• Question: Hi Josh I am Mohamed and I have a question for you. How will the hydrogen work and make cars move won't the cars explode because of the hydrogen

    Asked by mohamed2536 to Josh on 18 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Josh Makepeace

      Josh Makepeace answered on 18 Jun 2013:


      Hi Mohamed, thanks so much for the question. I’ll do my best to give you a good answer!

      The basic idea of how the hydrogen works to power a car is that you react the hydrogen in your fuel tank with oxygen that’s in the air to make water. When they react together, they release energy, which can be used to power the car. If you’re interested in learning more about this, have a search for ‘hydrogen fuel cells’ on the internet. If you’ve got more questions, send them my way! 🙂

      As far as the safety goes, there are definitely some safety concerns about using hydrogen, as it’s very flammable. Petrol is also very flammable! People have been doing lots of work trying to make the hydrogen tanks more safe in case the car has a crash.

      Also, with the work I’m doing, we make materials which store hydrogen by reacting with it to form a new material. Because we do that, the hydrogen isn’t stored in the explosive gas form, so hopefully we make it much safer.

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