* The efficiency compared to battery tech is horrendous.
* Hydrogen is effectively a storage technology -- we have to generate it and compress it. Which combined with the above means that charging a hydrogen car will always be more expensive than putting the same amount of usable energy into a battery powered car.
* Let's not forget that the cheapest way of generating hydrogen is from fossil fuels. Electrolysis is very inefficient.
* Any concern there might exist for the effect on the electrical grid coming battery powered cars multiplies for hydrogen due to the inefficiency.
* You need a large infrastructure to produce and distribute it.
* It's a huge chicken and egg problem -- a hydrogen car needs hydrogen, and there's nowhere convenient right now to get it from.
* In the end, a hydrogen car is ultimately electric. What is more convenient, having a car that can be plugged into an outlet, or a car that needs an extremely specialized hydrogen station?
IMO the only excitement from hydrogen is for fossil fuel companies, because that's what the vast majority of it is made from, and because it'd be a fairly natural fit into their existing infrastructure.
There may be some niches where hydrogen could be the better solution -- hydrogen trucks might be viable because there you can have well defined routes, and trucks have a weight limit which may not play well with batteries. But for normal cars I don't really see it.
Now I should say, I know basically nothing about battery tech. But unless full charging time can be greatly reduced, by which I mean under 5 or at most 10 minutes, I still feel hydrogen could have the upper hand even if it is more expensive and less efficient.
Really think about the time you spend stationary when stopping for fuel on a road trip. It's not just pumping fuel, you also go to the bathroom, get some food, and stretch your legs.
Extremely fast charging a Tesla trick, Hyundai Ionic 5 (starting around 45K before incentives) can charge 10-80% in 18 minutes, which is enough to travel around 330 km. That's roughly 3 hours of driving in most counties.
I could see hydrogen making sense for fleets with local operation that need to be operated nearly 24x7, like the support vehicles at an airport, city busses, and taxis in cities with strong night life. It also makes sense for heavy industry. Doesn't make sense for passenger vehicles; the cost of batteries has crashed too far and the power grid is way too ubiquitous.
That extra five minutes on road trips is far far far less than the amount of extra time that has cars take day to day, needing to stop at gas stations rather than get plugged in at the garage. The tradeoff is hugely in EVs favor, IMHO.
If production ever hits a point where it is not battery supply constrained, I could see tesla offering a battery insurance pool system with swapping capabilities, were they pull any pack under ~85% capacity and turn it into a power wall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0-sHtlCZ7M
https://insideevs.com/news/329836/tesla-battery-swap-locatio...
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2015/0312/Tesla-b...
With gasoline, you have to go weekly for your regularly commute. It can be annoying, but the upside is that you only have to stop for 5 minutes on a long trip!
With EVs, you just charge at home or the office which is really convenient. But the downside, is that those 5 minute stops become 25+ minute stops and you typically have at least 1 more of them. On top of that, the locations aren't as prevalent which increases planning needs.
With Hydrogen, you get the negative of weekly stopping, the negative of fewer locations, and the only benefit is that it can be refilled... almost as well as a gasoline for about the same $$.
So why would I choose hydrogen over either other choice?
That 1% use case should be priced for the externalities.
I'd like to see electric vehicle purchases heavily subsidized by taxes on fossil fuel vehicles and taxes on gasoline. If you really need to pollute 100% of the time you're operating your vehicle just in case you need that extra 1%, it should be priced in a way that really makes you think hard about that 1% scenario and whether there are really no alternatives.
I actually think a lot of people will prefer a 10-20 min fast charge on a BEV (I certainly do). Due to the volatile nature of hydrogen I can’t imagine many places will let you run to the toilet or get a coffee while pumping either; these are all just fine to do with fast charging.
For me the choice between BEV and the alternates is more about availability of home charging - if you can wake up each day with reliably ~250 miles of range already in the car, you virtually never need to fill up/charge on the road anyway!
