For the enthusiast?
According to an American website, Ford has patented a technique that should make it easier to use hydrogen as a fuel in an internal combustion engine. Interesting, because as far as we knew, Ford also focused mainly on the battery-electric car.
Ford is said to have established a method to better control the ratio of fuel to air in the combustion chambers when using hydrogen as fuel in a turbocharged petrol engine. In short, this would mean that the hydrogen engine must and can use a much leaner mixture, so that it mixes more air with the fuel. This would, among other things, prevent pinging, which quickly becomes a problem with a hydrogen combustion engine due to the faster combustion of hydrogen compared to petrol.
The most interesting part of the news, discovered by Musclecarsandtrucks.com, however, is that apparently at least one person at Ford is researching hydrogen fueled engines. After all, hydrogen as a whole – apart from a limited number of brands – is no longer really in the interest of car manufacturers. In addition, the most popular application by far is that with a fuel cell, so in fact an EV that converts hydrogen into electricity on board, which the car then runs on as an EV – ie electrically.
The hydrogen fuel concept is quite different, having been used sporadically by car manufacturers in the past. Interestingly enough, there was already a hydrogen combustion engine in 1807, one of the first combustion engines ever. In modern times, it is mainly BMW that has spent a lot of time discovering this technology, including with a fleet of fifteen 750hLs based on the 7-series of the E38 generation. These cars could run on both petrol and hydrogen.
Conceivable advantages of using hydrogen as a fuel are that well-known and traditional technology is largely used and that a little more experience is possible. After all, engine noise, engine character and perhaps even manual gearboxes will be preserved. Perhaps Ford is investigating this method for the latter category of enthusiasts, because this is a clean way to allow the combustion engine to continue for a group of enthusiasts (or conservatives). Now we are speculating, but it would certainly be nice to hear more about this concept in the future. That also happened last week, because Toyota is not yet done with combining hydrogen and cylinders.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl