The case for hydrogen-powered cars

When discussing hydrogen cars, I particularly like the blog of Mux about this topic.<p>Part 1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net&#x2F;blog&#x2F;11470&#x2F;why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net&#x2F;blog&#x2F;11470&#x2F;why-fuel-cell-ca...</a><p>Part 2: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net&#x2F;blog&#x2F;11493&#x2F;why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net&#x2F;blog&#x2F;11493&#x2F;why-fuel-cell-ca...</a><p>Part 3: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net&#x2F;blog&#x2F;11556&#x2F;why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net&#x2F;blog&#x2F;11556&#x2F;why-fuel-cell-ca...</a><p>Part 4: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net&#x2F;blog&#x2F;11572&#x2F;why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net&#x2F;blog&#x2F;11572&#x2F;why-fuel-cell-ca...</a>

The one advantage of hydrogen cars, refueling speed, is not actually an advantage for typical driving habits.<p>A hydrogen car takes about five minutes to refuel. On a typical day, a battery car takes about five <i>seconds</i> to refuel: you plug it in and you leave it overnight. Sure, the actual charging takes longer, but who cares? You’re not involved.<p>On long trips, this reverses, but how often do you do those? Most people do a couple a year. You might lose a couple of hours waiting for charging there. Otherwise you’re saving minutes every week.<p>This is something I see people having a hard time truly understanding. They see that a car takes hours to recharge on a home 240V outlet, think “that’s a long time!” and stop there. They don’t realize that it’s a time <i>saver</i> most of the time.<p>Even if there was a hydrogen station on every corner, and the price was as cheap as electricity, I’d still never buy a hydrogen car. Who wants to visit a fueling station every week?

I think hydrogen cars is a technology that kills itself.<p>Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil&#x2F;gas), and that a BEV is cheaper to assemble (less parts, less piping), the market for hydrogen cars is completely dependent on the price of batteries.<p>As batteries get cheaper, and rapid chargers get faster, the niche that hydrogen can occupy gets smaller.<p>The thing is, hydrogen cars are electric cars. It&#x27;s possible some of them will even include a larger battery and become plug-in. So every hydrogen car sold will also benefit the development of better BEVs.<p>To me, this is a clear feedback loop that benefits pure BEVs. And where will BEVs be when hydrogen cars actually hit the market with significant numbers and models? What if 150kWh batteries are standard? What if 400kW charging is standard? What if the price is not much higher? These are all within reach. It&#x27;s just a matter of time, and the hydrogen economy does not seem to be moving fast enough that its got time to spare.<p>But I fully support all subsidies and financial support for development of hydrogen fuel cells. Maybe it won&#x27;t be success in cars, but it could be in other fields.

Things not so often mentioned in the Hydrogen vs batteries discussions:<p>- just fueling hydrogen vehicles requires an substantial amount of electricity for the compressors. An electric vehicle could drive at least 10% of the distance on this electricity alone. That is not counting the compression work at any the production site and when filling the trucks.<p>- distributing hydrogen requires trucks. In most places, the elecricity network is available.<p>- refueling with a hydrogen vehicle is faster then recharging. But you have to refuel them at fuel stations. Electric vehicles can recharge at home or any parking lot with outlets - more and more companies have parking lots with electrical outlets.

If you could remove the protons from the hydrogen then the remaining electrons could be piped through wires, vastly simplifying distribution

Not sure if hydrogen cars are the future. But at the least, for a few years, they will run side by side with BEVs. Definitely in the form of buses and garbage trucks.<p>That&#x27;s why I&#x27;m currently quite fond of platinum as a speculative investment. Fuel cells require quite a bit of platinum. Yet platinum has rarely been cheaper relative to other commodities like gold. I think because the market is discounting a decline in diesel engines and maybe because of recycling. (Even though platinum has been more expensive than gold even before catalysts were common.)<p>In addition, platinum deserves to receive a geopolitical risk premium. 80% of the world&#x27;s platinum is mined (at a loss!) in South Africa, which is prone to intense labor disputes and looking less attractive every day. And the next big producer is Russia. Yet above ground stock piles have declined in the past decade.<p>In the 1+ year that I&#x27;ve been in platinum, it hasn&#x27;t been a success. The market just remains comatose. But we&#x27;ll see :-)

&quot;This remains a categorical advantage over BEVs, which even under fast-charging conditions typically require several hours to fully recharge.&quot;<p>-That&#x27;s BS. Should say 30 min. to 1 hour. Hydrogen is a dead end. Toyota and Hyundai are only making hydrogen cars for the ZEV credits.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;UOt9KF2fsdw?t=128" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;UOt9KF2fsdw?t=128</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;zC3zM9rrUT0?t=609" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;zC3zM9rrUT0?t=609</a>

Hydrogen has serious technical issues compared to batteries. It is very hard to store, easily flammable, can cause metal issues -- see hydrogen embrittlement and attack -- and is basically not present in nature except as a byproduct of fossil fuel extraction.<p>So you need to dump a bunch of energy in creating a very difficult to handle material. In comparison, battery tech gets 7-10% better each year and has the immense economies of scale of electronics, electric motors, and power electronics all driving down cost and increasing competition.<p>There&#x27;s a reason oil and gas companies propelled a lot of this development.

