or more efficient energy production methods.
Ron
So, if what we're talking about is a storage/transmission system, how does hydrogen add up? Very badly is the answer.
To store any usable quantities of hydrogen requires one of the following: extremely low temperatures, extremely high pressures, or some chemical to absorb it. Low temperatures are not practical for automotive applications because it requires constant energy input to keep it cold. Extremely high pressures or absorbing it into hydrides are sort of practical but you end up with either a very large, expensive high pressure tank that holds a small amount of hydrogen, or you end up with a large, very expensive bit of palladium or whatever that's going to hold a small amount of hydrogen.
So getting hydrogen requires a very expensive and inefficient process which (today) is derived from fossil fuels. It can only be stored in small quantities and the storage itself is extremely expensive. Oh, it also does best with fuel cell engines which also require extremely expensive catalysts (more palladium, etc).
So in the end we come out with numbers in the neighborhood of a $150k vehicles that has a range of 150 miles and has a cost per mile of 50 cents, just for the fuel. Sounds like a winner to me!
Compare this to electric cars. Electricity is distributed and available everywhere. There are green sources of electricity which are cost-competitive, and improving. The big expense in electric cars is the battery. Lithium is the best choice, and it is coming down in price rapidly. Range on a lithium battery cars can go over 200 miles.
When you look at the pros and cons, the only advantage we see in the end for hydrogen is that it can be refuelled quickly. You pump it into your car and go on, just like with gasoline. But are the downsides worth it?
I can't help but think that this whole hydrogen thing is an enormous, almost fraudulent exercise in scamming subsidies from the government to support a technology which is outrageously expensive. I would rather see natural gas refueling stations, rather than see stations that sell hydrogen extracted from natural gas.
I also have a feeling that part of the push for hydrogen is a push to maintain huge barriers to entry in the auto manufacturing industry. It will require enormous technology resources and patent portfolios to produce a hydrogen car. With electrics, on the other hand, anyone can do it in his garage, once batteries become available. That must be scary to the industry; they haven't faced any new entrants into the market in a long time.
Stop hydrogen!
After reading this page about a worst case scenario of what could happen after we run out of oil, I've come to wonder if its claims that we don't have enough platinum on earth to make fuel cells feasible for cars is true. Does anyone know either way?
One thing is a confirmed fact though, they cost a lot to make 1 million US$, and they may come down to $100,000 in 10 years. What a bargain!
I sure hope they can make fuel cells work, but everything I've read seems to indicate that best case, it's not a done deal quite yet.
Would you say it is any more dangerous than propane?
Propane powered vehicles with fuel tanks have been on the roads for decades. They can be fueled, and crashed, flipped, dropped, shot, without blowing up.
The safety issue is nothing more than hot air from Big Oil supporters.
Actually, they've gone to some real trouble to make carbon-fiber-reinforced tanks that are *very* hard to bust. I've seen the test footage, and when they finally did manage to bust one (which was no mean feat), it slowly leaked the hydrogen out. What is more, when they ignited the leaking hydrogen, it just burned, Just Like Gasoline; it did not explode.
Incidentally, leaking H2 is somewhat safer than leaking gasoline, because it tends to float up and away instead of accumulate in a growing pool on the ground.
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It's been done for only a few grand - http://unitednuclear.com/h2.htm Make your own solar powered hydrolysis machine in your backyard :)
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From TFA : The Chino center will use natural gas as a feedstock, to use the extensive natural gas infrastructure that is already in place. "Natural gas is an established, very efficient way to make hydrogen," he said.
If you can get away without laying new pipe all the better. Since the source of the hydrogen right now is still predominantly fossil fuel based (directly or indirectly) burning hydrogen in your house doesn't really do much. Even if the energy stored in your hydrogen came from electricity you're still not any further ahead if you're just going to convert it back to electricity at your house.
Ok. Being able to tank up at your house would be pretty cool. Erm... but I'm just thinking about propane. I think there's some sort of certification one needs to go through before they can fill up a truck (please feel free to correct me) Something similar would probably apply to hydrogen as well.
