In principle, yes, but the safety ramifications are significant.
You're also going to need a lot more of it than you think. Hydrogen has about 3 times the energy BY WEIGHT than gasoline. That means 300 miles will require more than 50 lbs of hydrogen. So, now you need some infrastructure to compress the hell out of it, and it's no longer a DIY job (badly designed compressor systems for flammable gasses = bombs).
MAKG,
you failed only by not completing the thought....
Yes Hydrogen is more energetic BY WEIGHT. the issue is
that it takes something like six times the VOLUME to carry
an equivelent energy even presuming you are dealing with
(cryogenic) LIQUID Hydrogen
so using my own truck with a SINGLE 20gallon tank
(people who know my truck may now activate their
trans-nasal bovine mammory excretion propulsion system)
my truck can go 400 miles on that single tank.
To go the same distance on hydrogen requires a frigging
giganormous fuel tank.
But it gets worse, if you are presuming gaseous hydrogen (even highly compressed) you simply can't carry enough to matter (as determined by being able to drive any "Serious" distance.)
Frankly all the talk about fuel cells is as an end-around to the limitation of rechargeable batteries in electric cars and in point of fact if fuel cells to power essentially electric cars become more than a curiosity (to power the smugness of their owners) they will NOT be hydrogen fueled fuel cells.
there are other fuels that can be used to make fuel cells work...
Methane, Methanol, Ethanol (they just require different membrane
materials) and all have one enormous advantage over hydrogen...
They are "storeable" in useful quantities.
Methanol and ethanol obviously as room temperature liquids
and Methane as a compressed gas.
Hydrogen is attractive as rocket fuel because of the actual "simpliticy" in the primary structure of a rocket...
In essence a Rocket is a giant metal balloon filled with fuel and oxidizer with a rocket motor at one end.
Yes they are hideously complex in the details, but those details account for a nearly trivial percentage of the total lift weight.
The weight of the fuel ammounts to the vast majority of the total takeoff weight.
On an automobile the fuel weight is trivial.
Even in the rather extreem case of my Ranger with
it's 83gallon fuel capacity the total weight of fuel is
still only ~500lb that's only about 10% of the total weight of my truck (Max Gross)
The bulk taken up by fuel? with the typical 20gallon
fuel capacity in say... a Ford Taurus that would require
a 120gallon fuel tank (plus necissary insulation) simply
to have the same range as with gasoline.
Say "Goodbye" to your trunk capacity.
No not most of your trunk capacity ALL
of your trunk capacity.
It's either that of fuel stops MUCH more frequently
Then add the complication that the hydrogen is going to boil off
even if the car isn't being driven.....
So once again I will say (to all the hydrogen true believers):
Hydrogen? Don't be an F'ing idiot!
AD