In a nutshell, his research led to the issue of the production of the cells themselves. Hydrogen is not a naturally occuring element like oil or gas and the cost/concerns of production way outweighed any benefit or sustainability.

Said friend is uber-thorough and does not abandon projects frivilously, so I'm inclined to take his word for it. Do your own digging on this - right now everyone's looking for that silver bullet energy source, often more for financial gains than environmental concerns.

Again, I'm just parroting what I understand of this ....

Alot of people keep bringing up the problems with hydrogen but what good are electric cars. Like batteries aren't major pollution problems. The thought of what they plan to do with all those in the next few years just gives me the creeps. And talk about issues, they've had plenty but they keep them under wraps.....send you notices about upgrades....yeah right....those are cover your butt upgrades.

I don't know about hyrogen fuel cells. I've heard they are the wave of the future. Good that you want to look into it before jumping into business. Try searching on something like, ecology of hydrogen fuel cells, ecological impact of hydrogen fuel cells, etc.

Lorna

Lithium is no where near as toxic as lead, we prescribe lithium to bipolar folks, lead makes you stupid. Also its not a problem unless someone is stupid enough to crack a battery, lead batteries leak, not a problem with lithium which also has the advantage of holding about 8 times as much charge per pound as lead.

Hydrogen cars do not produce anything toxic, and your friend is not making fuel cells, for one thing he certainly doesn't have the money for the machinery just used to purify the platinum and paladium. I highly suspect that what he is up to is converting the fuel injection systems to inject hydrogen rather than gas. This process means cleaning the whole engine, its the same cleaning process that happens with a gas engine (since it is a gas engine he is cleaning) and as a result you will have spilled propylene-glycol (antifreeze) and a whole slew of hydrocarbons in the form of gas oil grease and degreasing fluids. The only thing dangerous about hydrogen is that it has a tendency to accumulate in closed spaces and a little spark can turn a garage filled with hydrogen and air mixed into a bomb big enough to level a whole block (seriously it would be like natural gas explosion only 4X more powerful) which is why hydrogen should be played with outdoors where it safely escapes into the upper atmosphere. If you would be okay with the idea of having someone set up a normal mechanics shop in your garage then a hydrogen conversion shop should pose no more risks, assuming you make him play with the hydrogen outside.

As for the hydrogen fuel cell way he would be completely removing the entire drive train and all of the accessory parts, basically gutting the entire car save for the upholstery and removing the wheels and replacing them with specialty wheels and electric motors and a whole giant host of computer systems for steering and balance and really i can pretty safely say that he will never turn a profit going that way, its more work than its worth.