But when you have near autonomous truck that runs closer to 24 hours per day or have a co driver in cab splitting duty then fuel cell will have an edge
Hydrogen poses some serious dangers as it is odorless and colorless if it leaks. It is very easy to ignite and it is explosive at a wide range of mixtures with oxygen. [0]
An hydrogen leak in an underground parking garage will be a very dangerous situation.
Obviously any dense concentration of energy will be dangerous. The gasoline in a traditional car is also highly flammable (though less likely to be explosive), and lithium reactions also also very hard to extinguish. But with both gasoline and lithium fire, you have some time to get yourself to a safe distance, with hydrogen... not so much.
They serve different functions and should all be targeted aggressively.
I agree a Hydrogen car is a long way away though. Many more viable options in the near term.
And electrolysis and plasma based hydrogen from renewable natural gas coupled with renewable energy are going to be cost-competitive with SMR based hydrogen very soon. Faster than anyone thinks.
Effectively all hydrogen currently produced, and this will be true for decades, is from splitting methane.
Distributing all that highly flammable high pressure blow-up juice around the world for consumer use is another matter.
That simply not economical.
In fact several technologies are more likely to be used then hydrogen for grid storage.
Planes will never work well due to hydrogens low energy-to-volume ratio, unfortunately.
But the same tech is necessary for carbon neutral food production anyway. Today's agriculture is fully dependant on fossil fuel energy, both for running the machines and for creating the many inputs like fertilizers and pesticides.
Remember, people said the same thing about electric cars and they were wrong. This is just history repeating itself. In a decade, no one will seriously try to argue against hydrogen.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage#Metal_hydride...
a lot like batteries and gas tanks
Fossil fuels in general (maybe not shale oil) are sources, since you get more energy than what you spend. So, their energy return on energy invested (EROEI) is positive.
In this regard, we're facing diminishing returns, the low hanging fruit is long gone. This, plus resource scarcity, is going to be a huge limiting factor to growth…
See e.g. https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-separating-hype-from-h...
What will it take? What are the alternatives?
https://www.caranddriver.com/toyota/mirai/specs
https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-3/specs
As far as acceleration, that's just a design parameter, as both are driven by electric motors. I'm surprised the Mirai can't perform better given it's extra weight.
Cheapest way of charging EVs is from fossil fuels.
> You need a large infrastructure to produce and distribute it
But you can reuse gas stations as the delivery mechanism. Versus EVs which require all new infrastructure since the charging time is so much longer.
> It's a huge chicken and egg problem
No different from EVs right now.
> What is more convenient, having a car that can be plugged into an outlet, or a car that needs an extremely specialized hydrogen station
Hydrogen charges a full tank in < 5 minutes which makes it the more convenient solution for most of the world who don't have access to outlets at home.
Fossil fuel electricity is more expensive than wind and solar. Even the most expensive solar, residential, is cheaper than buying from a dirty grid for the vast majority of customers. And the intermittent nature of solar and wind is a perfect match for charging a fleet of EVs.
In contrast, green hydrogen is nowhere near as cheap as fossil fuel hydrogen from steam methane reformation. The dirty secret that no hydrogen fan talks about is that "blue hydrogen" the bridge to green hydrogen, requires carbon capture technology that does not currently exist at scale. And it requires transporting CO2 back to some sequestration site, doubling the amount of transportation of gasses.
1. That it requires something energy consuming like cold-temperature electrolysis.
This is no longer true. We have ways of generating Hydrogen much cheaper from water vapor - which is a very common by product in many industrial processes and which is often simply vented. The new methods also use Nickel instead of the very expensive Platinum electrodes which reduces the cost drastically.
https://www.maritime-executive.com/features/norwegian-team-d...
UNSW Team has demonstrated ways of generating Hydrogen using very cheap metals (Nickel, again) using a catalytic coating which are orders of magniture cheaper than using Platinum electrodes.
https://phys.org/news/2019-12-scientists-cheaper-hydrogen-en...
