Comment by Tade0
13 hours ago
> EVs take forever to charge, rendering long trips unrealistic.
You'll find EVs that will go 700km+ with just one, 15min stop, as they charge at over 350kW in this day and age:
https://ev-database.org/#group=vehicle-group&av-1=1&rs-pr=10...
You'd want to make that 15min stop at least once on such a trip. Or fly instead.
> It's only through trillions of research dollars, that current battery tech is where it is.
Problem is that while batteries only needed scale and improvements in manufacturing processes to become cheaper, there's no such path with hydrogen.
The tank and the fuel cell are inherently expensive. The fueling station costs literally 10x that of a fast charger and in this day and age doesn't even charge faster as while the first customer will be done in less than 15min, the next needs to wait for the system to repressurize and that takes time. Also it goes kaboom if it fails, which is something we know, because it already happened. The fuel itself cannot be cheaper than electricity unless you want to make it from natural gas, in which case you better just use that instead.
> (batteries are terrible, environmentally)
The sheer energy that's wasted by a hydrogen car vs EV over its life cycle is enough to produce and safely dispose of a battery.
And this is what it really boils down to: hydrogen is not energetically efficient, therefore you can't make it cheaper unless you use fossil fuels. We already have fossil fuel cars.
There is only one car in that database that has even close to a 700km range on long trips, and that is only under perfect conditions.
As with any car, you don't wait until out of fuel to recharge. Instead, you seek to do so well before. These pages at least understand a little of that, and cite a real-world range under perfect conditions of 450km before recharging, with a range of 300km afterwards.
Yet these figures are with no heat or AC, with it not below -10C, and with an incredibly slow speed of 110km/hr, which is illegal on some freeways in the US and Canada (yes, too slow on a freeway is illegal). At least, according to this page.
And yes, this is a "long trip" after all. I often have circumstances where I drive 1600km a day.
For current situations, although the future can be different, if you click on the details, it's actually 22 minutes to get an 80% charge, and of course with 400kw thrown at it. You have to get to the charger, hope one is free, then start this business. Just the on/off plus charging would realistically be 30 minutes, and taking 1 1/2 hours off to charge is ridiculous.
The current real world problems are, you'll never find that level of charging anywhere along the route of your long trip. Not with assurances it actually works, and that you don't have to redirect 100s of kms out of the path you wish to take. I cite current, because the future is just that. However, you'll literally have to spend trillions on infra just to do anything more than that, because if you're having literal parking lots full of cars charging at turn-offs on interstates, that's going to require massive, new long-haul electricity infra.
Which is really the point. Very slow to charge, hard to get charged, and once the infra is in place, there's still issues. Like recycling. And weight of car. And peak demand vs storage (such as with h2). And more.
Each tech stands poorly against gas cars, in terms of usability, reliability, range, fueling issues, and so on. That's to be expected though, with over 100 years of relentless development of carbon beasts, in planes, ships, cars, engines of all sorts.
It will take decades at the very least to get as good with electric in any form.
Yet what do I hear and see?
What madness do I see relentlessly spouted?
That one tech is the only answer, that R&D will change nothing, that even though range is an issue, the person is the problem, not the range, and so on.
Like the crass "use an airplane" comment.
Ah well.
> I often have circumstances where I drive 1600km a day.
Do you not do stops? The ranges I've shown include a 15min stop to recharge.
Anyway, I used to do such trips regularly. Covered over 100k km like that. I still did stops every ~400km because a man's gotta eat and, more importantly, wee.
Also sleep, because after a few close calls caused by 18h+ of driving I figured it makes more sense to find a hotel after 1200km or so.
Overall, current-day EVs and infrastructure wouldn't add more than 30min (if anything at all) compared to a combustion car if I were to do the same trip today.
In hindsight I should have flown and take taxis at my destination - would have been cheaper.
My view is that you're arguing about a non-issue, because the small minority that actually runs down a full tank before stopping is endangering others and being unkind to their bodies.