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An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that’s the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.

  • frezik
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    7 days ago

    There’s also expected future battery improvements to consider. We can’t make a useful battery-powered airplane right now that could do passenger service from LA to Sydney. EV long haul trucking is also in its infancy at a barely feasible level for a limited number of cases. Then there’s heavy construction equipment like cranes. All of which are cited as niches that hydrogen would be useful.

    Thing is, our battery tech tends to improve–about 5-8% capacity by weight each year, at the higher end of that over the last few years. That’s a doubling every 10-15 years. We’re not at theoretical limits yet, money is still being pumped into both fundamental research and large scale deployment, and we have every reason to believe this trend will continue. That’s going to squeeze out the niches where hydrogen is useful.