Most of the rail system in Germany is electrified anyway. With batteries to power the non electrified bits, why bother with hydrogen?
Additionally, Germany is a big train tech exporter, and there's lots of unelectrified route miles in Europe and the world, many of which would be totally uneconomical to electrify.
This would be so much simpler than electrifying the whole line and much easier to maintain.
This infrastructure is often already at key stations, and so it might require no extra work to implement them. Just more money for the battery powered trains.
edit: also I don't think your idea will 100% work because it would take some time to charge the trains at the stations.
They are, but the article mentions that these particular ones are built by the French TGV-maker Alstom.
These trains are being considered for use on similar regional stretches currently served by diesel-electric trains in the Netherlands as well.
- The link between Hamburg and the island of Sylt isn't (one of the most profitable ones)
- The ICE-link between Hamburg and Puttgarden (to Copenhagen) isn't (one of the most busiest around 110%++ capacity)
- Large parts of Swabia, one of the most industrious areas of Germany are completely un-electrified apart from the ICE-link between Munich and Stuttgart. Getting from Aalen to Lake Constance or Kempten via Ulm you will see a lot of "Mittelstand"-Companies but not a single electrified track.
Hydrogen scores really well on the per kg measure, and pretty bad on the per liter one.
The values are: Hydrogen 142 MJ/kg and 9.17 MJ/l.
For comparison: Fuel 46.4 MJ/kg and 34.2 MJ/l, Lithium polymer batteries 1.8 MJ/kg and 4.32 MJ/l, which is why Tesla batteries are a LOT heavier than they look.
So to answer your question: a hydrogen fuel tank (pressurized at 700 bar, also known as "you need a 10cm thick steel plate to contain this, and may God have mercy if you so much as dent it") is about 3x lighter but 3x bigger than an equivalent fuel tank, and 70 times lighter and half as big as an equivalent battery.
In case you're wondering, hydrogen in fuel is "compressed" to about 3000 bar, but in a way that's stable, not prone to sudden temperature drops and doesn't blow up if the octane number is high enough.
People don't realize that a tesla sedan weighs more than an average sedan. And I laugh when people say you can keep extra tesla batteries and swap them to extend range. They think it's like changing smartphone or regular car batteries. They don't realize that tesla batteries weigh 1300 lbs. Good luck with that.
Once there is a real breakthrough by either the hydrogen fuel side or the battery side, society will steadily and gradually switch to one or the other and leave gas fuel behind. But who knows if/when such a breakthrough will happen. Either way, we are going to be using gas fuel for a few decades at the very least.
Unlike swapping batteries in cars, the infrastructure exists already.
The only bottleneck right now is battery production, not even demand.
The technology is here, the demand is here, the supply chain is being adapted so that price (not weight) drops.
I don't see how the weight of a car has any meaningful impact on adoption. Speaking of which, adoption is usually an S curve and I fail to see how electric car's adoption would be any different. That makes it everything but "steady" and it will take pretty much everyone by surprise, like any other technology before (computers, internet, laptops, smartphones... and petrol cars). That raises many interesting questions about the readiness of each country's infrastructure but that's another debate.
Certainly, in the USA, a country that already has problems maintaining its road infrastructure, that could become problematic.
It's not a matter of opinion. candiodari posted the metrics just a few comments up. Gas/Hydrogen has 4 to 8X better power to weight ratios.
> The only bottleneck right now is battery production, not even demand.
No. It's also demand. Most people want big gas guzzling trucks and SUVs.
> That makes it everything but "steady" and it will take pretty much everyone by surprise, like any other technology before (computers, internet, laptops, smartphones... and petrol cars)
S curve applies to something "revolutionary" or better. Electric cars aren't better than gas cars. Regular cars are cheaper, get more mileage and are much more efficient (and powerful) than electric cars. The only thing going for electric cars is they pollute less.
Smartphones did something that telephones couldn't. Computers did things typewriters couldn't. Cars did things that horse carriages couldn't. That's not the case between gas powered cars and electric cars.
https://www.japanfs.org/sp/en/news/archives/news_id036048.ht...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charging_station#Battery_swapp...
A battery means that you don't need to build miles of infrastructure. You can just add a small amount.
A train traveling more than 100km in a single trip is extremely common. 1000km, the range of the current hydrogen prototypes, is much more feasible.
[1] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronik_der_Streckenelektrif...
That's what this hydrogen train is for; it's base (LINT) is one of the most common trains used on those "backroad lines".
(Coincidentally, the lint is also one of the most uncomfortable trains to ride if you are larger than a twelve year old boy)
It's a much better solution for handling the spikes in wind than most of the alternatives.