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Comment by magicalhippo | Hacker News Reader

We've owned an EV for two years and charging at home has been a huge deal, especially for my SO.

She needs to get to bed early, so when hanging out with friends she hated having to go to the gas station on her way home. Often resulting in panic the next day. More than once she ran out of gas cause she forgot to look when driving off in the morning.

It takes about 3 seconds to plug in the car when we get back home, and we never have to worry about running out when we drive away in the morning.

Hydrogen would have to be significantly better in price and range to offset this for our future vehicle purchase. A mere 2x range increase over pure EV won't cut it.

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This is just post-hoc rationalization. The extra few minutes of refueling time is hardly a problem.

Even so, eventually you likely will be able to refuel at home since home electrolysis is possible.

> This is just post-hoc rationalization.

For you maybe. For my SO I can assure you it's absolutely not.

Having owned an EV for two years now, it's clear that it's been good enough for us. Yes range is a bit limited, but for us it hasn't been an issue. It has some upsides like fairly trivial home-charging if you got a garage.

As such, hydrogen can't just deliver the same to be competitive. Hydrogen will have to deliver more. Longer range at same cost wouldn't be enough for us, the negatives would make it a no-go. So it would have to be longer range for much cheaper.

But I don't see how cost can be significantly cheaper, given the process inefficiencies and infrastructure required.

Looking at the concepts[1] I can't imagine them being cheaper than a home EV charger, which is about 1000-1500 USD installed. Never mind that we don't have any space for such a huge thing.

And I'm doubtful as to how much H2 we'll be able to generate here in Norway during winter.

[1]: https://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/index.php/home-hydrogen-fuel...

Then I will have to disagree. I insist that it is still post-hoc rationalization.

Sooner or later, hydrogen cars will be cheaper to own than a battery car. Once this happens, none of this reasoning will hold up to scrutiny.

Should be noted that you can have hydrogen delivered in the same way propane/LPG can be delivered. In fact, gasoline/petrol could have been delivered since the first days of the automobile. None of these ideas really mattered in the end.

> Once this happens, none of this reasoning will hold up to scrutiny.

My point is it can't just be say 20% cheaper to own. It'll have to be much more than that to offset the pain of having to refuel.

Sure, if it's 20% cheaper including having the H2 delivered at home, then we're approaching something that can be considered.

As we are talking about a large ticket item (cars), a 20% difference is a big deal.

As with all fuels, this shouldn't be much more expensive than from a fueling station.

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