Solar panels on land used for biofuels could power all cars and trucks electric | Hacker News Reader

Solar panels on land used for biofuels could power all cars and trucks electric

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Not surprising at all - photovoltaics yield about 50 W/m2 on average at mid-ish latitudes. Last time I checked (see below) biofuels are around 100x less efficient per acre (and in the case of algae-based biofuel, have a lot of post-processing that make them even less attractive.)

1 acre of corn ~ 500 gallons of ethanol (~6kWh/Liter for ethanol) so 50046e3 = 12 MWh/4046 m^2 ~ 3000 Wh/m^2 for corn. If there is one growing season per year, then that energy is spread over 24*365 hours. So about 0.3 W/m2 on average.

Of course, the ethanol can be stored, and has a pretty awesome energy density. So it isn't completely stupid (e.g. aircraft are a thing), although it is pretty stupid.

I'm not sure electric trucks that run off of batteries is a practical solution. Given the size and weight of trucks and cargo they require 10-15 times larger battery to provide noticeably smaller range. Throw in refueling time and it's really not the best solution for CO2 reduction. I'd prefer to see hydrogen-powered trucks. Use all that extra energy to produce hydrogen.

Naturally this is relevant only for current battery tech and capacity.

This is an often repeated talking point, but the reality on the ground has proven hydrogen vehicles to be failures every time they are tried.

Hydrogen trials outright fail or prove to be substantially more expensive overall than EVs every time they’re tried.

The hydrogen vehicles are more complicated, more expensive, have expensive fuel which is difficult to transport and store, have no economies of scale or a realistic path to on (unlike batteries and electric motors), introduce serious safety concerns, and lack the convenience of being able to refuel on site.

And EV trucks, like in every other category, are outselling hydrogen trucks by orders of magnitude. See recent China sales [0].

[0]: https://cleantechnica.com/2025/11/26/chinas-bev-trucks-and-t...

EV trucks got a head start because we already have extensive electricity networks, though. That makes rolling out charging stations a lot easier than rolling out a hydrogen distribution network (the existing network to distribute gasoline will not work because it’s made for fluids, that of natural gas won’t work either because hydrogen molecules are so small, and the natural gas distribution network often doesn’t have the necessary density)

Because of that, EV trucks might be a local optimum.

Having said that, hydrogen is difficult to handle. To get reasonable power density, you have make it liquid, compress it, or do both. Purely liquid is impractical, given that it happens at 33K at normal room temperature, so you need pressure, lots of it.

Yes, and the energy required to compressed it to liquid form is immense, leading to high costs.

And until it’s made from something other than methane it won’t be a climate solution. In fact hydrogen production is a major climate problem that should be solved first before we consider wasting any green hydrogen on something that can be done cheaper with electricity.

China at this point has massive economy of scale when it comes to EV, so of course they will try to turn everything into EV.

From what I could find, it appears that there's about 100x times more funding that goes into EVs R&D than into HFCVs. One might think that there could be solutions to most if not all listen issues with hydrogen trucks if there was enough interest in that field from private sector and governments around the world.

I personally would prefer that there was better battery tech which would take less space, weight and have more density. But we are not there yet, so hydrogen to me seems like a decent solution for trucking industry if only it had something more than token R&D funding.

But the problems with hydrogen are fundamental and inherent to it as a molecule, not something innovation can change.

- Energy required to get it from water is fixed.

- energy required to compress it (and got for it liquify it) is fixed.

- Explosion dangers and basically invisible flames are fixed.

- Difficulty in transporting are fixed.

> It appears that there’s about 100x time more funding.

That may be because battery technology has proven itself and has paths to scale (phone, laptops, battery storage, a million different consumer electronics) for any new advancement. While hydrogen has proven itself a failure time and time again and has no paths to scale.

At this point hydrogen powered anything are solutions in search of a problem.

Actually for most trucking batteries are already practical. Most trucks travel only one or two hundred miles a day, like doing deliveries or going from a port to a warehouse, or a warehouse to a location like a factory or store. And even long-range trucking is mostly with loads that are volume constrained, not weight, so the additional weight of batteries is not a big problem. The big advantage of batteries is lower cost per mile

Here's a company actually doing this https://www.terraformindustries.com/

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