Sure it'd be nice to generate your own hydrogen from solar/wind, but really its not all that different from generating electricty for yourself. I guess the one plus for hydrogen over electricity is storage. With a big enough tank I suppose you could stock up gas over the summer and burn it come winter. It'll be really interesting to see where the hydrogen economy heads in the next few years.
Hate to Reply to Myself (tm Slashdot Inc.), but i forgot one other thing: another research group has been working on storing H2 as a Nickel-Metal Hydride. Sound familiar? It's the same method used for batteries of the same name. They fill a tank with fine, fine metal powder (mostly Ni), and pressurize H2 into it. The H2 bonds to the powder at the molecular level, which means you can squeeze ~1,000 times more hydrogen into the same size tank. To get the H2 out, you actually have to apply a small amount of heat to the tank. A fraction less efficient, but much safer than your post would suggest.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
People ask for alternative fuels. A large company like ChevronTexaco, who has the power to actually make these good changes happen> , listens. Then people bash them for doing so because they're involved with the petroleum industry. What is it that you want?
CNG is available in the vast majority of service stations. It blew me away when I first got here - being an American, I had no idea it was in widespread use.
.40 AUD per liter vs. 1 AUD for gasoline (and Australia has some of the lower gas prices in the world)
Good points:
- It's a lot cheaper than gasoline, about
- A liter of CNG gets you (just about) as far as a liter of gasoline
- It's less polluting
Most of the Sydney-area taxis use CNG for precisely this reason. The one person I know who owns a CNG-fueled automobile for personal use has a brother-in-law who owns a taxi company, so he got a stock vehicle, and had it painted (Sydney taxis are white)... He loves it.
And how heavy is a tank full of Ni and where does the initial heat come from to release the hydrogen? Why not just devise a better battery and store electricity? Sure would cut out an expensive conversion to electricity or combustion. Hydrogen is not a great fuel. Even if you can make it safe.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
They said that the process should eventually allow a 1-liter tank to hold enough H2 to give a Civic-size car a 1,000 km range (assuming it was using a fuel cell). The heat (they said it doesn't take much) comes from the battery pack (most/all fuel cellers have them).
Now as to whether hydrogen is or isn't a 'great fuel', I don't know. But safe it most certainly can be.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
- Hybids can do considerably better; for instance, the Accord hybrid is tuned for performance while still delivering fairly good economy (design tradeoff).
- At least one Future Truck hybrid managed to add all the hybrid features to an Explorer while subtracting weight from the smaller engine and superfluous drivetrain components. According to this CSM article:
If that isn't enough for you... read one of their technical reports (not sure if that's the same vehicle or not). You made three errors in that statement:- Maximum power requirements are typically in acceleration, not hill-climbing.
- Running out of battery isn't "stranding", it's just going slower. Like, you know, having to downshift when climbing a mountain with a load?
- These folks appear to be using engines in the ~2 liter department, but they're getting better-than-V8 performance out of the system. Better performance appears to be one of the common elements of hybrids, though the extent to which it is stressed vs. economy is a design tradeoff.
If you don't know what I mean by now...Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The Associated Press is reporting the story, not TBO.com (see same exact story here on Yahoo news).
See Chevron's press release here.
See U.S. Federal Gov't press release on this here.
Sounds about right. Once we get nuclear-powered SUVs maybe we can start naming them after presidents. "And now the six-o'clock news. Interstate 90 was blocked today after a fiery accident involving the Eisenhower and the Monroe. Several smaller vehicles were also involved, including the Oklahoma, California, and . None of the drivers were injured, cushioned in their titanium-armored luxury staterooms, though several thousand local inhabitants are missing."
hydrogen fuel takes energy to make, so we'll still buy plenty of oil to make the hydrogen. Getting the US nuclear power industry going again in a big way is the only (short term, eg decades rather than centuries) way to dramatically reduce our dependency on oil. PS for those who modded parent troll, where do YOU think most of Al Qaeda's funding for 911 came from? Hint, it was neither Iraq nor Afghanistan...
