We can't even roll broadband out properly let alone the massive amounts of infrastructure required to deliver enough power to every home. That leaves centralized charging hubs which will quickly become overwhelmed and a massive time sink.
There's also no reason we can't provide charging at destinations rather than homes. Workplaces, shopping centers, etc.
Transit, trains, ebikes, etc. are all significantly more efficient, less polluting, and just better solutions all around.
Not to mention that public transportation in a lot of areas can be... Let's just say perceived as unsafe.
Hydrogen (by itself) is as clean as it can be. The byproduct is water.
Personally, I think if we do have hydrogen cars in the future, hydrogen cars should require a plug and an enlarged lithium battery (say, 10kWh at least). Otherwise we’ll need to produce FAR more electricity than with battery-electric cars and consumers will be on the hook for far, far higher use costs.
Why does this matter?
Now if you’re talking plug-in hybrid hydrogen cars, that’s fine. You’ll be on pure electric 85% of the time anyway so the crazy expense of hydrogen fueling isn’t so bad.
Takes 5 minutes to fill up if the hydrogen is pre-cooled and you happen to be at the filling station (which is rare).
The post was mostly about the challenges with regulations/codes. For the most part it was a plea for governments to smooth over the jankiness they introduce to the whole process. Hardly an insurmountable challenge.
Hydrogen is dead. Upgrading the existing electrical network gradually over time (EV adoption will be gradual) is going to be significantly easier than building a distribution network from (almost) scratch as would be required for hydrogen. To think the reverse is bonkers.
Converting to hydrogen makes wayyy more sense than EV infrastructure. All of the gas station can be easily converted to hydrogen stations with different pumps and tanks. A lot cheaper than running MW of power for a EV station or upgrading neighborhoods.
Then there are people that live in apartments. It isn't feasible to have a charger for every apartment at a complex. So not everyone is going to be able to charge. Even if it is a normal outlet.
There is also the fire danger. I can't even imagine the amount of damage a fire cause by an EV could do to an apartment complex.
Then there is the vandalism issue and mantaince problems involved.
Only if you are rich dose EVs make sense. But on a mass scale they make close to zero sense.
Care to cite any sources?
This sounds suspiciously like “rip out the gas station and build a new hydrogen station”
Car manufacturers are all releasing EVs. How many are really mass producing hydrogen vehicles?
It's a scale and chicken/egg (or two sides market) problem.
Gas stations won't convert until there is a decent number of hydrogen cars on the road (in the area the station is in), and people won't buy hydrogen vehicles if there are no stations to refill at. Manufacturers won't be able to scale production to make the investment worthwhile. EVs do not suffer from this problem as there are many people already in a position to easily charge at home (yes, I know it is not everyone, but it's a large enough market to be self sufficient).
For scale, I'll posit that there isn't room for three different types of power systems. Car companies won't want to invest in hydrogen because it's clear that there will be a significant percentage of people wanting EVs. The market for hydrogen cars will always be shrinking, because EV adoption will always be growing.
Gas station business models are finely tuned, with most of their revenue from convenience goods, petrol sales are just the mechanism to get people into the store to impulse buy. EVs will play havoc with this model. Less people will go to the stations as they will charge at home, causing a feedback loop of stations closing, and ICE vehicles becoming less convenient. It will also result in less money to invest in things like hydrogen tanks and pumps.
The number of EVs is only going to continue to grow, the window for hydrogen gets smaller and smaller (and I think already closed).
> Then there is the vandalism issue and mantaince problems involved.
Not really sure what this means. Presumably you are not talking about the EVs themselves as they require a lot less maintenance than ICE vehicles.
> Only if you are rich dose EVs make sense. But on a mass scale they make close to zero sense.
EVs continue to get cheaper and cheaper. Eventually it just won't make buy new ICE vehicles, even if you have to spend thousands to put in charging infrastructure.
