Mike Strizki drives the only hydrogen-powered car on the East Coast. That’s because he’s the only person with access to fuel… which he makes, by himself, in his backyard in New Jersey.

And it’s not just his car. Mike’s house, his lawnmower, even his bicycle are all powered by hydrogen. He’s convinced that this element could be the single most important solution to the climate crisis, if only people and governments would just get on board.

But he’s been screaming this from the rooftop of his hydrogen house for two decades. And today, fewer than 0.2% of cars in the US run on hydrogen. What’s it like to be the earliest early adopter of a technology that never catches on? And does Mike still have a chance to be proven right?

Featuring Mike Strizki.

ADDITIONAL MATERIALS

In the race to decarbonize cars, battery electric vehicles have proven more popular than hydrogen. But debate still rages on which is the better zero-emission technology. Some say hydrogen cars cannot catch up to battery-electric vehicles, whereas others claim EVs aren’t the future, hydrogen is.

Mike Strizki and his hydrogen-powered house have been featured on The Wall Street Journal, ABC World News, and a number of New York Times articles including “The Zero-Energy Solution,” and “The Gospel of Hydrogen Power.”

An old photo of Mike Strizki’s children sits next to a hydrogen-powered remote control car and Star Wars figurines. Credit: Felix Poon.

Mike Strizki has decaled his Toyota Mirai with a diagram of the car’s components under the hood, trunk, and seats of the car. Credit: Felix Poon.

SUPPORT

To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly.

Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.

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CREDITS

Host: Nate Hegyi

Reported, produced, and mixed by Felix Poon

Editing by Taylor Quimby

Our staff includes Justine Paradis, Marina Henke, and Kate Dario.

Executive producer: Taylor Quimby

Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Lennon Hutton, and Walt Adams

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Audio Transcript

Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.

Nate Hegyi: Hey, this is Outside/In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I’m Nate Hegyi.

Mike Strizki: So it's warming the fuel cell up now? Yeah. Okay. We're online.

Wanna go for a ride?

There are lots of self-described car guys out there. people who obsess over engines, they talk about rpms. They love to hang out under the hood.

[Beep]

Mike Strizki: Okay. Go ahead.

Felix Poon: Alright, it's got some torque.

Mike Strizki: It's got some balls.

This is Mike Strizki. Chatting with our producer Felix Poon. And Mike is definitely a car guy… but a very different breed.

Mike loves his car…

Because it runs on hydrogen.

Felix Poon: Otherwise it looks like any normal car from the outside.

Mike Strizki: Well except for it’s got an H2O button in it.

Felix Poon: An H2O button? What does that do?

Mike Strizki: So when you’re thirsty. And you want to drink a water like I did in Death Valley. You press the H2O button.

Felix Poon: Wait did that come with the car or did you do that?

Mike Strizki: No that came with the car.

[MUX IN: Feisty and Tacky, Blue Dot Sessions]

Hydrogen as a fuel for cars is not a new idea. One of the very first cars in the world ran on hydrogen, back in 1860. It was called the Hippomobile. And its inventor sold hundreds of them.

But real interest in hydrogen cars didn’t really pick up until the late 90s.

Back then, nearly every major car maker was developing their own one. GM, DaimlerChrysler, Mazda, Toyota, BMW, they all exhibited prototypes at car shows.

Jay Leno: So now you can pull into your Green Peace rally and go up to Pamela Anderson… why yes, my car is hydrogen.

Yes, yes, I love animals, and I only eat vegetables, and I’m driving a hydrogen car.

[MUX OUT]

Nate Hegyi: Even George W Bush was a fan.

George W Bush: our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles. So that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution free.

[MUX IN: Pembroke Pines, Walt Adams]

At the time, Mike Strizki seemed like he was ahead of the curve. He was hydrogen’s biggest civilian ambassador.

But today? Hydrogen has gone the way of Nokia flip phones, AOL and beanie babies.

Less than 0.2% of cars in the US run on hydrogen.

And virtually ALL of them are in California, where you can actually find stations to refuel them.

