Whenever hydrogen cars are brought up with the general populace, at least one person says "but what about crashes? Won't an explosion level a city block?" This is all because of an airship in 1937 and a whole lot of "humanity." What's funny about this, (the reaction to hydrogen cars, not the Hindenburg disaster) is that we're all already driving around vehicles that are powered by explosions.
One of the biggest barriers to adopting hydrogen as a fuel source, in fact, is that it's less explosive than gasoline. If the Hindenburg has been filled with gasoline, it would have never exploded, because it would have never been able to fly up to that tower. If it had been filled with gasoline and miraculously able to fly, the disaster would have been much, much worse.
Regardless, Toyota knows that talking simple science to people usually doesn't work, so a demonstration that people will pay attention to was devised: a Toyota engineer shot the company's hydrogen storage tank with a variety of bullets. Only a ".50 cal armor-piercing" round could pierce the shell. Yeah, Toyota just appealed to the action movie-lover in all of us.
Toyota is going to release a production hydrogen fuel cell car in 2015.
RELATED: Toyota Wants to Sell 5,000 to 10,000 Hydrogen Cars in 2015
RELATED: Dueling Auto Shows: 20 Awesome Cars at the LA and Tokyo Auto Shows
[via Toyota]
