Why would Toyota be advertising the AE86 in 2007??

[Mux213]

The hindenburg is a bad bad bad bad bad reason!

Its a real shame it has given hydrogen such a bad rap because the fuel itself is much safer then we think. A big ball of gas doesn't just explode, it needs oxygen to react with. Its the same with everyone thinking that if you shoot up a car and hit the gas tank, it will blow up while in fact, nothing really happens (anyone see that episode in myth busters). The gas first needs to be mixed with oxygen, and the air around us only contains about 20% of that stuff, so basically you need a volume of 5x as much air as the hydrogen just to get all the stuff to go BOOM, and to really make it go BOOM it needs to be mixed well.

It was actually the paint on the hindenburg that caused the disaster, the hydrogen just made it worse from there (they really should do a show about hydrogen, and other gas explosions, on myth busters, they did one with methane gas in a port-a-potty that actually showed how hard it is to ignite concentrated gas).

That said, the safest way to store hydrogen for use as a fuel that I know of right now actually is 100% safe because hydrogen isn't stored in a pure form but already reacted to another substance. Its based on the fuel cell principle, a fuel cell is a system where hydrogen and oxygen aren't burned to produce pressure and mechanically power something, but where they react to directly produce electricity. Fuel sells using pure hydrogen and oxygen have been around for along time (even used since the 50ies in space craft), but I saw a documentary a while back where they used hydrogen already reacted to another chemical making it inert. When this substance is used in the fuel cell the hydrogen and oxygen reacts to create watter and the 3rd chemical is simply released in its natural form ready to be reused later.