Mike… lives in New Jersey. The closest hydrogen pump is more than five hundred miles away, in Canada.

The only reason he can drive it around is because… he makes hydrogen fuel… by himself… in his yard…

Mike Strizki: because I'm the only one who can fuel them. There are no other refueling stations here. They've killed all the ones in New England. Up where you are. They killed five of them.

<<NUTGRAPH>>

This is Outside/In. I’m Nate Hegyi. Today… what’s it like to be THE early adopter of a technology that never catches on? And does Mike still have a chance to be proven right?

Mike Strizki: If you're not willing to be the pioneer and have the arrows in your back, then it's not. That's not your place in life. But someone's got to do it.

Producer Felix Poon has the story…

Mike Strizki: So never say something's impossible. It's only impossible when you say it's impossible, then it's impossible.

Stay tuned.

[MUX SWELL AND OUT]

<<FIRST HALF>>

Felix Poon: This is Outside/In. I’m Felix Poon.

Felix Poon: There’s a free-standing garage in Mike Strizki’s yard. The roof and metal siding are covered in solar panels. So is the lawn next to it too.

Mike Strizki: So, uh, this is kind of my kind of my space. Like I said, my fortress of solitude here. And this is where I build new machines and I develop new patents.

Mike is in his late sixties. Stocky build. Wears glasses. He walks around his property with a purposeful confidence…. the way a foreman might give a tour of his factory floor.

Mike Strizki: so I have about 56kW worth of solar here. So that's enough to do. My two hydrogen fuel cell vehicles my hydrogen lawnmower. My hydrogen bicycle.

[alarm beeping sound]

Oh. Excuse me. Probably garbage. I'm going to put it on silent.

Felix Poon: I thought that was something that had to do with your systems but that was actually the ring tone of your phone.

Mike Strizki: Yeah.

[MUX IN: Coulis Coulis, Blue Dot Sessions]

We go inside the garage. Half of it looks like a mechanic shop. There’s a Toyota Tacoma up on a lift.

A bunch of tools, car parts, and faded Star Wars action figures.

The other half of it looks like a mad scientist’s lab.

[HUMMING AND CLICKING NOISES]

Mike Strizki: when I put energy into the electrolyzers to split the water. It's going into splitting hydrogen and oxygen.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element on earth. But it doesn’t typically occur naturally on its own. You have to split it from other compounds.

Around 95% of all hydrogen produced in the US right now is split from natural gas. This is called “gray hydrogen.” And making gray hydrogen is not clean. It releases CO2.

But what Mike is making is called “green hydrogen.” That’s when you use renewable energy, like solar power, to split hydrogen from water in a process called electrolysis.

And I want to pause here and just let this sink in, because this is kind of a miracle. I mean, it’s like alchemy, turning water into a clean, virtually limitless supply of energy?

Mike Strizki: 80% of all matter in the universe is hydrogen. It's the universe is most abundant energy source.

Experts will tell you Mike’s numbers are a little exaggerated, but not by much. Point is, it’s everywhere.

Mike Strizki: Anything organic is hydrogen. So grass clippings, sewage, garbage.

Felix Poon: We have hydrogen in us.

Mike Strizki: Well, we'll think about it. Your brain? Yeah. Your brain is the most water in your body. And your body is 80% water. Okay, so we're mostly hydrogen.

[MUX SWELL AND OUT]

Regardless of where you get it from, to use hydrogen, you typically need something called a fuel cell. A fuel cell is like a battery.

As long as you’ve got a tank of hydrogen hooked up to it, you can use a fuel cell to power pretty much anything that runs on electricity.

Mike Strizki: Once you have a hydrogen source, you know everything else is all free game that you can fill.

…even a toy remote control car that I see on the wall in his garage – it’s got a sticker on it that says “hydrogen powered.”

Mike Strizki: This car is powered by a fuel cell. So that car still works. I drive it around for the kids here. Yeah, that's 30 years old.

Felix Poon: And are these your kids over here, this picture?

