Hydrogen is completely unsuitable for land based transportation because building the infrastructure and actually making the stuff is pretty hard to do at scale. The electricity grid, on the other hand, already exists. And once you’ve built the charger, you don’t need to send a truck to refill it on a regular basis.
H2 is way better for trucks and planes than batteries, because even with the reinforced tanks it doesn’t weigh much, and the refueling does not take long.
I agree that battery electric is probably the way to go for consumer passenger vehicles, though.
electrolysis requires a lot of input energy so it’s not very efficient, and nuclear is still very expensive and politically contentious. And if we were somehow able to get new nuclear plants built they’d be put to much better use replacing coal plants than for H2 production.
Sure, but electrolysis is only around 30% efficient — so you need 3 units of energy to produce the hydrogen to drive a vehicle x distance, whereas a BEV would only need one unit to travel the same distance.
That is, you can use the electricity generated from that nuclear power plant to drive three times the distance with a fleet of BEVs than you’ll get out of a fleet of hydrogen powered vehicles.
Like I said the problem is the infrastructure. Building this out at scale would require a massive effort that nobody will want to pay for. And rightly so because electric trucks are already a thing and will get a lot more popular in the next few years.
To piggyback off this though, there are areas where the infrastructure would make sense, like long distance shipping trucks and busses that have pretty well defined areas that they could regularly dock and refuel at, and those are the exact situations where electric is struggling the most.
All to say, the research into hydrogen powered vehicles isn’t useless, even if it’s not going to offer anything at the consumer level.
The problem is that batteries keep improving–about double capacity by weight every 10 to 15 years. I’ve been following hydrogen development for decades now, and fundamental problems in storage and efficiency have yet to be solved. If you were to start building hydrogen truck infrastructure today, batteries would catch up and everyone would just use that.
But ultimately, we should look to replace 90% of long haul trucking with trains.
The electricity grid, on the other hand, already exists
…largely in the same appalling, copper-line state it has been in since its original installation 100 years ago. Which is woefully and catastrophically unprepared for an America full of EV drivers.
Not disagreeing with your core point, but just saying. The American electrical backbone system is absolutely in no way prepared for a mass shift to electric vehicles at this time. We’re getting there, and if EV adoption continues at its current pace we run a pretty good chance of being fine so long as proper upgrades are actually being made, but we’re not there yet and demand for EVs absolutely could still outpace the ability of our electrical infrastructure to support them.
Hydrogen is completely unsuitable for land based transportation because building the infrastructure and actually making the stuff is pretty hard to do at scale. The electricity grid, on the other hand, already exists. And once you’ve built the charger, you don’t need to send a truck to refill it on a regular basis.
H2 is way better for trucks and planes than batteries, because even with the reinforced tanks it doesn’t weigh much, and the refueling does not take long.
I agree that battery electric is probably the way to go for consumer passenger vehicles, though.
/owns a hydrogen car
*if we can find a clean way of producing H2 at scale
Electrolysis works, though as with everything, nuclear is the best option.
electrolysis requires a lot of input energy so it’s not very efficient, and nuclear is still very expensive and politically contentious. And if we were somehow able to get new nuclear plants built they’d be put to much better use replacing coal plants than for H2 production.
Sure, but electrolysis is only around 30% efficient — so you need 3 units of energy to produce the hydrogen to drive a vehicle x distance, whereas a BEV would only need one unit to travel the same distance.
That is, you can use the electricity generated from that nuclear power plant to drive three times the distance with a fleet of BEVs than you’ll get out of a fleet of hydrogen powered vehicles.
Like I said the problem is the infrastructure. Building this out at scale would require a massive effort that nobody will want to pay for. And rightly so because electric trucks are already a thing and will get a lot more popular in the next few years.
To piggyback off this though, there are areas where the infrastructure would make sense, like long distance shipping trucks and busses that have pretty well defined areas that they could regularly dock and refuel at, and those are the exact situations where electric is struggling the most.
All to say, the research into hydrogen powered vehicles isn’t useless, even if it’s not going to offer anything at the consumer level.
Electric trucks are lugging around their batteries moreso than their payload.
The problem is that batteries keep improving–about double capacity by weight every 10 to 15 years. I’ve been following hydrogen development for decades now, and fundamental problems in storage and efficiency have yet to be solved. If you were to start building hydrogen truck infrastructure today, batteries would catch up and everyone would just use that.
But ultimately, we should look to replace 90% of long haul trucking with trains.
…largely in the same appalling, copper-line state it has been in since its original installation 100 years ago. Which is woefully and catastrophically unprepared for an America full of EV drivers.
Not disagreeing with your core point, but just saying. The American electrical backbone system is absolutely in no way prepared for a mass shift to electric vehicles at this time. We’re getting there, and if EV adoption continues at its current pace we run a pretty good chance of being fine so long as proper upgrades are actually being made, but we’re not there yet and demand for EVs absolutely could still outpace the ability of our electrical infrastructure to support them.