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martin_bech | 3 years ago

Because the infrastructure needed would be bonkers, and creating fuelibg stations is not really a solved problem. You also loose a big amount of energy converting from electric to hydrogen and back. The cars themselves almost always have low storage because the tanks are very big. Hydrogen car performance is also a lot lower then pure EV.

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93po|3 years ago

Fueling stations are a solved problem. There are compact, modular, on-site hydrogen generators designed for installation in places like gas stations. I recently met the founder of this company: https://genh2hydrogen.com/ that is doing exactly this - they're currently taking pre-orders and looking for final funding, but they have the engineering and prototyping in place. The Department of Energy even offers interest-free 30 year loans for any stations that want to buy one.

martin_bech|3 years ago

That looks promising, but the costs are still way higher then putting in EV chargers, and you can set up EV charging at home, for almost no cost.

Again the scale of hydrogen fueling stations needed would be massive

b112|3 years ago

Why do peopke always ignore the range, and specs, of the three separate car brand's H2 range, when making claims like this?

You're wrong.

And claims of energy loss!! Sure, no loss to heat in batteries? And batteries lose charge if they sit idle!

freemint|3 years ago

There is some loss in batteries but like we can measure things and hydrogen comes out way short in terms for miles driven per kWh of electricity in the grid.

MerelyMortal|3 years ago

The infrastructure needed to create a power grid for people to charge electric vehicles at home would be double-bonkers.

Upgrading fueling stations seems much easier than mining all of the copper needed to add all of the extra lines for EV charging, and then upgrading the whole national grid.

Supposedly one company has claimed 95% efficiency on creating hydrogen from electrolysis:

https://newatlas.com/energy/hysata-efficient-hydrogen-electr...

Power that by nuclear energy, and it's a green & clean winner.

bryanlarsen|3 years ago

Any grid good enough to air condition every house in the day time is good enough to charge electric cars at night.

JumpCrisscross|3 years ago

There are ancillary benefits to upgrading the grid that retrofitting pipes to pump hydrogen doesn’t bring. Most of America and Europe would do just fine without upgrades, for most of the population. And the jurisdictions touting hydrogen (e.g. Japan) have 70s-era anti-nuke greens in power.

Hydrogen is a smart hedge to pursue. But thank goodness it’s mostly Japanese tax dollars doing it.

vel0city|3 years ago

There's already tons of available lines going to a ton of people's homes. It only took a dozen or so feet of cable to add a 14-50 outlet in my garage.

Their homes were built expecting them to be able to pull 150-200A of power. It doesn't take that much power to charge an EV overnight. Mine charges way faster than it needs to on 32A 240V.