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Nearly all major car companies are sabotaging EV transition, and Japan is worst, study finds (thedriven.io)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It is great tech, but there are serious downsides too.

storage and handling: Hydrogen is a tiny atom, so it leaks like nobody's business. Even liquid hydrogen is terribly low-density which makes pretty much a hard limit on storage density, unlike battery tech which can at least hypothetically dramatically improve. Pressure vessels suck. They have to be crazy sturdy and roughly spherical which places major design limitations on vehicles that use them.
distribution: EVs can limp by on sparse fast charging stations and home charging while better infrastructure builds out. Electrical supply is already ubiquitous. Who's going to want a hydrogen vehicle (which you can absolutely already buy, nobody's stopping you in the US at least) with so few fueling options? The upfront investment to bootstrap a market with hydrogen stations to the point of even competing with crappy EV charging is enormous.
no onboard energy recovery: Regenerative braking is an incredible benefit on its own.
industry synergy: EV manufacture benefits from tons of other industries investing in battery tech. The tide lifts all boats.

There are solutions as with any tech, but the transition picture with hydrogen is a lot lot worse than EVs. The least worst option tends to win.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I don't have a good understanding of the storage and handling aspect, other than to say I think most of the leakage is from embrittlement, for which the primary defense is ceramic coatings, or periodically baking the pressure vessel. That is to say it seems like a manageable problem. Design limitations are also manageable IMO. Ok it's unfortunate it can't be made into any shape like batteries but it's also not significantly worse than a fuel tank.

For distribution, of course there's no network if no one is driving hydrogen cars. It's not that much of a leap to imagine that gas stations will start selling hydrogen surely.

Regenerative braking is possible for HEVs. The Toyota Mirai has it.

I don't really follow you with industry synergy. Like people are using batteries so batteries are best? What if we hit peak Lithium (or China puts the squeeze on)? In that case it would be better to have an alternative up your sleeve.

the transition picture with hydrogen is a lot lot worse than EVs.

That may be your opinion but I'm not convinced. Japan and Australia are going all in on Hydrogen. I don't know much about this, but it seems like there's plenty of smart people who believe it's viable enough to invest entire countries economic futures on.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

None of the points you make are wrong, it's just a lot more uphill for hydrogen looking at the total picture. With almost every issue there is a way forward for hydrogen, but EVs are already significantly farther along the curve. It's hard to overcome that kind of snowballing. Only time will tell!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

IMO EVs are going great but adoption / implementation is struggling in some use cases, and hydrogen might be a nice alternative.