Damning new report finds nearly all major car companies are actively sabotaging world’s efforts to avoid catastrophic global warming, and Japan companies are the worst.
Almost all hydrogen is made from fossil fuels, it’s much cheaper than green hydrogen, so you can guess what people would fuel their hydrogen cars with
Electricity to hydrogen to electricity is really wasteful, you get less than a third the energy than you would if you went electricity to battery to electricity
It’s really difficult to store and transport, it is very very low density. Being the smallest atom hydrogen can leak from practically any container or pipe, but that doesn’t compare to (2) above
I think Toyota only promoted hydrogen because they knew it would give internal combustion more time. Toyota are really good at internal combustion engines
Presently yes. It’s a by-product of natural gas production. There hasn’t been much of a market for it. In Australia there’s $230b of green hydrogen production projects on the table. Just one of which in Western Australia is going to produce 3.5m tonnes of green hydrogen per year.
Electricity to hydrogen to electricity is really wasteful,
Yes but electricity transport is very wasteful. There’s plenty of sun in Western Australia, falling in desert areas where land for solar arrays is practically free.
It’s really difficult to store and transport,
There’s problems yes, but the industry believes these are solvable problems. Toyota is the largest vehicle manufacturer in the world. Japan has several other very large vehicle manufacturers. They’re all betting on hydrogen. They’ve invested $2.3b in a hydrogen supply chain which is already shipping hydrogen.
I think Toyota only promoted hydrogen because they knew it would give internal combustion more time.
Hydrogen doesn’t provide power through “internal combustion”. A hydrogen fuel cell produces energy by running hydrogen over a catalyst which produces water and electrical energy.
I’ll layer on to the other replies which are spot on…
One reason I’ve soured on hydrogen is that it’s overall much less efficient than battery as an energy storage mechanism.
This is a really in depth article about a study that found that “well to wheel” efficiency of battery EVs was 70-80% and with hydrogen it’s 25-30%.
I was initially excited about hydrogen as energy storage for renewable sources, but battery tech has improved and is improving.
Also, one of the major advantages of a BEV for me is the ability to charge at home, possibly from energy generated by my own panels. Even if there were solutions for me to generate my own hydrogen, I’d rather lose 20-30% of that energy with a BEV than lose 70-75% with a FCEV.
I’ve provided a rebuttal for the other replies which you might find interesting.
In a scenario where you’re considering using roof-top solar to produce hydrogen for your car then yes, the inefficiency of cracking hydrogen from water makes it unappealing.
The thing is, I don’t think most of the world has access to roof-top solar and the portion that does will diminish as population and population density increases.
If you consider for example this project in Western Australia covering 15,000km2 it makes a lot more sense. The land (and associated sun light) is practically free. Hydrogen is a far more cost effective method of energy storage to get the energy from middle-of-nowhere-west-aus to market.
I guess one way to look at it is that hydrogen is a better option if the cost of the solar energy is less than a third of what it would be if you produced it nearby.
Counterpoint, most of the world does not have access to “middle of nowhere” regions with lots of sunlight, that is just Australia and a few places near major deserts.
If only there was some way we could transport energy from these areas of the world with cheap land and plentiful sunlight to those areas where the energy was required.
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.
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.
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!
It probably has to do with some of the engineering problems with containing hydrogen.
It definitely has a lot to do with influential people bandwagoning onto Elon Musk et al. trashing EVs
“Oh we couldn’t possibly make an electric vehicle because there’s nowhere to recharge it”
There are problems storing hydrogen but we’ve been working on mitigating those problems.
Australia has $230b worth of hydrogen projects on the board. Do you think no one involved in any of those projects has realised that it’s not possible to store hydrogen?
Do you think no one involved in any of those projects has realised that it’s not possible to store hydrogen?
You say that as if it is completely ridiculous but have you seen how many companies jumped onto impractical technologies like the hyperloop or self-driving cars or even replacing half their workforce with LLM-based AIs?
No I’m not thinking about that.
I’m just trying to reason between public sentiment and over here, trying to say that public sentiment has less to do with actual technical viability and more to do with random comments from influential people.
There are actually, many directions in which people are trying to find ways to make the H2 storage viable for specific applications…
I don’t really understand the hatred for hydrogen honestly.