Read:m osphere.htm
http://www.princeton.edu/~chm333/2004/Hydrogen/at
It explains why Hydrogen released into the atmosphere is a bad thing.....unless we are a lot more careful with H2 than we are with every other fuel we use today, we will be making matters worse, and that isn't counting the fact that the technology still isn't up to speed to make the entire process efficient. A hydrogen economy requires that you produce it, currently from natural gas or water, store/transport it, then feed it to a fuel cell. Right now, the only way to produce Hydrogen without releasing CO2 is to crack water with clean electricity from solar/wind/hydro/nuke power...The fuel cells are delicate, expensive to manufacture, and require expensive materials that have to be mined (OMG he said the M word). Platnium is $800+ an ounce these days....people will be jacking your hydrogen car just to tear apart the fuel cell for the Pt in it......
This whole thing is a waste of our money, the technology is not there, and the advantages don't come close to breaking even with the disadvantages...we need to concentrate on making vehicles more efficient, and start looking seriously at changing power generation world wide over to nuclear or finding a way to sequester the CO2 produced by powerplants.....I think the money being pissed away on hydrogen cars would be a lot better spent on fusion research.....why not spend the cash to recover some helium3 off of the moon for fusion testing....
More than anything I think the goverment supporting Hydrogen research is a way for them to go through the motions, while they line their pockets with more money from Big Oil and Big Coal...and I am talking Everyone in DC, not just the current admin.....
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For all the poo-poo I am reading about cracking Natural Gas to create hydrogen and thus pollute may I mention the said process is done so the C02 can be treated as a point-source pollution vs. a non-point source pollutant (ie internal combustion engines). That allows for the sequestration of Carbon people!
Also, since the cracking of natural gas is done at a central site, the C02 can be sequestered instead of released into the atmophere. Electrolysis can be accomplished on a regional scale. All we need are some nifty pebble bed reactors, to provide us with safe energy for the electrolysis.
People wake up, the future is coming like a frieght train. America needs to learn to dream again.
Dusty (If you dont know what Carbon Sequestration is--- try google).
While he's wondefully wealthy and can afford to buy one just for the sake of having one, Arnold was at least showing some leadership recently when he bought a GMC Hummer "H2H" converted to run on hydrogen rather than fuel. Just look for "Hydrogen Hummer Governor Arnold" at news.google.com or your favorite news outlet. Here's one article.
The gas station to fill his ride is at LAX airport. How that would help the Governator working in Sacramento is beyond me. Who wants to go to LAX every time you need to fill up? and how many miles can a big beefy Hummer go before it needs a refill? The Chino multi-station pilot test at least seems more practical.
Speaking of practical, just how practical is hydrogen going to be, anyway? Unless there is a huge improvement in the abundance of energy needed to seperate hydrogen atoms from water (or methane or other sources), other methods like bio-diesel or just plain electric are going to be more pratical ways to reduce US dependence on oil. If we somehow are able to implement pebble-nuke plants like the Chinese are doing, hydrogen processing might become more cost-effective.
Biodiesel is really what we should be concentrating on right now. Biodiesel pours right into pretty much any existing diesel engine and has only slightly less BTUs per gallon that petroleum diesel. Certainly biodiesel isn't as clean as hydrogen, but it's a whole heck of a lot cleaner than petroleum diesel and even more so than gasoline. The best part of biodiesel is the fact that you can start using it immediately in your unmodified diesel powered vehicle and not have to worry that you're going to be able to find some (currently) exotic fuel if you go on a trip. Worse case, just pour regular diesel in. Biodiesel would make the transition phase painless.
:-) All you need is a standard catalytic converter and a biodiesel-fuelled vehicle will likely meet the stringent Ultra-Low Emissions Vehicle standard.
The nice thing about biodiesel is the fact any crop that has a high carbohydrate count can be processed in to biodiesel fuel. And the best thing is that biodiesel fuel burns very cleanly, not even needing a diesel particulate trap!