2. Storage of hydrogen is very complicated and dangerous.
This is also being addressed by various teams - including the storage of Hydrogen in activated carbon etc instead of storing it in very high pressure in tanks.
https://phys.org/news/2011-09-method-inexpensive-carbon-mate...
Hydrogen's energy density gives it a big advantage over EV technologies - and if it is also stored using the newer technologies, it allows for much lighter vehicles.
Solar is now cheaper to install than it costs to operate existing coal and oil power stations. That's a startling fact that really inverts some traditional intuition on carbon emissions.
The site perhaps, but the hardware is completely different.
nope
>Hydrogen is effectively a storage technology -- we have to generate it and compress it. Which combined with the above means that charging a hydrogen car will always be more expensive than putting the same amount of usable energy into a battery powered car.
Nope, 350kw charger -> loss
>Let's not forget that the cheapest way of generating hydrogen is from fossil fuels. Electrolysis is very inefficient.
no, newest one >95%
>Any concern there might exist for the effect on the electrical grid coming battery powered cars multiplies for hydrogen due to the inefficiency.
Nope you get more energy with less area used via pipeline than grid lines
> In the end, a hydrogen car is ultimately electric. What is more convenient, having a car that can be plugged into an outlet, or a car that needs an extremely specialized hydrogen station?
home hydrogen station exist
> IMO the only excitement from hydrogen is for fossil fuel companies, because that's what the vast majority of it is made from, and because it'd be a fairly natural fit into their existing infrastructure.
wrong fossil fuel companies still want to sell fossil fuels. we have to deal with emission inside cities. hydrogen cars cleaning the air while driving. battery cars still emit emissions.
As an inferior technology, Hydrogen stood a chance if it was able to quickly deploy a network of charging stations, locking in customers with a strong network effect. The opposite is true now, electric charging points are popping up everywhere, because it's so damn easy to do, every shopping mall can accommodate at least a handful using its existing electric cabling. Most everybody has a 3.7KW power outlet at home that delivers significant range for an overnight or over-weekend charge.
Meanwhile, Hydrogen needs a completely new pipeline distribution system, using special metals and seals because it's so agile and leaky. There is no point in investing in such a system, because battery electric has already won the race. And without this network, Hydrogen remains an oddity fuel relegated to specialty applications.
It was a dead-end anyway. You either get Hydrogen form natural gas, which is an environmental killer, or you get it from green energy with a 20-30% whole cycle efficiency. Why not use the energy directly with a 80-90% efficiency, and use that vehicle fleet to regulate the whole electric grid?
Is the assertion laying new hydrogen pipes would be cheaper than expanding electrical lines?
Building pipes instead of wires is already 3 times less efficient per unit of energy. Moving around huge bombs that weigh more than their load is ridiculously ineficient. It's just unfathomable for the same reasons we don't move around compressed methane gas in tanker trucks - and hydrogen is even less dense. Gasoline, diesel and propane are very special cases of compact hydrocarbon fuel, you cannot replicate that for Hydrogen.
We do liquify natural gas, but that's not an option for Hydrogen, and even for gas, it's only an economic option where there are no pipes and when the energy to do it (gas price) is basically free. As an energy storage solution, it's abysmal.
Li-ion is a bridge to H2, an enabler.
H2 fuel pellets will be passed around like hard candy.
H2 production will be just as distributed, decentralized as our future energy generation.
Li-ion will peak ~2032, hitting yearly (battery) production of ~8T gw/h, and state of the art attaining a large fraction of theoretical max energy density.
Assuming H2 today is ~= Li-ion 2006, peak H2 would be ~2050. Assuming civilization lasts that long.
Hydrogen solidifies at an insanely low 14 Kelvin. Using an ideal Linde liquefaction cycle will waste you 30% of the energy contained in the fuel simply to perform this deep freeze. You get a relatively low density fuel, about 5 times less energy dense than gasoline, that you will need to protect with massive thermal insulation (think Space Shuttle external tank) otherwise it will outgas like crazy and be an imminent explosion risk. When you add the electrolysis and fuel cell loses, you get a bulky but inefficient vehicle.
