Hacker News Reader

Comment by _ph_ | Hacker News Reader

Why??? There is no environmentally friendly way to produce hydrogen. Either it is stripped from natural gas producing CO2, or from hydrolysis with currently about 30% efficiency. That means an equivalent electrical car can drive about 3 times as far on the same amount of electricity. Finally, refueling stations are extremely expensive to build because hydrogen is a rather volatile substance.

View on HN

Hydrolysis from solar is '30% efficient' of nearly limitless solar radiation. Hydrogen fuel cells emit no CO2. Its hard to underestimate what a gigantic win that is.

But you have to ship it and store it.

But the relevant comparison is to batteries, which are more efficient.

Unless we have enough photovoltaic energy production to close down all coal plants, the "limitless" part isn't really there. And even then it is cheaper to store the electricity directly in batteries - they are even cheaper than the devices required for hydrogen fuel cell cars. Hydrogen fuel cell cars still need a battery, though a smaller one, then the expensive fuel cell and finally the gas tank which has plenty of issues by itself.

Nit pick: Electrolysis is more like 70% efficient, but once you add the losses from compression and turning that hydrogen back into electricity, your 30% figure sounds about right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water#Efficien...

Because electricity comes from a wall socket and so renders a whole petrochemical industry irrelevant. Do you think they're going to take that lying down?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com