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German economy minister presses EU for technology-neutral car policy
(dpa-international.com)
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this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2026
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Wait, that wouldn't be technology-neutral. The emission limits are the same for combustion cars, hydrogen-powered cars, and electric cars. The car industry can do whatever it wants to reduce emissions of internal combustion cars to those limits. It is just unlucky that people don't buy these hydrogen cars for ten times the price!
Ah, so you figured out our government is made of hypocrite millionaires. Whenever they say something vague that kind of makes sense at first they usually mean the exact opposite.
Well you don't get any support for buying a hydrogen car as you get for buying an electric one.
Neither do companies get funding support for installing hydrogen stations as you get for electric ones.
So your example only works if there's no funding support involved.
EDIT: I don't think the internal combustion engine is the way btw.
Just wanted to say there are more things to consider for technology neutrality.
Hydrogen technology of that kind was supported by massive research funding for over 50 years. It hasn't delivered what it promised.
I'm not specifically supportive of hydrogen either, just wanted to say one needs to look at the whole picture.
There have been a massive number (and value) of publicly funded projects subsidising and supporting hydrogen worldwide, including Berlin. They all failed because it's a dud, an utter blind alley. The ONLY reason those trials happened was because fossil fuel companies want hydrogen to maintain their supply monopoly.
for hydrogen propulsion to make sense prerequisite is to have lots of cheap green hydrogen, which mean very cheap renewable electricity, by which point there's no need because electric cars are more direct replacement. but there are applications where hydrogen is used directly, as a reagent instead of as energy source and can be made from renewable electricity. Yara makes some of fertilizer this way and there's a pilot plant for green steelmaking in sweden iirc. it just so happens that now cheapest hydrogen is made from gas
this also pulls in different directions because people building renewable generation don't want electricity price to be too low
Absolutely agree on all counts.
The optimal flow from a consumer and global warming perspective is
build out renewables until lowest predictable output exceeds demand, at which point you have massive over generation at peak,
utilise excess power generation to crack water for hydrogen (pref sea water)
use h2 for making ammonia fertiliser and other viable use cases
Use BEVs for personal and busrs and as much as practical caternary overhead power or live rails for trains, trams etc the power should be super cheap given over capacity.
This of course runs into vested interests
doesn't matter because you have to purify it anyway
direct hydrogen uses that make sense given hydrogen is cheap are ammonia, methanol (also from biomass), steel and generally speaking fine chemicals. methanol and ammonia can be used as fuels for cases where BEVs don't work, like shipping. this also requires monstrous overbuild of power grid
prerequisite for cheap hydrogen (cheap electricity) will also make further electrification make sense and that eats lunch of hydrogen use for power even before hydrogen infra buildout happens
It's not the purification reason that it is "pref sea water" it's availability and impact of source. Fresh water is becoming a steadily scarcer resource whereas global sea levels are rising.
The water you spilt is better than fresh water quality. It does not matter what the source is. The cleaner you start out with, the less effort you need to purify. Sea water takes a far more to purify. You can use that for drinking etc. just as good as H2.
Also, the amount of water split is just not relevant. 1 GW of production at theoretical efficiency needs less than 300 m³ per hour! Absolutely nothing for such a massive power level. A cooling tower of a 1 GW power plant evaporates something like 10x as much.