Sorry, this will never happen, regardless of what some hard SF author converted to futurologist may have led you to believe.
"An FCEV can drive about 28 miles (45 km) on 1 lb (0.45 kg) of hydrogen"
and
"If the demand for hydrogen increases, the price could drop to around USD 2.50/lb (USD 5.60/kg) by 2030"
Therefore 28 miles will cost 2.5 USD.
However, according to ev-database.uk the most efficient Model 3 uses 235 Wh/mile. If we assume that most EVs will be charged using a cheap EV tariff by 2030 (see https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/0v0-dr1v3-fl3x-3n3rg...) with a cost per kWh of 0.06 GBP, it will cost 0.39 GBP to drive 28 miles. Even if the most expensive average UK electricity cost for today is used (15.60p - https://www.ukpower.co.uk/home_energy/tariffs-per-unit-kwh), it's still on 1.06 GBP, meaning the price per mile for a BEV today in the UK, is cheaper than a FCEV in 2030.
Have I miscalculated or am I missing something?
Certainly, new power plant construction, even if green, will be financed by additional cost to the consumer.
On the other hand the low-voltage network may need to be upgraded to cope with the increased energy demand. Here smart charging can reduce the load, and associated costs, for a number of years (https://www.kaluza.com/blog-busting-the-myth-ev-smart-chargi...).
Assuming that the intially purchase price of EVs reach parity with ICE vehicles, the consumer should save money, in an EV only world IF the consumer is able to use smart charging to take advantage of fluctuations in energy prices.
In addition to this Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology (that allows the consumer to sell energy to the grid during times of high demand + low generation) will generate income (https://www.edie.net/news/8/-World-s-largest--V2G-trial-find...) further increasing the affordability of EVs in comparison to hydrogen vehicles.
Summary, no big deal and in fact smart EV charging tech can actively help the grid and make it easier to use all the cheap power we generate.
As Musk pointed out some years ago, hydrogen is not so much a fuel as it is an energy storage medium. Right out of the gate creating the hydrogen reduces the system efficiency by about 50% because of the electricity required.
In essence then hydrogen fuel cells are just a less efficient form of electricity that require a complex and expensive mechanism to turn into motive force. Possibly useful for shipping or trains but not the way to bet for cars.
Yet, that shorten battery lifespan a lot (imagine a car charged weekly to get around town, now discharged/charged daily... battery life is now 1/7th).
There is also loss during charging, and discharge, loss in power lines too.
Meanwhile, you could create h2 right at the power plant during time of excess. Like at a dam.
Then just send all that stored energy via pipelines, just a with natural gas.
Plus, there's a specific cost to the battery life, that can be calculated, and evaluated against the gains from arbitraging electricity prices.
If batteries are economical on the grid, and they are increasingly replacing natural gas peakers for cost reasons, then car batteries will be a huge resource that is an economic win for car owners and for electricity rate payers.
Clean hydrogen is difficult to make, giving an opportunity to the oil industry to easily make cheap hydrogen from refineries, which is not carbon neutral.
I'm not sure there is enough platinum in the world to make all those cars. Mining platinum might cause additional carbon emissions.
Hydrogen is very dangerous because it's highly explosive. Gas is safer in that regard.
not anymore
> Clean hydrogen is difficult to make, giving an opportunity to the oil industry to easily make cheap hydrogen from refineries, which is not carbon neutral.
It's not and everybody is talking about GREEN hydrogen
> I'm not sure there is enough platinum in the world to make all those cars. Mining platinum might cause additional carbon emissions.
you don't need it to create fuel cells
> Hydrogen is very dangerous because it's highly explosive. Gas is safer in that regard.
Nope industry is using it since decades
This doesn't lead to a discussion, or informative comment threads.