Mike Strizki: Yes.

Felix Poon: So you've got a picture of your kids right next to this old fuel cell?

Mike Strizki: Well, you'll find that's the case all over the place. Family's a big part of what I do.

Felix Poon: Can I take a picture?

Mike Strizki: Yeah, sure.

Felix Poon: Um, how old were you.

Mike Strizki: When you got Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader?

Felix Poon: So you got some figurines.

Mike Strizki: The evil empire.

Felix Poon: So you're Luke?

Mike Strizki: Yeah.

[MUX IN: Open Road, Lennon Hutton]

These two sides… the kids… and his fight against the evil empire… these came up a lot when I was talking to Mike.

He believes, with an almost religious conviction, that hydrogen… is the cure to the planet’s climate problems.

He thinks if everyone could just get behind it, like really get behind it – we could transition to a hydrogen economy in just one year.

But he knows it’s an uphill battle.

Because the public and the government are not behind hydrogen… not nearly at the level Mike says we need…he’s been fighting his version of the death star for twenty years.

Mike Strizki: we can't keep doing things the same way and expect a different result. If we don't cure energy and water in this lifetime, there is no tomorrow. We kill the oceans. We die. We're pretty close to that right now. I mean, how would you feel if you had the cure for cancer? And, you know, no one wanted it because, you know, they're making too much money.

[MUX SWELL]

Mike wasn’t always this jaded about the future.

His obsession with hydrogen started just before the turn of the century, when he was an engineer with the New Jersey Department of Transportation.

One day, his boss gave him a fuel cell and told him to find something to do with it.

[MUX OUT]

Mike Strizki: And I said, wow, that's pretty cool.

Felix Poon: What did you find cool about it?

Mike Strizki: Um, that you were able to take hydrogen gas and convert it directly into electricity with no emissions whatsoever and no noise.

Mike Strizki: So that was the beginning of my, uh, my life with hydrogen.

Mike put fuel cells in electronic highway signs: the kind that say things like, “road work ahead,” and “slow down.”

Mike Strizki: That was a big deal that made headlines all over the world.

Up to this point, this technology was primarily used by NASA.

And then, Mike put fuel cells in cars, and he entered two of them into the American Tour de Sol, America’s “Green Car Competition & Festival”

Mike Strizki: the New Jersey Venturer.

Mike Strizki: First hydrogen fuel cell car to ever enter a competition. And that’s when it made headlines around the world.

Mike knew he was onto something BIG.

But Mike wanted to go bigger. He wanted to live in the first residential house in the world powered by hydrogen.

This wasn’t easy. Off the bat it turned into a bureaucratic nightmare. The state of New Jersey said: this isn’t a home renovation… this is a power plant. So Mike had to petition them to change residential zoning ordinances.

Then the state permitting agency gave him the runaround. They didn’t like the idea of Mike storing hydrogen in used propane tanks.

And they weren’t worried for nothing.

[Archival]

Newsreel: The airship was hailed by thousands, who little dreamed that it was their final glimpse of the Hindenburg.

Hydrogen’s reputation will always be tied to the fate of the Hindenburg airship… a disaster so harrowing that the broadcaster who watched it go up in flames coined the phrase, “Oh the humanity.”

Herbert Morrison: It’s a terrific crash ladies and gentlemen, the smoke and the flames now, and the frame is crashing to the ground, oh the humanity!

I won’t get into all the details, but the truth is, modern hydrogen technology is just about as safe as any other fuel.

But advocates like Mike are constantly having to overcome fears, about another Hindenburg disaster… or associations with the hydrogen bomb.

Which is why, as he was fighting to build his hydrogen house, Mike’s conviction had to be unmovable. Rock solid.

Even when it meant frustrating his own family.

Felix Poon: Were your family members at all ever trying to get you to stop?

Mike Strizki: Of course. All the time.

Felix Poon: Well, the irony is, it seems like you've said often that you're doing a lot of this for your family.

Mike Strizki: I'm doing this for everyone's family, not just mine.

