For those of you really thinking about this, here's the current status of hydrogen fueling stations in California:
Out of 65 stations in the state, only 33 currently have fuel and are known "online".
Good luck!
Out of 65 stations in the state, only 33 currently have fuel and are known "online".
Good luck!
Hydrogen cars are the worst of all worlds. You still have to overhaul your production and distribution infrastructure. But you keep the complicated power train and time suck of tank-filling from ICE vehicles.
So if the goal is to make green fuel why not just use supply the existing natural gas network with synthetically produced fuel? Why go to great lengths to ship and store hydrogen that’s really really hard to work with in so many ways?
I think the answer is that there’s no intention of hydrogen being actually a green fuel source. It’s just going to be made from cracking hydrocarbons but it’s branding as green will obfuscate that. If they wanted to make fuel from electricity which is the implied promise of hydrogen they’d do that already. But they don’t. There’s absolutely no intention of being green here.
If it made sense they’d do it already. Electrolysis->methane and use the existing network makes no sense. Hydrogen with its custom network is an even larger step from making sense.
The "drive train" is electric motors from a lithium ion battery... you know, like a "regular" EV.
> time suck of tank-filling from ICE vehicles.
The Toyota spec page says it can fill the tank in 5 minutes. How many EVs can go from nothing or practically nothing to a full charge in 5 minutes?
It's an EV + a fuel cell and tank assembly. Same drivetrain. Complicated powertrain [1].
> Toyota spec page says it can fill the tank in 5 minutes. How many EVs can go from nothing or practically nothing to a full charge in 5 minutes?
5 minutes to fill, call it ten minutes round trip to get there and back, plus scheduling friction: that's 20 to 30 minutes out of the day. If you don't own a car, you don't have to do this.
I don't own an EV. But the people I know who do spend close to zero minutes a year actually charging their EV. It happens silently while parked at home or at work or, on road trips, while they lunch. The normalisation of the fill-up routine is mind-bogglingly taxing in a way that's obvious to anyone who's spent any amount of time as an adult not driving a car (for Americans, living in New York).
I've owned and driven ICE vehicles since the late 90s. I've owned cars in the country and the city, in 3 states of one country and in a second country. I've driven cars significant distances in two further countries.
The trip you describe where you're going out of your way specially to get fuel and then return, is an exceedingly rare occurrence IME. It's generally just something I (or my wife) will do on the way as the tank gets to somewhere below half or a third full.
Obviously if we're on a long distance trip we'll be more specific about it, but the expectation you have about making a special trip just to get fuel in a car is, as you put it "mind boggling".
Okay, you're still adding a minimum of 10 minutes to your day? A couple times a month? The convenience of not having to do that should be undeniable.
Maybe that would be the case with a fuel cell due to lower energy density, I don't know.
It's certainly not the case with an efficient ICE car. My Mazda gets up to 1,200 km from a tank of diesel. The VW I had ~15 years ago got about 950km from a tank of unleaded.
Don't get me wrong, I understand that recharging a battery vehicle at home is convenient for day to day short journeys due to it's convenience via passiveness - but but a stop to get fuel is hardly comparable to the sort of delays you have with charging battery vehicles in the same scenario.
I don't the average mileage or a hydrogen vehicle nor tank size, so I'll take your word on that. Using your numbers and the map I plotted a route that does get you from San Diego to the Oregon border. But you will need a tow truck to meet you at the end, because there would not be enough fuel to get you back to Sacramento.