An Israeli company has developed a new process for generating hydrogen right in an automobile, which completely solves the conundrum of transporting, storing, and fueling vehicles with pressurized hydrogen. The system uses metals like zinc or aluminum and plain water. The process heats the metal to a high temperature, where it combines with the oxygen in water to create a solid oxide. What is left behind is hydrogen, which is burned to propel the car. Refueling consists of replacing the oxide byproduct (a powder) with a coil of metal and some water. Another benefit is that the automobile has zero emissions.
The effort is still in the prototyping stages, but the firm swears it will scale well to fit in a normal size automobile. It is further proof of the robustness of the emerging Energy Economy.