Comment by ErroneousBosh
21 hours ago
Apparently 1kg of hydrogen is about 60 miles range, which seems like a lot, but apparently fuel cells are that good.
Currently hydrogen fuel if you can get it is about 15 quid a kilo in the UK, giving a tank range of around 400 miles for £80. This makes it a little more expensive than diesel, considerably more expensive than petrol, and roughly the same price as electric.
By comparison Autogas LPG is around 92p/litre (or about £1.80 per kilo) and in a very large heavy 4.6 litre Range Rover you get around 250-300 miles for your £80 tankful, depending on how heavy your right foot is.
> This makes it a little more expensive than diesel, considerably more expensive than petrol, and roughly the same price as electric
Is electric charging more expensive in the UK than petrol? That's nuts.
According to [1] it breaks down like this:
EV at rapid/ultra-rapid chargers: 25p/mile
Petrol, diesel: 15p/mile
EV charging at home: 8p/mile
This is because there's a government price cap on home electricity, but not on commercial electricity - and rapid chargers are all commercial (and of course for-profit).
[1] https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/charging/electric-...
It is if you use a rapid charger. If you're fortunate enough to be able to do what you need with a car within 50 miles or so of your house and leave it overnight to charge, it's cheaper.
At present, EVs do not solve any problem I have.
Very few people would use 100% rapid charging. Even on a long journey, they can arrive home with, say, 5-10% remaining, and recharge at home. (The car calculates this automatically.)
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If you can get a cheap electric overnight home charging tariff in the UK, then the electric cost is lower. Mid week, I charged 43kWh for the cost of £3.04 (7p per kWh). My home charger does 7kwh in a hour. Usual mileage is about 4 miles per kWh (typical rush hour drive into Edinburgh). That should give me about 170 miles of range.
Scaling it to 400 miles (400 miles at 4 miles per kWh is 100 kWh which at 7p each is about £7. Pretty much an order of magnitude better than your estimate. I admit home charging is the best arrangement and I am fortunate to have it. I did a holiday trip to the highlands and used public/hotel chargers which were closer to your numbers but also much faster (up to 150kWh per hour capacity).
I think that even discounting hydrogen engineering difficulties, the infrastructure for electric is pretty much in place and the race of the technologies is over.
The problem is that using an EV makes living in the Highlands far more expensive even allowing for the cost of diesel, because you're forced to use rapid chargers at great expense - if they're available, and actually working - or a quick trip to the shops becomes an overnight stay.