Perhaps it will be only the "rich" who can adopt EVs at the start, but when the majority of new cars are EV, eventually the pool of 2nd hand ICE vehicles will become mostly EVs as well. It's inevitable.
We are talking about the infrastructure of EVs not EVs them selfs. The price is dropping on EVs, but that won't matter if most people can't charge them. Which is the problem.
Vandalism is becoming more and more of a problem with EV charging stations. People are stealing the Copper wires. That will be a major issue at apartment complexes if they install charging stations.
The US. department of energy is pushing to have $1 per kilogram by 2030. ($2 per kilogram by 2025). The Toyota Mirai can go 402 miles on 16.8kg of hydrogen. And it takes 5 minutes to fill up.
How many have shipped? How many gas stations are pumping hydrogen?
> most people can't charge them
And yet there are millions of them on the road, with numbers always increasing.
The strength of EVs, and why they will win over hydrogen is that they can be adopted regardless of what the majority are doing, incremental instead of big bang. There is a sizable market of people who can charge EVs. This number is only going to grow as more and more apartments/carpark are being fitted with chargers (which people have already said are not a necessity). It's not a small task, but it can be done gradually, unlike hydrogen. Unless you get some massive coordinated effort between multiple car companies and gas stations to roll out hydrogen refil stations across an entire country in preparation for hoped for sales, people just won't buy them. EV naysayers love to talk about range anxiety for EVs. Imagine the range anxiety if you had a hydrogen vehicle today.
Prometheus and others have plans that may come to fruition.
Electric cars are for the rich. And of course they say it's the future and everyone should do it, without realizing it's literally impossible. No grid in the US could come close to handling that, much less in developing countries.
Not to mention due to range limitations, many people and companies are ruled out automatically.
I don't think electric is bad, or should go away. But it's not meant for the masses. I think H has a brighter future worldwide.
The grid absolutely can handle EVs.
The range of modern EVs is totally fine for almost all cases.
The price is an issue, but even in my poor Eastern European country the number of EV exploded this year. Mainly second hand small city cars, but also others.
Almost everyone in the midwest and mountain west considers a 3 hr (one way) drive a normalish weekly or monthly event. Sure, it's not most people, but it's not some tiny outlier.
I'm completely fine with being made a fool of, but I'm going to need more than 'yeah, it can do it.'
Maybe yours can.
In California, they were recently asked to not charge cars during certain times of the day because the power system could not support the additional load.
My understanding is that California's grid could have supported the load, they just weren't able to generate the electricity required to do so.
And ok, maybe some upgrades will be needed in some places. But the situation is not so dark as the person above described it.
Are you not cooking?
Our stove needs 1kw and our oven has 6kw.
It's not crashing when everyone is cooking why would it crash when everyone is charging?
Also it costs more (energy wise) to make H and then consume it than using the energy itself. This should probably has a relevant cost saving.
Economy of scale will bring much cheaper batteries very soon. Let's say 10-20 years
It's not at all the same as everyone on planet earth in the same hemisphere trying to charge their cars during peak summer AC time, between 4 and 6ish pm.
Why do you keep parroting this nonsense? Virtually nobody charges their car at this time
If you use anything more fancy on the PV side you can also control it on the other side.
And for more than one flat, load control is already available. We're I life we have 90 cars in the parking garage and there is a load controller
Independent of this, plenty of counties use energy to heat (consumes a lot) or have ac which also pulls a lot.
Ev charging is estimated with 10% additional load on a power grid. That's doable.
Is it a challenge? Yes. In one place more than in another place
I could go on, but it just doesn't make sense to pin hopes on hydrogen.
Batteries are less energy per volume than gas. Batteries are extremely hazardous if damaged. They have a relatively short lifespan. They are hardcore industrial hazardous waste. Power generation is likely coming from a gas power plant or even a coal power plant. The required infrastructure upgrades would be astronomical.
A significantly more efficient plant than an ICE.