content: Hydrogen Powered Trains Coming To Germany And UK Hydrogen fuel cells, long touted by auto makers as "the next big thing" are quite a foolish idea. I've been calling them "fool cells" for many years. In automobiles and light trucks that is.  Hydrogen, the lightest (and smallest) element, is so notoriously difficult and expensive to contain in small to mid-size vehicles due to its propensity to escape any storage tank. Then there are losses in the hoses leading from the tank to the fuel cells. It is widely known that any hydrogen powered car, even if left sitting / never driven in your garage or parking spot, will go from a full tank to empty in 2 to 3 weeks. A terrible idea for personal transportation. Moving up in size, to buses for instance, improves the equation as these vehicles will use all their stored hydrogen during a single day so any losses will be small. I've never actually seen any hydrogen powered buses but I know they are in service elsewhere in Europe, in Canada and Asia (China and Japan come to mind).  Hydrogen fuel cells are an expensive piece of kit that takes in hydrogen + oxygen and produces electricity (with water as the only waste product). The electricity is then used to power an electric motor. TIL, now both the UK and Germany will have hydrogen powered trains by 2020. Germany has one already in service which uses hydrogen that is considered a waste product of the chemical industry and is just burned off, wasted. Here's the 2016 article about it:  https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2016/09/germany-hydrogen-passenger-train/501575/   By 2021 Germany will have 14 hydrogen powered trains, replacing diesel trains:  https://futurism.com/hydrogen-powered-trains-are-coming-to-germany-in-2021/ The UK will test its first hydrogen powered train by 2020 with an eye toward full replacement of all diesel trains by 2040. http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2018/02/14-uk-to-test-hydrogen-powered-trainsets-in-2019 Hydrogen fuel cell trains benefit from their size and, like buses, generally don't sit idle for long.