>And what is hydrogen but fuel made from water?
98% of H2 is made from fossil fuels.
You know why, right?
98% of H2 is made from fossil fuels.
You know why, right?
H2 is already expensive when reformed from natural gas - you can expect to pay 20-30 cents per mile to travel in the most advanced, fuel efficient H2 vehicle out there.
https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/exclusive-fresh-bl...
H2 made via electrolysis is a bit more than 3x that cost. Are you ready to pay $1 per mile to drive?
Of course, price generally declines with volume, so we could expect those numbers to come down if H2 were more widely adopted. But there is a thermodynamic floor on the cost of H2, which means that it will never be cost-competitive with pure electric vehicles.
https://medium.com/10x-curiosity/the-hydrogen-hopium-ea11c7a...
And then there's the complexity issue. As a former fuel cell engineer, I understand better than most how complex and finicky proton exchange membrane fuel cell systems are. They are easily poisoned, they're prone to freezing, they have long startup times, they require high-speed, expensive electric air compressors, and they have complex valving and sensors to ensure safe operation.
Purely electric vehicles simply do not have these problems. A battery and a motor is about as simple as a drivetrain can possibly be. EVs will always be fundamentally far simpler than FCEVs, which translates into a lower upfront vehicle cost.
You have no answer to these problems.
I suggest you stop furiously responding here and instead consider your biases, and reevaluate your position. Batteries are so much better than H2 for transportation on just about all fronts that the two are not even close to comparable. H2 at this point is a malicious distraction being foisted on the general public by oil companies attempting to stay relevant, and governments engaging in sunk cost fallacious thinking. The sooner fuel cells for transport (and H2 for heating) are relegated to history's dustbin, the better.
Oh, and as for your assertion that electricity sans nuclear and hydro is 85% fossil fuels... that's true... and irrelevant. 40% of electricity generated in the US today is renewable, and that number grows steadily each year. We would be absolutely foolish to use that electricity to crack water, compress the H2, transport the H2, and convert it back to electricity in fuel cells, losing 65% of the energy in the process, than simply using it directly via batteries. Come on man! Discard the propaganda, separate your emotions from your positions, and think for yourself!
A fuel cell is also an electrochemical system. An FCEV is also an EV. Same electric motors and everything. They can attain the same level of efficiency as a li-ion battery and not any more complex. Less complex even, if you seriously analyze the complexity of the battery pack. And because of that, it can easily displace BEVs.
I don't know your background, but your writing is that of a bullshit artist. It completely ignores basic facts and substitute BEV propaganda.
No, they cannot attain the same level of efficiency. It's not even close, and no one who was arguing in good faith and had done even the most cursory research on the issue would make that absurd claim.
https://tide.theimi.org.uk/industry-latest/motorpro/efficien....
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mirai-fcev-vs-model-3-bev-pau...
You're just making stuff up. We're done here.
Do you see BEV becoming the dominant truck technology?
If FCEV trucks were to take off as a technology and get to a share of say 30 % of all trucks in some region, then I'd speculate that the FCEV tech in itself would ultimately displace BEV not only in the truck but also partially in the car sector.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years...
In order to deliver enough electricity most of the time, without needing huge amounts of storage (which are tiny right now), renewables will have to be massively over built. I assume there'll be times when there's 5x or more the electricity available compared to actual consumption.
Let the sun shine and the wind blow in summer and there'll be huge amounts of electricity which cannot be stored or consumed by BEV or some other grid connected battery because they're not enough. Industrial processes won't easily consume sudden surges in available electricity either.
Take the UK grid with its average of ~ 31 GW. Let's say they triple their wind power capacity which is currently at ~ 18 GW and double their pv capacity which is currently at ~ 3 GW. That'd be 60 GW so roughly twice the electricity that's consumed on average.
We're in summer, heat pumps don't consume .. so 30 GW excess electricity over say 3 windy days adds up to ~ 2 TWh. That's the capacity of 26.7 million Tesla Model 3 (long range) with a 75 kWh battery each. And they'd all need to be charged from 0 to 100 %.
Batteries won't suffice, I think.
So what'll be done? Electrolysis, I think -> H2, ammonia, methane, ..
So there'll be significant amounts of these being produced and stored.
Ammonia might well become the energy carrier of the future, being shipped around the world with large tankers to transport energy from where it's produced to places where it's used.
If that were to become true, wouldn't the fuel cell be the fitting technology for heavy duty and/or long range vehicles?
And once there'd be infrastructure for trucks and heavy vehicles, roughly the same ifrastructure could be used for FCEV cars.
As for smoothing out the electricity supply, EVs themselves are likely to play a large role, as will home batteries. The grid of the future will be much more distributed than what we have today. Tesla recently released a report which outlines where we are, where we need to be, and what is required to get there. It's succinct yet comprehensive, and well worth a read.
https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/Tesla-Master-Plan-Part-3.pdf