It seems like a great tech. There are huge hydrogen facilities being built in Western Australia to crack hydrogen from sea water.
I think Toyota only promoted hydrogen because they knew it would give internal combustion more time. Toyota are really good at internal combustion engines
Presently yes. It’s a by-product of natural gas production. There hasn’t been much of a market for it. In Australia there’s $230b of green hydrogen production projects on the table. Just one of which in Western Australia is going to produce 3.5m tonnes of green hydrogen per year.
Yes but electricity transport is very wasteful. There’s plenty of sun in Western Australia, falling in desert areas where land for solar arrays is practically free.
There’s problems yes, but the industry believes these are solvable problems. Toyota is the largest vehicle manufacturer in the world. Japan has several other very large vehicle manufacturers. They’re all betting on hydrogen. They’ve invested $2.3b in a hydrogen supply chain which is already shipping hydrogen.
Hydrogen doesn’t provide power through “internal combustion”. A hydrogen fuel cell produces energy by running hydrogen over a catalyst which produces water and electrical energy.
I’ll layer on to the other replies which are spot on…
One reason I’ve soured on hydrogen is that it’s overall much less efficient than battery as an energy storage mechanism.
This is a really in depth article about a study that found that “well to wheel” efficiency of battery EVs was 70-80% and with hydrogen it’s 25-30%.
I was initially excited about hydrogen as energy storage for renewable sources, but battery tech has improved and is improving.
Also, one of the major advantages of a BEV for me is the ability to charge at home, possibly from energy generated by my own panels. Even if there were solutions for me to generate my own hydrogen, I’d rather lose 20-30% of that energy with a BEV than lose 70-75% with a FCEV.
I’ve provided a rebuttal for the other replies which you might find interesting.
In a scenario where you’re considering using roof-top solar to produce hydrogen for your car then yes, the inefficiency of cracking hydrogen from water makes it unappealing.
The thing is, I don’t think most of the world has access to roof-top solar and the portion that does will diminish as population and population density increases.
If you consider for example this project in Western Australia covering 15,000km2 it makes a lot more sense. The land (and associated sun light) is practically free. Hydrogen is a far more cost effective method of energy storage to get the energy from middle-of-nowhere-west-aus to market.
I guess one way to look at it is that hydrogen is a better option if the cost of the solar energy is less than a third of what it would be if you produced it nearby.
Counterpoint, most of the world does not have access to “middle of nowhere” regions with lots of sunlight, that is just Australia and a few places near major deserts.
If only there was some way we could transport energy from these areas of the world with cheap land and plentiful sunlight to those areas where the energy was required.
Yeah, ideally a way that doesn’t leak out of pretty much anything like hydrogen does.
Embrittlement is a problem but it can be mitigated with careful selection of materials and ceramic coatings et cetera.
It is great tech, but there are serious downsides too.
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.
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.
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.
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!
IMO EVs are going great but adoption / implementation is struggling in some use cases, and hydrogen might be a nice alternative.
It probably has to do with some of the engineering problems with containing hydrogen.
It definitely has a lot to do with influential people bandwagoning onto Elon Musk et al. trashing EVs
Every tech has problems.
“Oh we couldn’t possibly make an electric vehicle because there’s nowhere to recharge it”
There are problems storing hydrogen but we’ve been working on mitigating those problems.
Australia has $230b worth of hydrogen projects on the board. Do you think no one involved in any of those projects has realised that it’s not possible to store hydrogen?
You say that as if it is completely ridiculous but have you seen how many companies jumped onto impractical technologies like the hyperloop or self-driving cars or even replacing half their workforce with LLM-based AIs?
Who jumped into the hyperloop?
Self driving cars are going to be worth infinite money. Great investment.
Sure some companies were over-exuberant about LLMs, but not to the same scale of national infrastructure we’re talking about.
Failed investments are not evidence that all investments will fail, but large investments are an indicator of economic viability.
No I’m not thinking about that.
I’m just trying to reason between public sentiment and over here, trying to say that public sentiment has less to do with actual technical viability and more to do with random comments from influential people.
There are actually, many directions in which people are trying to find ways to make the H2 storage viable for specific applications…