Hydrogen is not the answer to peak oil, Jeremy Clarkson, think again

In a recent blog post, TopGear Jeremy Clarkson makes the point that hybrid cars are the wrong direction to go and lean burn would have saved the world better than catalyst converters. He claims that Hydrogen cars should be the future. Now, I really like Jeremy Clarkson, but I think he is not really right in his entertaining article. Firstly lean burn wouldn't have brought the improvements in terms of clean emission than the catalyst did. A catalyst cleans about 90-99% of what the car produces while lean burn may lead to a 1.5-2.5 times improvement. Only the combination actually helps. Secondly Hydrogen suffers from many different problems that are difficult to solve and make the introduction very expensive. I strongly believe that improvements in battery technology will make the electrical car more viable than hydrogen powered cars. And if we don't think we need 400 HP and 2 tons to drive from London City Airport to Piccadilly Circus then efficiency should be okay. Hydrogen may make sense for certain types of usages, maybe even for powering the range extender, but I don't believe it's the future of motoring. As we have seen over the last 10-20 years there are many ways of improving already existing technologies. Cars today need probably 50-60% fuel of what they did for the same performance ten years ago. Electrical cars have substantially increased in efficiency over the last three to five years. Combining this with new technologies such as hybrid (ideally not with batteries but rather super caps) and hydrogen we still have a lot to gain before we are running out of affordable oil.
One comment to the blog was quite interesting as a thought - we may find other and better ways to fuel more and more cars, but there's a clear limit in terms of how many streets we can build and have. And that limit is given by the size of the earth ...
And as I am just on it, if you haven't watched the movie "who killed the electric car", then you should.

The electric car is the winner ...

... at least when you believe search engine trends. "Electric car" is the by far most searched term, compared to "hybrid car" or "hydrogen car".
Despite of all the known problems (weight, reach, ecological issues with batteries, etc.) a lot of people love the idea of the electrical car. Driving a semi-electrical car from time to time (Toyota Prius) I can understand some of this enthusiasm. It's quite a special experience to accelerate without any major noise and to glide in almost perfect silence. Parking an electrical car is fun, as nobody will get annoyed if you have to try twice. Torque of modern electrical motors is great and it's there from the first instance on. And as it feels so green it makes you feel good.
But, no, it's not really exciting enough. I love the noise that a well engineered fuel operated motor produces and I like the smell and the vibrations and this pure feel of machinery. It's bloody difficult to simulate this, I guess.

Will the Open Source Hydrogen Car show the way to the future of mobility?

It may not be the most beautiful new car and it probably is not the answer for a family's mobility problems, but it combines clearly a number of interesting concepts and ideas. It's called the Riversimple Urban Car.
First it's a hydrogen car. It only needs a 6 kilowatt fuel cell to reach 80 km/h and drive for more than 300 kms without being refueled. It only weighs 350 kg and has the dimensions of a Smart.
Also interesting is the fact that it is partially funded by Sebastian Piech and other members of the Porsche family. The development has been done together with Oxford University and Cranfield University. Riversimple plans to build 10 prototypes soon. They also do think long term. Cars are to be leased for 20 years and then taken back and recycled.
What also is exciting to know is that they will publish all designs and ideas on a wiki and therefore build a true Open Source car. So if you want to build your own you will be able to profit from their experience and learnings.
As said in the beginning, it's not the solution for everything but this car clearly is able to outperform all/most cars known in existence in terms of fuel economy while still being practical.