You can ask for the same in return from those you're interacting with, but considering you're a brand new account seemingly created to provide a counterpoint; it felt worth calling out (with your declining Karma).
Green hydrogen is difficult to make because of low energy efficiency, which I agree, would be solved with nuclear since nuclear provides a lot of green energy.
Platinum is required for fuel cells, please do a research or provide sources or explain.
It is generally considered more ecological than electric, because of much lesser environmental footprint than required for producing batteries.
Another advantage would be bigger driving range and faster refuelling.
However, it looks like that outside of Germany, electric cars just won, and Germany itself will not be able to reverse the trend.
I'm very concerned about this, but have found basically zero impact for batteries, in that if one is concerned about batteries, then all that iron mining to build the rest of the car should probably be a bigger concern.
After doing research, I'm 99% sure that lithium battery environmental concerns are just concern trolling from fossil fuel interests. But I am very open to concrete new information.
"An electric vehicle’s higher emissions during the manufacturing stage are paid off after only 2 years compared to driving an average conventional vehicle, a time frame that drops to about one and a half years if the car is charged using renewable energy."
Could be they are trying to find a way to get a piece of the European pandemic recovery funds, which are going mainly to "green" projects?
In my opinion any fossil fuel hydrogen should be banned, or at least taxed at far higher rates than current carbon taxes.
We need electrolyzed hydrogen for industry, and we should make sure it's the cheapest option so that we don't have a market failure again.
Getting electricity to a battery EV at scale is somewhat of a "last mile" problem, and I'm not sure if upgrading our grids to handle this will be cheaper than rolling out hydrogen infra.
Consider that you can ship hydrogen on a truck to existing pump stations (maybe not as efficient) as we do with gas right now.
I have no data to back this up, just the handwavy arguments above...
However EV's last mile problem is solved, at least for people with garages. 220v is more than enough for daily charging. A 120v 15amp circuit is almost trickle charging at <5mph, but most car are idle >90% of the time and that slow charging is enough to replenish a typical days driving in 8 hours.
As far as the transmission and distribution grid, shiftable load like car charging has the potential to drastically reduce grid costs, by shaving off peak capacity, and utilizing the times of Los grid usage. Chris Clack is a leading grid modeler, and his latest grid models tor decarbonization show massive savings by putting batteries and solar at electrical meters. Car charging is half of the function of home batteries, and it's likely that in the near future, many cars will allow vehicle to grid discharge, like the new f150 truck.
I read recently that the UK just needs to go back to 2002 levels of electricity generation to cover the whole fleet switching to electric.
There are some problem areas, generally people who live in dense urban areas without an allocated parking space but I don't think that is insurmountable.
In my area (in Norway) there are probably 50% EVs on the road now, closer to Oslo I bet the proportion is higher. In my street alone with 10 houses the cars are about 80% EVs and I just heard another neighbour has ordered an ID.4.
The local bus is also electric and it has a pantograph that draws 450 kW from a charger just 50 meters from my house in it's "down time" as I am at the end of the route.
No problem with the grid so far, but they have put a capacity charge on how much max capacity you use divided into 50 NOK ($5) monthly tiers. The tiers so far are 5, 10 and 15 kW, I'm unusually in the 5-10 bracket since I turned my cars down to 3.4 kW charging. In addition they lower the grid price during night to encourage people to charge when not much else is in use.
But so far it has not required a massive grid build-out. It might be since the grid itself is well maintained being critical infrastructure.
Since we are in the subject of hydrogen cars and pumps, there is also no tax on hydrogen cars here so there have been a few, but not nearly in the number of EVs. The pumps will sometimes require more time to refill than a charge since if you have many filling in a row the pump itself tends to freeze up and requires quite some time to thaw.
The requirements of a hydrogen pump station is far higher than a gas station, it's not just the matter of shipping it on a truck to an existing one. You need compressors and decompressors (why it's freezing up) and it does take quite a bit of energy.
