Comment by matthewdgreen
1 day ago
H2 from electrolysis is wildly expensive. H2 from natural gas is more affordable. Both are alternatives to BEVs, which are the better approach to electrifying transport. If Toyota had gone all in on BEVs when it began its H2 strategy, it would be selling more EVs than Tesla. Instead it entirely ceded the field to others, first Tesla and BYD.
H2 from electrolysis is wildly expensive. H2 from natural gas is more affordable.
Irrelevant. It seems like everyone who argues against H2 is stuck on "now". Had that been the case with battery powered cars, they'd have never got off of the ground.
Batteries were terrible, wildly expensive, extremely unreliable. It's only been the immense research poured into them, that has brought their costs down.
Meanwhile, the cost of storage on an H2 car is nothing, compared to the immense and exorbitant cost of all those batteries. Batteries which make a car extremely heavy. Batteries which cannot be charged below -20C, and require heaters. Batteries which are incredibly dangerous in car accidents. Batteries which are costly, and damaging to the environment to create, difficult to recycle, and damaging to the environment to recycle.
Compared to battery tech of any type, H2 is a dream from the gods.
Yet because there hasn't been 17 trillion dollars of cash thrown into h2 generation tech, people prattle on about how expensive h2 generation is.
And it doesn't matter where h2 comes from now. It matters where it can and will come from. The goal isn't to make sources of power to generate h2 clean, the goal is to get end-polluters, cars, clean.
If the only goal was "clean", then most electric batteries charging right now, would fail that very goal. After all, there are still coal and gas power plants this very moment, and if we pulled all electric cars off the road, those would close.
No, the goal is to work towards more and more solar power, wind, etc. And in parallel, get cars ready for the day when power they're charged from isn't polluting.
The myopic view of what I deem hyper-environmentalists, is disturbing to me. It is paramount that we don't let short sighted views fog the reality around us.
Anyone arguing 1000lbs of batteries, all environmentally damaging in their construction, recycling cost, and disposal, is superior to h2, is arguing from a pedestal of sandy, earthquake prone, unstable support.
What I don't understand is why we would use H2. It's not like batteries are not getting better all the time. Not just the getting H2 for a good price but the whole system seems so much more complicated than just using a battery. What is it that H2 can do so much better that we would even spend the time and money to develop better solutions? Tell me what is the killer feature?
Because it must be a really killer feature to justify wasting about 50% of the electricity you put in and developing a distribution network and building cars that can handle H2 and even using the H2 for driving instead of steel mills or other places that might need green H2. Not to forget about the hassle of refueling with gasses that is totally different from a normal gas pump where you have to create a high pressure seal and the handle gets to cold to touch.
Also comparing a technology that will be only useful in many years with the battery technology from today is an odd choice, to say the least. Not only is the content of problematic materials constantly shrinking, the number of batteries that need recycling is currently so low that there is very little need for a big industry. But it is very likely that just like with the classic car battery recycling the more recent batteries will definitely be stripped for their precious materials.
You raise dying some good points, but hydrogen is really hard to store. It leaks out of everything. You have to very carefully design three containment vessel in order for it not to go wrong.