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Comment by robga | Hacker News Reader

“Not the only answer” is right.

Elsewhere on the internet, BEV vs FCEV arguments descend into typical slanging matches. But it’s not A vs B. The world and market can have A and B and C and D.

Many of us will never be able to plug in at home.

With ICE cars stopping sales By 2030 in my country, options like fuel cells are totally viable. My local hydrogen station is green, using electrolysis from excess grid energy. The Toyota Mirai is a nice car. There are also promising projects into hydrogen combustion engines.

Then you have new tech like Zero Petroleum in early stages.

I’d not discount BEVs being the Betamax of the 2020s.

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> Many of us will never be able to plug in at home.

800v infrastructure cars can DC fast charge at over 250KW, which means you get 13 miles of range per minute. Plug in, and let's say it takes you just 5 minutes to get a coffee and donut in the shop on your way into work - you've got almost 70 miles of range added. If someone lives in the city, that's a significant amount of driving, from just 5 minutes of charge time.

But charging at home...I take it you mean people who live in apartments without a driveway? Because "level 1" charging is actually pretty sufficient for many, many people given how few miles they actually drive per day. You plug in when you get home around, say, 7pm and by 8am your car has been charging at, say, 10 amps / 120v. That's 14.4kw/hr. Many evs use around 250-300whr/mile on average, so that's 48 miles of range every night. If you install a level 2 charger, you're looking at being able to fully charge in a couple of hours.

There's no reason apartment buildings can't be set up with charging systems for their parking lots/garages...with deployment scaling as there is demand.

Actually I was thinking of my local situation in the UK where about a third of the population live in medium density terraced housing. Some streets have minimal charging but with parking hard to find locals often resist their installation.

Hydrogen is not considered a viable fuel alternative for the masses due to the high risk of explosion among many other factors. I wish people would stop mentioning it in these discussions. https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-storage-chall...

Leaving aside the niggling inconvenience of explosions, stepping back and looking at the larger climate picture and global carbon balance sheet ...

Blue Hydrogen isn't exactly the magic wand that some are green wishing it to be.

https://theconversation.com/blue-hydrogen-what-is-it-and-sho...

Stop spreading FUD. The risk of explosion is as as high as in gasoline powered cars, only H2 gets ventilated faster and burns without a visible flame.

The risk of gasoline 'explosion' (neither would be an explosion, it would be a fire) is higher with gasoline because its vapors are heavier than air and tend to pool on the ground and in structures.

An explosion is certain in case of collision with a train and the explosion might be powerful enough to unseat a train.

So don't collide with a train?

https://youtu.be/OA8dNFiVaF0

Kinda hard when railway and streets cross.

Plug in at work, while shopping, or force people who build parking to add chargers.

there is a very simple physical reason hydrogen for personal transport is not feasible: electrolyzer to fuel cell efficiency is much lower than charging a battery.

we simply don't have enough green energy to afford wasting it on use Cases were batteries are feasible, and this won't change for some time. the article acknowledges that btw, and that is coming from a company that has a vested interest in the contrary due to selling the Mirai.

> Many of us will never be able to plug in at home.

Why is this a major concern? There's no possibility for me to plug in at home and my EV works just fine. Public charging stations are totally sufficient and the long range means I don't have to charge but every few weeks. Of course this is totally location specific (Netherlands).

> Why is this a major concern? There's no possibility for me to plug in at home and my EV works just fine.

It’s not a major concern. It’s just a buying factor. For those who can plug in at home it’s a plus. It’s a weak con for me. I’d rather not have to do two 60 minutes charges a week vs 4 minutes at a fuel station.

It’s light years from a scientific study but I definitely notice a lot more EVs on residential streets with off-street parking than not. In the UK at least it’s easy to spot/count them as the number plates have a green stripe indicating zero emissions.

I can understand how the difference in time spent fueling at a petrol station vs charging station would be a hurtle for a lot of folks. For me I don't even notice. When I'm getting close to 20% I just park a little further down the street at a charger. Total time spent fueling from my perspective is the time to hook up and remove the charger (about 2 minutes) + about 2 minutes walking back and forth. The rest of the time is passive as it's just parked overnight. Ironically on road trips I've found it actually takes less time to charge than to fuel because the gas stations in Europe are so busy this summer. Sometimes there's a 30 - 45 minute wait just to get into the stations :(. Meanwhile I just cruise right into a supercharger, use the restroom, and by the time I'm back it's ready to go.

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