There are many different ways to make hydrogen fuel. Some of these involve burning trash to generate the heat required to break hydrogen out of natural gas or water. You won't be able to drive on a banana peel, but that peel can be used by a hydrogen production facility to produce the fuel that your hydrogen powered car can use to operate.

There are several different ways in which cars can be adapted to run on hydrogen fuel, and eliminating the need to burn gasoline at all. The same exact internal combustion engine used for gasoline powered vehicles can be used for hydrogen powered cars with modifications to burn hydrogen as the energy source.

Cars can be converted to run totally on hydrogen as a fuel, replacing gasoline altogether. Cars can also be adapted with kits that add hydrogen gas to the existing air fuel mixture of the gasoline engine. This can result in improvements in gas mileage and a reduction in vehicle emissions.

Hydrogen powered cars leave no carbon footprint, thanks to being approximately 300% more efficient with fuel than vehicles using traditional gasoline fuels. Electric vehicles can also be made to use hydrogen fuel for on-board power generation. Built-in holding tanks can feed the hydrogen into fuel cells which in turn convert it into electricity and supply power to all vehicle systems.

Hydrogen fuel is cheaper to produce in addition to being a truly renewable source of energy. It takes 300 billion gallons of water to refine the gasoline Americans burn each year, but it would only take 100 billion gallons to refine the same amount of hydrogen fuel. As a result, hydrogen costs about half as much per gallon as gasoline.

The number of hydrogen powered cars will increase steadily as hydrogen fueling stations become more available. Starting in 2008, several hydrogen powered vehicles will already be available in limited numbers. Even now, every major automobile company is working on designing and engineering its own model. Some car makers are also trying to develop in-home systems that produce hydrogen, meaning that we could conceivably not only have pumps in the driveway to fuel up hydrogen powered cars in the future, but we could also supply hydrogen fuel to supply electrical power to our homes.

While you might think that safety could be an issue, a hydrogen-powered car is at least as safe as a regular car. High-stress testing has been done to insure that the tanks used for storing the hydrogen fuel can survive even the most serious accidents.