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Hydrogen does not fit into the more popularly imagined future where renewables creates electricity that is then stored in parked cars, to be used when everyone gets home and the solar has run out.
- just fueling hydrogen vehicles requires an substantial amount of electricity for the compressors. An electric vehicle could drive at least 10% of the distance on this electricity alone. That is not counting the compression work at any the production site and when filling the trucks.
- distributing hydrogen requires trucks. In most places, the elecricity network is available.
- refueling with a hydrogen vehicle is faster then recharging. But you have to refuel them at fuel stations. Electric vehicles can recharge at home or any parking lot with outlets - more and more companies have parking lots with electrical outlets.
I think hydrogen cars is a technology that kills itself. Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas), and that a BEV is cheaper to assemble (less parts, less piping), the market for hydrogen cars is completely dependent on the price of batteries. As batteries get cheaper, and rapid chargers get faster, the niche that hydrogen can o…
> Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas) There are other options. You can producte H2 directly from sunlight. https://setis.ec.europa.eu/setis-reports/setis-magazine/fuel... And we might run out of Lithium. Or Cobalt. Or Vanadium. I doubt that we run out of Hydrogen.
From that link platinum is 3.7E-6, others [Li, V, Co] are O(2E-3), or more, by percentage of Earth's crust.
All this time I thought it was a biblical reference but I guess it's actually about California. Everything's about California, really, when you get right down to it.
So you need to dump a bunch of energy in creating a very difficult to handle material. In comparison, battery tech gets 7-10% better each year and has the immense economies of scale of electronics, electric motors, and power electronics all driving down cost and increasing competition.
There's a reason oil and gas companies propelled a lot of this development.
When discussing hydrogen cars, I particularly like the blog of Mux about this topic. Part 1: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11470/why-fuel-cell-ca... Part 2: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11493/why-fuel-cell-ca... Part 3: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11556/why-fuel-cell-ca... Part 4: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11572/why-fuel-cell-ca...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas) There are other options. You can producte H2 directly from sunlight. https://setis.ec.europa.eu/setis-reports/setis-magazine/fuel... And we might run out of Lithium. Or Cobalt. Or Vanadium. I doubt that we run out of Hydrogen.
Current hydrogen fuel cells contain platinum. The tech inside the Toyota Mirai contains about 30g if I remember correctly. So, which earth element do you prefer to run out of? :)
Things not so often mentioned in the Hydrogen vs batteries discussions: - just fueling hydrogen vehicles requires an substantial amount of electricity for the compressors. An electric vehicle could drive at least 10% of the distance on this electricity alone. That is not counting the compression work at any the production site and when filling the trucks. - distributing hydrogen requires trucks. In most places, the e…
I think that, when people are worrying about charge time, they're really asking, "Will charge times mean that a 5-hour trip to visit Mom and Dad now turns into a 10-hour trip, or, worse, something that requires an overnight stay?"
When discussing hydrogen cars, I particularly like the blog of Mux about this topic. Part 1: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11470/why-fuel-cell-ca... Part 2: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11493/why-fuel-cell-ca... Part 3: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11556/why-fuel-cell-ca... Part 4: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11572/why-fuel-cell-ca...
The first part is a 60-minute read. Could you summarize the thesis of the first part or 2 into a few bullet points?