There is also the issue of leaking since hydrogen atoms are so small, we did have one blow up not that far from here a couple years back.
After living with only EVs for over two years now I think it's the way to go for personal cars and buses, but for ships and perhaps aircraft hydrogen makes more sense.
It's also easier to store excess grid power on sunny or windy days using hydrogen, but right now the issue is also that most hydrogen is produced using steam-methane reforming [1] which emits CO2. Way better than petrol though.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/hydrogen/production-of-h...
Toyota are also betting on hydrogen. This is the reason why, even though they were early with hybrids, they still haven't released any purely electric cars.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/japan-china-combu...
We really are the most short sighted and stupid species, and only have ourselves to blame for what is to come.
Investigating hydrogen for other uses like truck, ship, storage, emergency generator looks reasonable (Toyota also sell fuel cell system for various use), but still I doubt is they serious for hydrogen car like Mirai, or it's just a demo or for special case.
Toyota in particular seems to be betting big on hydrogen with a PHEV -> BEV transition as backup.
Hydrogen sounds useful for commercial vehicles where you can plan routes and stay close to pumps (eg. delivery, bus, etc.) Sounds horrible for personal vehicles.
I can see Japan investing in it - you are unlikely to travel out of country with your car.
On the other hand, if hydrogen proves to be a lot more expensive than a BEV, then you expect fewer hydrogen refueling stations, which makes hydrogen less attractive.
That seems to be more optimistic that what I've heard in the past. What's the efficiency of electrolysis+compression (or whatever step is necessary from bubbles to fuel in a tank)? Isn't that already well below 50%? How efficient are fuel cells in converting Hydrogen back to electricity? I thought I remembered that this too was a bit worse than batteries.
Battery/recharging tech is improving year on year. For their latest model S plaid they've claimed: Tesla says that 15 minutes should be enough to replenish 187 miles (301 km) of range.[1]
In 2-3 years when the rest of the worlds car companies/ fast chargers have caught on I just don't see how Hydrogen can compete with all the downsides it has.
1. https://insideevs.com/news/515641/tesla-models-plaid-chargin...
https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/e0f655f1-c51d-4fe6-9383-1ff...
Here's where Sandy Munro mentions Plasma Kinetics:
Energy storage is a big issue to reach the goal line. In Nordic countries there is very little solar power in the winter. Energy can be stored in hydrogen. An extra bonus is that excessive heat from hydrolysis can be used in district heating.
is this actually the process to get hydrogen on industrial scale?
from wiki: As of 2020, the majority of hydrogen (∼95%) is produced from fossil fuels by steam reforming of natural gas, partial oxidation of methane, and coal gasification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
This is the same shtick they've been feeding us for thirty years. Fuel cell cars as a realistic choice for consumers has been five years away for decades now. At this point I'm tired of hearing about it. Battery electric vehicles have been making steady gains in terms of innovation and energy density for long time now. Battery electric has an enormous lead as well as fundamental efficiency advantages.
https://i.imgur.com/SZFM97f.jpg
Until someone comes up with groundbreaking new ways to do electrolysis and hydrogen storage, the fuel cell economy is dead in the water.
I can only really think of successful ones (human power, draught animals, fossile fuels, electricity, etc).
I guess nuclear maybe, in that it never reached the potential people thought it would?
And it is only very few hours of the year that the prices turn negative anyway. You can't base anything off that. It's just not worth it.
It's very unstable, and difficult to control.
Honda has been trying to make it happen for 20 years now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_FCX its all a huge failure https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-cars/a36751587/honda-cla...
Whats fascinating is the realization Honda toyed with EVs even longer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_EV_Plus and still managed to fail miserably.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/41389/hyundai-clocks-1-million...
--
I'm very bullish on hydrogen for transportation. Maybe more. Think forward 10-20 years out.