Felix Poon: Yeah. So what did your family say to you? To try to get you to stop?

Mike Strizki: What are you doing this for? How? How is this benefiting us? You're taking time away from your family to do this.

Felix Poon: And what would you say to them?

Mike Strizki: I said I'm doing this for you and for everyone. So there is no freedom unless we fight for it, to do what we should be willing to do man, to create a better world for ourselves.

It took him five years, but eventually, Mike struck a deal with the permitting agency. His hydrogen tanks went online and began powering his home in 2006.

And Mike became something of a celebrity.

[Media waterfall]

Anchorman: The first ever hydrogen cell powered house in the entire world has been built right here in New Jersey.

Charles Gibson: Today one man in New Jersey unhooked from the power grid, forever

Narrator: He may not wear a cape, but in the world of green technology, Mike Strizki is a superhero

[MUX IN: The Connection, Lennon Hutton]

At the same time this was happening, California started investing millions of dollars building a network of hydrogen refueling stations across the state.

It didn’t take long for carmakers like Toyota, BMW, and Hyundai to release new hydrogen-powered cars. Cities around the world were signing contracts for zero-emission hydrogen trains and buses.

It seemed we were on the brink of a “hydrogen renaissance.” Hydrogen was the future. In fact, “Mirai,” the name of Toyota’s hydrogen fuel cell car – it means “future” in Japanese.

[MUX SWELL]

But now… it IS the future. Where are all the hydrogen cars and homes?

What happened?

[MUX SWELL AND OUT]

<<MIDROLL>>

Welcome back to Outside/In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I’m Felix Poon.

In the 2000s, Arnold Schwarzenegger, then governor of California, signed an executive order to create a network of refueling stations across the state.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: They’re safe, they're affordable, they’re viable. That’s why we launched the Landmark Hydrogen Highway.

[MUX IN: Echo, Lennon Hutton]

But when hydrogen cars made their California debut in the 2010s, it wasn’t gas cars they were competing against. It was electric vehicles.

At the time, California was funding the construction of both hydrogen stations and EV charging infrastructure.

And even today, there is robust debate about which technology is better.

Team hydrogen says their cars are way faster to refuel. Three to five minutes… which is a lot like pumping gas, compared to the hours it can take to charge a battery.

And they say, if you really care about the environment, hydrogen is king. That's because EV batteries need lithium, and all the increased mining is bad for ecosystems and indigenous sovereignty.

Team electric vehicles though…they point out that EVs are way more efficient. Instead of using electricity to make hydrogen – which ends up losing a lot of that electricity in the process – why not just put that electricity straight into EVs?

But the thing that probably decided the race wasn’t the science, or the environment. It was economics.

The first Tesla came out in 2008 – a full six years before the Toyota Mirai.

Plus… EVs could be charged at home. That means early adopters didn’t have to wait for the infrastructure to get built out.

So once people started buying more EVs, the technology had room to scale up—batteries got cheaper, consumers got more options, and charging infrastructure had time to catch up.

Now, there are more than 170 THOUSAND EV chargers in the state of California… The number of working hydrogen pumps at the time of this episode? is fewer than 60.

[MUX SWELL AND OUT]

Mike Strizki isn’t too happy about all this.

Mike Strizki: What are we doing with the electric cars? We're just moving the pollution around. It's all. All the All the electricity is still generated from fossil fuel. 96% of it.

So, let’s pick this apart. It’s true electric cars are only as green as the electricity you charge them with.

But that’s also true of hydrogen. Most hydrogen comes from natural gas, since it’s a lot cheaper to make than green hydrogen.

But Mike is not deterred. He thinks the costs will come down as long as we scale the technology up. To him, we can have our hydrogen cake and eat it too.

In fact he’s modified virtually everything at his place to not just be greener, but also more powerful, and more connected.

Take his Toyota Mirai. He opens the trunk and it’s packed to the brim with boxy electronic gear connected by wires…it looks like something out of Back to the Future…

Mike Strizki: This converts it to 480 volt AC, 208V, three phase AC and 240 volt single phase and 115 all out of the trunk of the car. So this is a drivable generator.

