Quote:
Originally Posted by Johno.UK
The biggest issue with hydrogen is the amount of energy it takes to produce the stuff in the first place plus the usual storage and transport problems.
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This is the point that I've seen brought up by EV experts. The amount of energy required to produce hydrogen is far in excess of what an electric vehicle uses. And that makes sense when you think about it - you're doing more energy conversions with a hydrogen vehicle, so the energy is lost from the fuel. As Mike says, hydrogen is being converted back into electricity in the car anyway. So with an EV, you use electricity. With a hydrogen vehicle, you convert the electricity to hydrogen, drive the hydrogen about the country, put it in the car and convert it back into electricity. It's very inefficient.
Hydrogen cars are like nuclear fusion generators. They're always 10 years away. Even in the 90s, hydrogen was the wonder fuel that we'd all be using. We're 25 years later and haven't really made significant progress in this.
In the amount of time that hydrogen cars have made very little progress, EVs have gone from nothing to being produced by all major vehicle manufacturers. Battery tech has gone from a little bit of extra range on a hybrid to over 300 miles. Charging has gone from 12 hours to an hour. Whilst EVs are not there yet, they're making far more rapid progress than hydrogen cars have.
Hydrogen has several major advantages, but by the time that tech is ready, we'll already be on EVs anyway. It has no advance at a decent rate because otherwise, it's too late. By 2030 EVs will have taken over. And with renewable energy systems requiring battery backups, we're finding all sorts of good uses for ex-EV battery packs too.