Here's my current and partial and wild guess hot take on ICE vs EV vs H2:
EV is great for cars and smaller. EV also good for energy storage, eg homes, utilities.
H2 is great for trucks, delivery, heavy gear, buses, etc. Basically cars and bigger, or needing more range.
~2032 we'll hit peak yearly Li-ion production at ~8t gw/h. Market saturated, most materials recovered from recycling instead of mining.
2022 produces ~40m ICE, ~1m EVs cars per year.
I don't know how many ICE vehicles (trucks, vans, etc) are made yearly.
Installed base of automobiles is 1.2b to grow to 1.8b by 2030. Average ICE lifespan is ~30 years. Crunch the numbers. We cannot get passenger automobile sector to carbon zero fast enough on our current trend lines. We'd need to retire ICE early and produce enough replacements.
I have NO IDEA how many EVs we'll produce yearly. Consider the yearly Li-ion production and kwh used per car. We'll have to make cars smaller. What Horace Dediu calls "micromobility". (eg The battery pack of the popular, cute, functional Chinese EV is 1/10th of a Tesla.)
There's still no clear game plan for carbon zero for the other half of transportation, meaning trucks and buses and bigger.
H2 today ~= Li-ion 2006. Think of how we might mature H2 even faster than Li-ion matured.
H2 will be completely safe. As in solid state storage. Plasma Kinetics and such. https://plasmakinetics.com
H2 production will be (must be) completely off fossil fuels. In a few years, we'll have excess energy capacity looking for applications. Like producing H2, ammonia, etc.
BMW, Toyota, others completely missed (biffed) the Li-ion technology wave. And will suffer for it. I think it's wise of them to look towards the next disruption.
--
One wild card is ammonia NH3. It may prove a useful transition step. Helping us retire ICE faster, while EV and then H2 ramp up.
I'm certain there are other wild cards.
If there is a chicken and egg problem, as mentioned in the article, where mass adoption of a "better" technology is only held back due to the the number of hydrogen pumps - that seems like an appropriate point for government to step in to bridge the gap.
1) Is hydrogen the better solution?
2) Why wouldn't government recognise this and bridge the gap?
3) As the article is by BMW, what is their agenda? Why wouldn't they just accept and hop on board the prevailing EV trend?
(edit: For the Elon cult downvotes, lol, note the word "appears" above, feel free to challenge it).
Since they're stuck in a classic Innovator's Dilemma situation, they vainly hope that the rest of the world will stand still until their subcontractors are magically able to produce all components required (at prices that leave them competitive!) to switch their entire production to renewable energy. Some hand-waving around technologies that are promising but "not quite there yet" is a central part of this strategy, as it allows them to sell their reluctance to investors. Just sitting there obviously doing nothing would make it too obvious.
They've been doing this for 10 years now, so there's really nothing new to see. Meanwhile, the "electric-car lobby" keeps profitably producing mass-market vehicles and exponentially increasing production capacity, doing the hard work of actually building things in volume that haven't been built before.
The market cap of Tesla implies that this is hardly a controversial stance today, although there is obviously still significant uncertainty.
For certain definitions of mass-market.
By far the best current assessment of how we will use hydrogen as energy transport I have found:
https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-separating-hype-from-h...
With hydrogen the fuel cell stack, tank, refueling mechanism and distribution are all things you need to solve. With BEVs some of those points collapse into just one component (the battery), we already have a distribution network and at low charging rates any wall plug will do. The technology baseline for electric cars is so low that they're about as old gasoline ones. The same can't be said about hydrogen.
"It is generally considered more ecological than electric, because of much lesser environmental footprint than required for producing batteries. Another advantage would be bigger driving range and faster refuelling."
And the biggest advantage: you're cleaning the air while driving from particles which harm your health. <- This reason alone is a key factor. Have a look here: https://youtu.be/ormfLJmWGC8
People complained about the emission cheating regarding volkswagen. So everybody who did has to be pro hydrogen car. Because its real emission free. not like a battery car
