By any objective measure, and even if you support his policies, Donald Trump isn’t fit to be president. He’s too old, his mind is gone, he’s scared to debate, he’s dodging interviews, and nothing he says makes any sense. Take, for example, his current obsession with hydrogen cars blowing up his audience. No, I don’t mean something insane that he said once. Trump keeps bringing up hydrogen cars exploding, often pointing out that a member of the audience who would be unrecognizable after the explosion.
Now, before we get too far, hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles aren’t the Hindenburg, and automakers design them with crash safety in mind. It’s entirely possible a hydrogen car has exploded somewhere at some point, but the only example I could find was a recent story about the Ukrainian military intentionally turning the fuel cell from a Toyota Mirai into a bomb to kill Russian invaders hellbent on war-criming their way through the country. It isn’t an issue in the U.S. and won’t be unless MAGA crazies borrow a page out of Ukraine’s playbook.
Actual examples of hydrogen explosions appear to be limited to a truck transporting hydrogen fuel in Delaware and a hydrogen fueling station explosion in Norway.
Like any stump speech, Trump repeats several of the same lines every time he goes off on his anti-hydrogen rants. Among other nonsensical claims, he repeatedly calls hydrogen a new technology. Even if you can bring yourself to forgive that blatant Isaac de Rivaz erasure, what about the much more recent GM Electrovan? Toyota’s work with the FCHV? Honda and the FCX? The Toyota Mirai? Hyundai’s Nexo? None of these are new and, more importantly, none of them have actually caught on. Because it’s a garbage idea for passenger vehicles and will really only ever work for commercial trucking.
If the above video had just been a one-off event, that would have been one thing. Instead, Trump has continued to travel around the country talking about the dangers of hydrogen cars. I was able to find at least five more instances where he repeated nearly identical claims, right down to telling the audience they’ll be unrecognizable if they’re ever in a hydrogen-powered car when it explodes. They’re also all so similar that there really isn’t much of a point in embedding all of them.
Why exactly Trump has decided to make hydrogen fuel-cells enemy number one, right up there with other Americans who disagree with him, no one can say for sure. If I had to bet, it probably because Tesla CEO Elon Musk appointed himself Brown-Noser-in-Chief, and they don’t want to do anything to risk cutting off the flow of those Elon Bucks. In several of the clips, you can see him start to trash EVs, only to pivot to how bad hydrogen is. Was it something Musk said? Was it something a staffer put in front of Trump to distract him from EVs, and now they can’t make him stop? Odds are, no one will ever know until some access journalist writes another book.
Finally, before the White Knights of Hydrogen show up in force to yell at me for dismissing the technology of the future, take a look at how refueling a Hyundai Nexo went for our friends at the Smoking Tire. If it still only sort of barely works in LA, how does anyone seriously think we’ll be able to roll this out nationally? Yeah, not happening.