By the way, did you know that the very concept of biodiesel engines came from the original development work of Rudolf Diesel? The first Diesel engine ran off peanut oil, of all things! That explains why diesel fuel can be easily derived from plant sources. Also, there has been serious research into growing certain types of algae that could easily be refined into biodiesel fuel.
Anyway, today's diesel engines are high-technology wonders that have effectively banished the clattering and smoky exhaust of older engines. Thanks to careful design, common-rail pressurized direct fuel injection and catalytic converters that also "burn off" diesel particulates, they are quiet, clean-burning, and sound exactly like a normal gasoline engine. Here in the USA, if you live in any of the 45 states where it's legal go drive the Mercedes-Benz E320 CDI, a vehicle that demonstrates very impressive acceleration performance but when driven at reasonable speeds gets fuel efficiency around 32-35 miles per US gallon! =)
Anyway, I believe we'll see a large number of diesel-powered vehicles in the US market starting in Fall 2006. Thanks to the EPA mandate that all motor fuels can only have at most 15 parts per million of sulfur compounds in fuel starting September 2006, that makes it possible to develop modern turbodiesel engines that meet the ULEV standard, hence making them 50-state legal. And Americans will discover that modern diesel-powered cars are quiet, amazingly powerful (thanks to the very torquey nature of diesel engines in the low RPM range), and impressively clean-burning. I wouldn't be surprised that Honda brings over their well-regarded 2.2-liter I-4 i-CTDi engine for application in the Honda Accord, CR-V and Element models, and BMW brings over their 3.0-liter I-6 turbodiesel engine for the 3 and 5 Series automobiles.
Also, because diesel engines have their torque peaks at relatively low RPM range, that makes them a perfect match for SUV's, pickup trucks and minivans. Can you imagine by 2008-2009 most of these vehicles switched to clean turbodiesel power, which means they will have at least 30-40% better fuel effiency than now? The GM Duramax turbodiesel engine used on their Chevy and GMC pickup trucks sports a far high torque peak than the equivalent gasoline engine, and is far more fuel efficient, too.
Please explain how NOx gasses are produced...
It was my understanding that a PROTON membrane allows only H+ ions through to react with ONLY oxygen....
Your argument is based on hightemperature hydrocarbon and oxygen reaction in which some nitrogen in the air is fixed into oxygen.
The reactions here occur at reasonably high temperatures, but ONLY oxygen and hydrogen react.
this creates h20.
Learn before posting, and dont spread disinformation.
if your statements were true, then the human body would create NOx from its combustion reactions.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
Hydrogen has no future. You need more energy to create it than you get out of it. Its "energy return on investment" (EROI) is negative. Biodiesel has a positive EROI.
1 _RP.pdf
Moreover, as a carrier, hydrogen has all kinds of problems (safety, you need a major overhaul of the entire infrastructure, entirely new cars, etc...).
Hybrid diesel and hybrid biodiesel cars are the only real alternative.
In 2003, MIT's Lab for Energy and the Environment made a study comparing the entire lifecycle for idealized automotive drive systems (internal combustion, hybrids, fuel cells). The results were very clear:
-straight gasoline scores worst of all
-gasoline hybrids score far worse than diesel hybrids
-diesel hybrids are nearly just as good as the best fuel cell systems.
The study didn't include biodiesel in hybrid diesel cars, but any laymen can dedude that it is the technology of the future.
You have to look at the entire lifecycle, when comparing technologies. And hydrogen/fuel cells are not efficient.
MIT's study can be found here (pdf): http://lfee.mit.edu/publications/PDF/LFEE_2003-00
This is not informative, its wrong. First of all, natural gas is not tied to fossil fuels. Currently we find alot of it with fossil fuels, but we don't need to.
