To put this in perspective: The role of hydrogen in the German energy system is extremely small. There are a couple of test plants, but that's about it. Yeah, lately there have been a few calls for more investments in that area, some articles discussing a larger role in the future. But it's certainly not at the center of the debate. The headline seems heavily overblown.
Trains may be better candidates than cars. There are many non-electrified branch lines that currently run on diesel and you need far fewer gas stations that have to deal with hydrogen and all its problems.
Your wording is a bit funny, so let me clarify: That's an actual train line with actual passengers. More train lines will be converted from diesel to hydrogen soon.
I don't see a big hydrogen movement happening in Germany any time soon no matter what the wishful thinking on that is at BMW and elsewhere. What I do see is two of the three car manufacturers flooding the market with BEVs in the next five years. They've been a bit slow to catch up to Tesla but VW and Mercedes seem to be quite serious about ramping up production.
Most likely there is internal company politics in many of these car companies which makes it hard to convert to BEV development, it will mean many people losing their jobs, factories closing, etc.
Now imagine a charging point using more electricity than your avarage household.
The grid is not ready for this and upgrading it might not be the best option.
Also know that there is up to 50% loss of electricity when transporting over long distances (like from wind-farm to the city).
Last, but not least: charging large vehicles like busses or trucks take a long time (and a lot of energy) time that is paid for by the company.
Now look at hydrogen: Produced and stored at decentralized locations, distributed through existing infrastructure, available at existing gas stations: Less stress on the grid, shorter charging times. Produce it where and when is most beneficial, store and transport it to when and where it is required.
I could go on. And probably somebody could go on with a lot of counter points.
However, this just states that 'BEV are just better', as you stated, is just not as simple as just that.
We are in a mobility and energy transition: Nothing about this is going to be easy.
Full disclosure: I operate both a corridor of electric car chargers and a hydrogen fueling station in Europe.
The only time I need to use a fast charger is when I am on a long trip. Normal commuting, shopping, day trips, works perfectly well charging at home on a 230 V, 16 A circuit (Tesla S 70D).
I agree that there must be more fast chargers but municipalities should concentrate on making it practical for people who live in blocks of flats to charge overnight. Just put a couple of normal Schuko sockets on every lamppost with a simple network controlled contactor. Insist that all parking spaces have such a connector.
Also:
> Also know that there is up to 50% loss of electricity when transporting over long distances (like from wind-farm to the city).
This affects the cost of production of hydrogen just as much as it does the charging of batteries so what is the relevance?
Also great to hear you live in a home where you can actually park your car close enough to the building to have the luxury of charging it through your own infrastructure.
I too have these benefits, and, probably like you, I too drive a Tesla vehicle cheaply, thanks to tax incentives and company benefits.
Now let's look at the other 99% of the world:
If you look at the totals, the situation you describe won't hold up in a full electric future. The sum of the energy requirement for all miles driven, against the opportunity to upgrade the network to meet demand, especially in zones where cars usage is dense (cities) and room for net-expansion is difficult or extremely costly (cities).. there is a huge deficiency.
The transportable and storable nature of hydrogen might come as a solution.
Also, I mention the electricity loss on the network because this actually is not well known. This discussion would likely have started with 'with hydrogen, 50% is lost' if I hadn't mentioned it. That's a go-to counter argument for hydrogen, but one that we should not be focusing on.
The first search result I found [1] says an average of 6% among US states, broken down as 2% loss in high voltage transmission and 4% loss in local distribution. The spread among states is from 2.2% total loss to 13%, so even given that wind farms may not be sited as close or optimally as fossil fuel plants, your figure of 50% seems implausible.
[1] http://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how-...
"BMW's answer is to commit to continue building gasoline and diesel engines"
Tl;dr: appeals to authority work, even when there's previous proof the authority has no pants.
To get emission cuts back on track, the government announced in July that 20 new research laboratories will receive a total 100 million euros ($110 million) a year to test new hydrogen technologies for industrial-scale applications. Even more money is earmarked for labs in “structural change” regions, or those most affected by the nations’ shift.
I wonder how much money they have spent on it so far.
After the explosion in Oslo some of them are shut down until further notice due to rework.
https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i1uJSbkueQN...
The Germans sold their cheat-cars as long as they weren't detected and even now when their own children protest against the political practices regarding climate change they don't really do something serious about it.
The sad thing is that this could be as good as the world will come with combating climate change. Nice.
You mean “some German companies”.
> even now when their own children protest against the political practices regarding climate change they don't really do something serious about it.
Germany is one of the best player in Europe in this domain. The country has ~35% of its electricity generated from windmills and solar panel (average during the year) and it’s in very active development. The main critic from my point of view is the fact that the country renounced using nuclear power, but that’s what people in Germany were asking for.
Just look at the most recent European Parliament elections, the Green Party got more than 20% of German votes. I expect to see politics spending more of their time and budget focused on ecological and environmental issues in the future as a way to gain those votes.
Oh really? Germany held a referendum where the majority of "the people" voted against nuclear? I don't think so. There's no reliable way to know what "the people" really want other than a referendum IMO. I don't believe for a second that "we know" that this is what Germans wanted.
As far as I remember Merkel used the (German) emotions during the Fukushima nuclear disaster as an argument to shut down all German Nuclear reactors. The timing: the political campaigns for the next elections about 2 weeks later. The decision to close down Germany's nuclear plants was political. The votes on Merkel (her party) are not equal to German anti-nuclear votes. I don't agree that there is a way to know that "this is what the people wanted". Let's not pretend Germany is a direct democracy...
It's impressive that Germany got to 35 % renewable. It's CO2 emissions however have not gone down sufficiently to reach their 40 % reduction goal[1]. In part because "renewable" doesn't mean "no CO2 emitted". Renewables still emit significantly more CO2 than nuclear plants do per generated unit of energy. Solar panels need to be produced, transported, installed and maintained, they are not recyclable, their lifetime is very limited (25 to 50 years efficient production). A similar thing goes on with wind. Renewables are also more deadly per TWH than nuclear. Even when counting all the disasters [2].
Compare France (a nuclear power generation country) to Germany and this all becomes very clear. France has one of the lowest consumer electricity prices in Europe. Germany has the second highest consumer electricity price in the world. Yet, France has significantly lower CO2 emissions per capita.
Also, the "wasted CO2 cost" of shutting down nuclear plants prematurely is not 0. Significant amounts of CO2 are produced during installing and "uninstalling" of nuclear power plants. If you close such a plant prematurely it means the tons of CO2 per generated TWH go up. Your clean nuclear plant all of a sudden becomes dirtier. I wasn't able to find or calculate how significant this is however.
[1]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=germany+reduction+goal&t=ffab&iar=...
[2]https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
The Germans couldn't even do that nasty political thing that France is doing even if they wanted to. That's how high their production price (and subsidies through taxes) are.
https://selectra.co.uk/energy/guides/tariffs/electricity/eur...