This seems kind of silly to me. I&#x27;m no expert but as far as I can tell, almost all the difficulties confronting electrics are known quantities that we make slow but steady progress on each year. Meanwhile this author is saying, that for hydrogen to be viable we just have to solve this one massive distribution system problem and we&#x27;re good.<p>Isn&#x27;t it kind of obvious which tech is more likely to overcome its impediments? Especially since problems that can be solved in small bitsized pieces is exactly the kind of thing big corporations are good at?

Hydrogen is a dream technology, but it comes with some caveats. Right now production tends to be linked to fossile fuels, either as a result of extraction, refinement, or from electrolysis powered by coal. Presently the only for this to scale and be green will be nuclear power, and the politics are poisonous around that in every way. It’s expensive to even try to build a plant, and without the political will to deal with the waste, it’s dsngerous too.<p>Then there’s storage of Hydrogen, which is manageable, but not trivial. Transportation is difficult, but again possible to manage given enough drive to make it work. Fuel cells also currently require expensive catalysts such as platinum. I don’t see any of these problems close to being approached, never mind solved.<p>This is a well written and comprehensive article, but I don’t feel it has answers to the central issues of scaling up the Hydrogen economy. On the other hand, Hydrogen can be green, while mass produced lithium batteries are anything, but.

There is no case to be made for hydrogen-powered cars. EVs are going mainstream full-power ahead. In 5 years there will be like 50 EV models on the market (already being designed right now).

I think we&#x27;ll end up with enough &quot;next generation&quot; energy (renewable, whatever), that we&#x27;ll be able to afford the inefficiencies in manufacturing &quot;legacy&quot;, high-energy-density fuels -- and product precursors, e.g plastics -- where still needed. (Avoiding further extraction and all the pollution and environmental damage and unqualified and quantified future impacts.) And our overall carbon burden may be enough less (disregarding accumulated atmospheric load, in this arugment), that we can afford the corresponding limited amounts of exhaust.<p>So, for common transport, I don&#x27;t know whether pure hydrogen still fits in. It hasn&#x27;t scaled, and it&#x27;s still more difficult to handle.

&quot;Most H2 is created through a technique called &quot;cracking,&quot; which involves splitting the methane molecule (CH4) found in natural gas into two H2 molecules and a free carbon atom.&quot;<p>You can generate methane from rotting garbage, cow dung and whatnot. Almost anything that rots. And some of it is now torched as the transport is too expensive from far away oilfields.<p>But here&#x27;s and idea: burn that methane directly in fuel cell?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;newatlas.com&#x2F;platinum-free-methane-fueled-fuel-cells&#x2F;17064&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;newatlas.com&#x2F;platinum-free-methane-fueled-fuel-cells...</a><p>People are WAY too exited about that &quot;only water vapor from the tailpipe!&quot; -hype.

Isn&#x27;t the problem that the _COST_ of hydrogen powered cars &#x2F; fuel astronomical compared to batteries and petroleum?

The only way hydrogen works as a fuel storage medium if you have more electricity than customers for it. In he Orkney Isles wind is used in this way.<p>Hydrogen does not fit into the more popularly imagined future where renewables creates electricity that is then stored in parked cars, to be used when everyone gets home and the solar has run out.

Does anyone know anything about the potential for fuel cell tech to replace diesel in diesel-electric locomotives?

<i>(In investing jargon, this is known as the &quot;Death Valley Curve.&quot;)</i><p>All this time I thought it was a biblical reference but I guess it&#x27;s actually about California. Everything&#x27;s about California, really, when you get right down to it.

6000 words and no technical arguments of why hydrogen is viable or not.

Not related to hydrogen, but it takes as much electricity to refine and distribute gasoline to drive 1km as an electric car uses to drive 1km

The hydrogen car is mostly a way to return drivers to slavery to gas stations.<p>Heavy trucks, though...

Stan Meyer tech has been ready for mass production for well over a decade. But it can&#x27;t be released until the death of the petro-dollar slavery system.<p>Energy == Money == Power and currently the MIC has most of it. Decentralized production of energy is their biggest threat.