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Refueling a hydrogen car in California is so annoying that drivers are suing Toyota
(www.latimes.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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You need to produce the hydrogen, if it's green one you're using electricity to do it, there's losses there (and you're using rate earth materials for the electrolysis). Then you need to liquify it to transport it, that's electricity you're using to bring it to -250°C, there's more losses here (not even considering the leaks, just energy losses). Then you put in cars where it's used to make electricity, there's losses again. Now add up all the costs and think about the cost at the pump compared to...
The alternative is to just take the electricity from the beginning, putting it in batteries to move cars.
With hydrogen you're using way more electricity to produce the same final output, you're just wasting a ton of it.
Quebec has the cheapest electricity in North America and it's still not financially reasonable to use our electricity to produce hydrogen. What ends up happening? Hydrogen for cars comes from the fossil fuel industry.
Where can we use it though? Where batteries aren't a reasonable solution, that's heavy transport.
You are not reading my post. The entire set of steps is exactly the same number of steps as charging a battery. Both are electrochemical processes and have similar losses. In theory, we can make a fuel cell that operates just as efficient as a li-ion battery.
The other point is that the process of moving hydrogen around is cheaper than moving energy via electricity. Losses of distribution are similar too. People are forgetting how big and complex the grid is.
How is it the same number of steps? You're taking from the grid and putting in the car OR you're taking from the grid, doing electrolysis, liquifying, transporting, storing and now you're finally putting it in the car.
To transport the hydrogen you're using tons of energy to liquify it, you still need to transport the electricity to do that, why not simply use the electricity in the cars directly then if you're going to transport it anyway?
It's funny because all experts that have a realistic outlook on the subject say the same thing, hydrogen for cars is stupid and inefficient and greewashing.
But hey, continue believing what you want, not as if you had any power over the market and you'll have to realize at some point that hydrogen cars were just something manufacturers tried to make a thing in order to not have to invest in making EVs.
Because a fuel cell is type of electrochemical device. It is literally a type of battery. So whether you are using a li-ion battery or a fuel cell, you are turning chemical energy into electrical energy. Also, the process of distributing hydrogen is comparable to the grid and has similar losses. The latter of which will see a dramatic reduction in efficiency as more renewable energy go onto the grid. Specifically due to the need for energy storage.
There are no experts saying hydrogen for cars is stupid. You are just hearing a lot of pro-BEV marketing and their fanboys. Of course, some of them pretend to be experts, but they are not.
In the long run, BEVs are going to die off because they are not economical vehicles. They cost far more than conventional cars and require huge amounts of new minerals for the raw materials used to make them. If the goal is just to have an EV, then the answer is a type of EV that does not so much raw material nor cost so much. That leads to ideas like PHEVs or FCEVs.