I can pull up to Coachella, Burning man, a house in the woods. I can power a wedding in a field all out of the trunk of the car construction site. So this is a drivable generator.

[MUX IN: Kovd, Blue Dot Sessions]

To Mike all of these innovations are right here - staring us in the face.

But for hydrogen cars to really take off (nevermind houses) it would cost a lot of money.

Producing green hydrogen is two to three times more expensive than fossil fuels. Storage and transportation is multiple times more expensive.

That’s because we can’t just start pushing hydrogen through natural gas pipelines, we’d have to retrofit it all first, or build completely new pipelines, or keep trucking it around, which, requires specialized equipment.

That’s why CA lawmakers these days are calling hydrogen station subsidies a “waste of money.” Why should they spend tax dollars on this for a measly 17 thousand Toyota Mirais, when there are over 1.2 million electric vehicles across the state.

If anything, hydrogen refueling infrastructure is actually getting worse. Pumps are going out of order, stations are closing down. Frustrated Mirai owners are filing class action lawsuits against Toyota saying that their cars are practically impossible to refuel, and that the cars aren’t that “green” to begin with.

And buyer’s remorse isn’t just here in California. In France, a city cancelled an order for dozens of hydrogen buses when they realized electric buses would be six times cheaper to run.

One headline puts it this way: “Study confirms what common sense has made clear for years: Hydrogen fuel cells cannot catch up to battery-electric vehicles”

[MUX FADE UNDER AND OUT]

Mike Strizki: I know I'm getting toward the end of my life, and I know I may not see a hydrogen economy before I die. And, um, that's a little discouraging.

Everytime I think we’re going in the right direction, it gets snatched out of the jaws of success for me.

Mike Strizki: We have the technology. We have it.

Mike Strizki: we've got something that works, but no one wants to use it. They're dismantling refueling stations in California, where we should be building them in every station.

Like I said, I king for a day. Every petrol station has to have a hydrogen pump in it. And you watch how everything changes.

During the initial hydrogen boom, Mike was hailed as a sort of superhero - the guy ushering in the future of energy. He’s been on ABC World News, the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times.

But now that the hydrogen boom has gone hydrogen bust… Mike’s home doesn’t feel like the house of the future anymore - now, it’s more like a museum.

Mike Strizki: These are old ones. So the old ones used platinum. These are water cooled. So I got these when h power went out of business… I probably have more fuel cells for an individual than anyone else in the world of all different kinds.

Felix Poon: Yeah. I feel like you could do a scavenger hunt in this building to find. Find all the fuel cells.

If you look, There are electrolyzers here.

Mike Strizki: All of this stuff is all prototype equipment I want to put in a museum. But these are all, um. None of this stuff exists anywhere in the world. I'm the keeper of all the secrets of fuel cell companies and electrolyzer companies gone by. That's why it's important that I get the information out that I've collected over the last 40 years. Because it may never be discovered again

[MUX IN: Waltz and Fury, Blue Dot Sessions]

This journey… the fight to build his hydrogen house… all the press, good and bad… And now, the disappointment of seeing it go another way… it’s been hard on Mike, and on his family.

Mike Strizki: They didn't like all of the publicity that surrounded me because it blew back on them.

Felix Poon: The concept itself, they were like, that's fine, but it was just the publicity.

Mike Strizki: Right? I mean, everybody was calling me Don Quixote, jousting at windmills.

Mike Strizki: You know, my family is having to put up with the hardships because I choose to help society and the people that are behind me. This is the legacy I'm going to leave. I'm like Nikola Tesla, you know? He didn't become famous till he was dead. Till then, he was just a scandal, right? Nothing good comes easy, you know. If you're not willing to be the pioneer and have the arrows in your back, then it's not. That's not your place in life. But someone's got to do it.

Felix Poon: Did that have an effect on your marriage at all with your wife?

Mike Strizki: I think that's a little further than I want to go.

