No one evokes images of the 1937 Hindenburg airship disaster when talking about diesel or gasoline. Yet without handling precautions, both can be flammable like hydrogen.

"If you talk to some of the folks that have been in the industry for a while, or people that really understand the physics behind hydrogen, those folks realize it's just another fuel source," said Charles Shappell, engineering director for Faurecia Hydrogen Solutions (FHS), told me. "It's no more or less dangerous. It's just a little different in how you have to handle it."

I recently visited with Shappell at FHS' facility in Farmington Hills, Michigan, curious about its manufacturing of hydrogen tanks.

As greater acceptance and early adoption of heavy-duty hydrogen-powered fuel cell trucks grows, the safety question is front and center. Shappell enters those conversations prepared.

"I give a little bit of a safety talk anytime I [meet] somebody who doesn't have that experience. What's in their mind is the Hindenburg and this great explosion. But in fact, what you had there was kind of the perfect combination of hydrogen and atmospheric oxygen and a flammable shell around the thing that created the conditions for that to happen."

In the real world, such an explosion is highly unlikely.

"It's very, very difficult to get hydrogen to combust because it's so reactive. If we have a leak, it very, very rapidly dissipates into the atmosphere, combining with water vapor or combining with the oxygen to become water vapor," Shappell said. "For a very, very brief amount of time, you can potentially have the right mixture of hydrogen and oxygen to create an explosion."