Second, natural gas is methane. It is worse to try and "crack" methane and convert it into carbon and hydrogen than it is to use other sources of hydrogen. In fact, you have it backwards. Methane is often produced by heating a mixture of hydrogen and coal. Why would anyone use hydrogen and coal to make methane, just so they could turn it back into hydrogen and coal? I know, they don't.
NOx formation is no more a problem with hydrogen engines than ordinary engines using hydrocarbons. And guess what, they aren't formed. Isn't that weird? No, wait, that's completely normal, otherwise lighting a match in the air would cause NOx to form, creating more fuel, and more NOx, and it would spiral out of control and consume the entire atmosphere in flames. Nitrogen in the atmosphere is N2 and is stable enough that it will not break apart to form NOx molecules just because there is heat and or oxygen around.
And finally, hydrogen is compressed to a liquid for transport and storage, allowing you to carry plenty of fuel just fine.
The only question I have, is how did something so completely and totally wrong in every way get modded up to 5 informative?
In any compressed gas, there are two effects going on. First, some molecules are close together and are weakly (and temporarily) bound. This reduces the stored energy in the system. The lower the temperature, the larger the fraction of molecules like this (and, eventually, the gas liquefies).
On the other hand, some molecules, at any instant, are in the process of violently colliding. They are briefly in a state of close approach where some of their kinetic energy has been converted to positive potential energy. At a given density, the higher the temperature, the larger the fraction of molecules that are in this second condition. This adds stored energy to the system.
For any gas, as you increase the temperature, the second effect eventually overcomes the first, and the gas has positive stored energy due to intermolecular interactions. This temperature is called the Joule inversion temperature. Hydrogen is one of the few gases for which this temperature is below room temperature.
Wonder of wonders! I have half a BILLION DOLLARS stashed away in a Nigerian bank from the estate of the late President Mbawasa Ngimima of Upper Revolta just waiting for a way to get it out of the country. Perhaps we could work out an arrangement...
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
Hydrogen is actually not that unsafe. The thing about hydrogen is that when it leaks, it goes straight up, REALLY fast. This makes it much safer then what we currently use today in many ways.
An antidotal story is that about a month or two back at National Semiconductor in South Portland Maine, they had a hydrogen explosion. Basically, a guy with a hydrogen truck pulled up to the building and got ready to pump the hydrogen into the tanks. When he went to go ground himself, he created a spark and this caused an explosion. Now, this truck isn't your average car, we are talking a freaking tank of liquid hydrogen under massive pressure.
So, what happened? The explosion was loud enough that people inside the building thought an airplane had crashed (they are right next to an air port). The operator of the truck was totally unharmed. The explosion went straight up. It made a lot of noise, but did no damage. The high pressure of the tank meant that instead of the explosion running into the tank and, well, exploding, it acted like a blow torch. No one got hurt, and in the end the only thing that happened was that they just left the truck slowly burning its fuel until away until it was empty.
In a properly designed car, safety is not a problem. You just need to make sure that your gas tank is well ventilated. So long as it can't build up and has a place to go, a hydrogen explosion is really not that bad. They are quick, loud, and straight up. It is an engineering probably easily solved.
That said, I am not a fan of hydrogen. Hydrogen is cleaner the gas to be sure, but his a low energy density (IE, you need a bigger tank or you are not going to go as far), and more importantly, it is just a method of power translation. Hydrogen is like a power cable to your house, not the actual power plant. Hydrogen just takes dirty power (coal) or expensive power (nuclear, green) that we already blows some of the energy to the wind, and then stuffs it in your car.
What we REALLY need to do is solve the power problems with the grid that we have right now first, THEN start worrying about cars. Once we can get some sort of green energy that is cost effective and reliable to replace our dirty and expensive methods of generating power, then you talk about wasting energy to create hydrogen.
Personally, I think we are much better off working on hybrid technology and maybe slapping a solar panel or two onto SUVs to give them a little more power. People have shown that they are willing to buy cleaner cars at a slightly increased price just for bragging rights. It might not be everyone, but it certainly is a start. Use traditional methods of cleaning up cars first, green up the power grid, THEN worry about making cars clean.