Please stop talking about Hydrogen-powered cars!
I'll tell IEEE seperately that they're being fools for a line like "in hopes of helping engineers more cheaply synthesize hydrogen gas to power hydrogen fuel cells and automobiles powered by them" Anyone who thinks we will ever use H2 as a consumer fuel is out of their minds. Anyone with high school physics should be able to see that.
We fill our fuel tanks based on volume. While hydrogen's Energy density is 33.3kWh/kg, this works out to 0.53 kWh/L at 20C and 20MPa (All values taken from the Physics FactBook). In comparison, gasoline has an energy density of 12.7kWh/kg and 8.76kWh/L at 20C and 20MPa. The important value for most of us is the kWh/L. 0.53 versus 8.76 is a BIG difference. The fact is, at standard temperature and pressure, because hydrogen has a low density, it has a very low energy density.Compressing the hydrogen will increase the energy density such that Liquid Hydrogen at -253C has an energy density of 2.36kWh/L, better but still a fraction of gasoline.
In industrial applications, where the hydrogen can be stored with appropriate safe guards, hydrogen would be a fine fuel. So I think this research is useful, but not in the way they are talking about it.
However, automobiles are consumer products and we cannot count on those kinds of safeguards being reliable when used by consumers. Just look at all the old clunkers on the road at the moment. New, each would have been fine, but it only takes 5 years before many of them are in need of the kind of work that would make the use of compressed hydrogen as a fuel unsafe. Imagine one of them with a compressed hydrogen fuel tank being ruptured during a minor fender bender. It'd be like the Hindenburg all over again. "Oh, the humanity!"
Simply put, free hydrogen (H2 in any state) is too impractical to be used as a consumer-grade fuel. Therefore, no H2-powered cars. A better solution would be to convert the hydrogen into some other kind of fuel, such as butanol. So any work on making cheap hydrogen should include the words "so it can be combined with CO2 in some fashion so as to form a safe liquid fuel suitable for use by" .