Felix Poon: Okay.

Mike Strizki: But everything has an effect.

[MUX SWELL AND OUT]

Felix Poon: do you ever look back and think like, uh, do you ever think you should have done it differently?

Mike Strizki: Sometimes. Very few decisions I would have changed, but there would be some.

Felix Poon: But the the big picture like sticking with, like, hydrogen, exploring clean energy.

Mike Strizki: That was never that was never a second thought. It's the right thing to do. I spent my whole life guiding my principles on the right thing to do. I don't want to ever close my eyes at night knowing that I did something I couldn't live with. If I don't open my eyes ever again, I knew I did everything I could to make this world a better place. And I can leave on that note. And that's part of why I'm still doing this stuff now. Because, you know, the fat lady hasn't sung yet.

These days, Mike lives by himself in his hydrogen house. But he isn’t really alone.

He’s the founder of a non-profit educational organization: which is literally just his home. He named it the Hydrogen House Project, and it’s been a revolving door of media, students, and curious onlookers.

Mike Voda: Nice to meet you Felix.

Felix Poon: Nice to meet you. You’re the other Mike.

Mike Voda: I’m the other Mike. Yeah.

While I’m there, a couple of his colleagues drop by. He’s got a new intern who just started today, she came and went.

They all believe in hydrogen just like Mike does. They haven’t given up on it yet.

And one of the things they’ve worked on is something they call a Joule Box – that’s j o u l e, the unit of measurement.

It’s a tall white utility closet, the size of a porta potty

It’s basically a giant swiss-army knife of renewable energy.

Mike Strizki: the first thing it uses is it uses the solar. If there's not enough solar. Then it uses the batteries. When there's not enough battery. Then it uses the hydrogen.

If something like this was around at the beginning of the hydrogen boom… maybe there would’ve been more buy-in – people could’ve fueled up at home, hydrogen cars could’ve kept up with EVs.

Even now, I want to believe it could still happen.

[MUX IN: Louver, Blue Dot Sessions]

Mike's conviction has a way of making this big problem of climate change – seem fixable with some will power, some know-how, and some rolls of duct-tape

But…in the end…Even if the fat lady did sing, and the hydrogen economy doesn’t take off, Mike probably wouldn’t stop.

Because no matter which solution is best for the planet, he’s right about one thing: If we don’t adopt more clean energy, our kids are gonna live in a very different world.

[MUX SWELL]

Towards the end of our interview, I asked Mike about his kids again. Even though they didn’t love the attention… did they ever join team hydrogen?

Mike Strizki: You know, my son didn't want me want to be seen in a Prius. Okay. He wants to drive the excursion. You know, the big, huge fuel monster. Okay.

It wasn't until the fuel prices came along that he wanted to borrow my Prius. When he's driving down the shore every day to go to the beach house.

And today he's running my renewable businesses.

Felix Poon: So now he's on board.

Mike Strizki: Hindsight is 2020, isn't it?

[MUX SWELL AND OUT]

[MUX IN: Ultima Thule, Blue Dot Sessions]

<<CREDITS>>

Nate Hegyi: This episode was reported, produced and mixed by Felix Poon.

It was edited by our executive producer, Taylor Quimby.

I am your host, Nate Hegyi.

Rebecca LaVoie is our head of on demand audio.

Our team also includes Justine Paradis, Marina Henke, and Kate Dario, who’s leaving us for greener pastures. Kate, we’re gonna miss you so much, I can’t wait to see what you do next.

Felix Poon: Special thanks to Andrew Chapman for talking to us about the hydrogen economy.

Music in this episode is from Blue Dot Sessions, Lennon Hutton, and Walt Adams.

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.

Mike Strizki: See where all the icicles are? See the dripping?

Felix Poon: So you can drink that.

Mike Strizki: You can drink it. It's deionized water, same as the pure water that goes into the electrolyzers.

Felix Poon: Maybe I should get my water bottle and refill it right now.

Mike Strizki: You should. My grandkids do it all the time.