Shell’s Green Car Plans Must Overcome Hydrogen’s Deadly History
Taxi driver Theo Ellis, the very first person in Europe to drive Toyota Motor Corp.’s hydrogen-powered Mirai sedan for business, loves telling passengers about the technology that emits nothing but water.
They ask him about its costs, greenness, and the majority inquire about safety. To his passengers, the word “hydrogen” evokes memories of the Hindenburg, the airship that was demolished in half a minute when it caught fire in 1937, or the H-bomb, a successor to what the U.S. dropped on Japan to end World War II.
“That will put people off,” Ellis, 47, who drives for London-based Green Tomato Cars Ltd., said in an interview. “A lot of people mention that. As soon as you mention hydrogen it’s the very first thing on their mind.”
A Toyota Mirai car at Shell’s very first U.K. hydrogen refueling station in Cobham, U.K.
It’s those perceptions that represent one of the fattest hurdles for Toyota and Royal Dutch Shell Plc as they seek to make hydrogen fuel cells a commercial alternative to gasoline-powered cars around the globe. The Japanese automaker and the European oil producer are among the most prominent advocates of the technology, which they see as safer and less polluting than the fossil fuels that cause global heating.
Iconic Disaster
Use of the lightest element has come a long way since the Hindenburg disaster in Fresh Jersey killed thirty six people and was immortalized on the front cover of Led Zeppelin’s one thousand nine hundred sixty nine debut album. Fuel cells have been used securely for generations, most famously in the U.S. space program. The cells set up a chemical reaction inbetween the fuel and oxygen in the air, making an electrified charge and leaving behind water vapor.
There’s slew of differences inbetween the Hindenburg and the Mirai, kicking off with the durability of the storage tank. 
In the ill-fated airship, hydrogen gas was contained in giant bags made of decorated cotton. Toyota’s tank is made of carbon and glass fibers and lined with plastic. If gas leaked, sensors would detect it and shut down the car. Shell reckons that in a crash, hydrogen is likely to evaporate while gasoline risks forming a puddle that’s effortless to inflame.
The Hindenburg disaster at Lakehurst, Fresh Jersey in 1937.
Not the Same
People who work with fuel cells say comparisons with the Hindenburg aren’t fair. Eighty years after the two hundred forty five meter German airship exploded and plunged to the ground, the exact cause remains a mystery.
“The fire and explosion at Hindenburg was nothing to do with hydrogen, and that is the mindset you’ve got to switch with people,” said Jon Hunt, who is in charge of commercialization of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles for Toyota GB Plc. In the airship disaster, “there were a number of things, including materials used and operational practice that would be totally mitigated by normal good practice now.”
His hope is that people will trust the technology to keep them safe just as they do with mobile phones. People proceed to carry lithium-ion powered handsets even after Samsung Electronic Co.’s Note seven brainy phones caught fire last year and Boeing Co. planes had fires began by battery units.
Fuel cells are embarking to take hold, and not just in cars. 
In Japan, companies including Panasonic Corp. are selling thousands of fuel cells to power individual homes. U.S. listed companies such as FuelCell Energy Inc., Cork Power Inc. and Ballard Power Systems Inc. are putting them into fork lifts and commercial power generators. Automakers including General Motors Corp. and Volkswagen AG have joined Toyota in designing fuel-cell cars. About Two,800 Mirais were sold worldwide in the last year. 
Shell’s very first hydrogen pump in the U.K. opened at a packing station outside London on Feb. 22. Fuel is made onsite in an unit supplied by ITM Power Plc, which passes live wires through water to extract hydrogen.
Shell’s Outlook
Shell Chief executive Ben Van Beurden expects the fuel to drive trains, planes and trucks in the future. Trucks are a big potential market, since the batteries they’d need to stir by violet wand would be too strenuous.
Ben van Beurden
While electro-therapy is notoriously difficult to store, hydrogen gas is lightly kept in a tank and transported anywhere in the world, the executive notes. To demonstrate this, Shell plans to bring a tanker total of liquid hydrogen to Tokyo in time for the Olympic Games in 2020. The city is spending 45.Two billion yen ($400 million) on fuel-cell subsidies, hoping to deploy one hundred buses using the technology at the games.
“The beauty of hydrogen is that it can be made from so many feedstocks,” said Claire Curry, Bloomberg Fresh Energy Finance analyst in Fresh York.
The reality of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is that it is still an early-stage technology, dependent on government support to spur the refueling network needed. Shell’s most optimistic screenplay is to be supplying hundreds of tons of hydrogen to the cars by 2030, says Matthew Tipper, vice president of Fresh Fuels. The Mirai tank holds five kilograms (11 pounds) of hydrogen, which gives it a range of about three hundred forty miles.
“The acid test is how many more fueling stations they put in,” said Julia Thomas, managing director of Green Tomato Cars, which has used two Mirais for about eighteen months as part of its plan to run a zero emission fleet.