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As portions of the auto industry experiments with alternative fuels and lightweighting, some unknown problems inevitably will be encountered. One we hadn’t even considered before is cause for concern with hydrogen interacting with a certain material, potentially causing structural failures. This clearly illustrates the need to thoroughly vet emerging technologies instead of blindly rushing into adoption.
Learn why electric cars can have problems with rust here.
This problem is high-strength steel, which is becoming more common in car structures, suffering from hydrogen embrittlement. Researchers at Sophia University in Japan, where hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are becoming more common, have done experiments on fractures in high-strength steel to better understand the phenomena so they and others can devise ways to guard against it.
Obviously, having…
