What, you don’t see how great it is to have two separate sets of infrastructure with little overlap in order to have a less efficient solution pushed by the oil industry?
june@lemmy.world 9 months ago
As two major manufacturers double down on developing hydrogen cell cars.
The complaints about electric infrastructure not being ready for widespread adoption but people championing hydrogen cell just boggles my mind.
frezik@midwest.social 9 months ago
echodot@feddit.uk 9 months ago
That’s it of course isn’t it the hydrogen is generated through fracking so they’re just trying to maintain the existing business model.
That alone is the reason that no one should have ever paid attention to it it wasn’t ever intended to actually work it was supposed to just look like it might work so that they would continue to get some money.
frezik@midwest.social 9 months ago
Yeah. There was a time, 10 or 20 years ago, where I would have said we should invest into all possible solutions, including batteries and hydrogen. It would have been nice to have it all be funded 10 times more than they were, but they were funded.
And then batteries won. The pseudo-reasonable argument “we should fund every possible avenue” no longer applies. We did that, and now is the time to go all in on the winner.
buzziebee@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The materials to make batteries aren’t readily available in the quantities needed to add grid scale storage to all countries and replace all global ICE vehicles. Hydrogen is also ideal for countries like Japan where their grid isn’t all connected (it’s loads of small grids) and can’t handle either the increased load from charging vehicles, or transport the energy from productive renewables areas to non productive renewables areas.
Like with most energy tech, we should be investing in it all so we have a diverse mix of solutions.
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I am not familiar with it, would you mind telling me how much works? Why would Hydrogen not be sourced from ocean water and then compressed/stored? How did fracking come in, it seems like a chore to have made it so
echodot@feddit.uk 9 months ago
Because electrolysis requires ungodly amounts of electricity in order to work on industrial scales in theory it’s doable but no one does it. We would practically have to crack nuclear fusion to make it viable, which sort of defeats the point.
However you can get it from shale gas quite easily because it’s just in there mixed in with the gas, I assume some geological process creates it, so you just need to separate it from the gas. The trouble is it involves doing the actual fracking, even if you don’t actually ever burn the gas, which they also do because of course they do.
It’s just a totally stupid system all around.
Natanael@slrpnk.net 9 months ago
It can be through electrolysis, but it is almost never done that way. It’s less efficient than simply using the grid to charge batteries, in that usecase the ONLY benefit it has its energy density (and that might not last either).
In practice the main source is as a byproduct from refining fossil fuel like oil or gas which is separated and collected.
daqqad@lemmy.world 9 months ago
What part of that confuses you? Hydrogen is better for cars VS batteries in every meaningful way in 2024. Long range, quick fill ups, zero harmful emissions, don’t need to live in SFH or rely on landlord/HOA to grant you the privilege of charging your car.
Hydrogen cell cars are electric cars that don’t rely on severely underdeveloped technology of batteries we have today.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 9 months ago
And where are you gonna get the hydrogen from? You have any idea how power inefficient electrolysis is!?
SupraMario@lemmy.world 9 months ago
www.airproducts.com/…/hydrogen-onsite-generators
Uhh there are tons of companies making these now. You can literally drop one of these in the middle of nowhere running off solar, pulling hydrogen from the atmosphere.
ExLisper@linux.community 9 months ago
running off solar
Because solar is free?
Guys, we can stop trying to solve climate change, we already have free energy!
daqqad@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yes. Do you have any idea how much energy we’re wasting because nuclear power plants produce way more than we need because they can’t scale easily or that most green energy generation is at the time people don’t actually need it? Hydrogen is a prefect storage solution for that power.
jabjoe@feddit.uk 9 months ago
It is somewhere to put energy, when you filled the efficient storage. But that doesn’t make it good for transport.
SkyNTP@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
You’re mostly right. But I don’t agree on the last part. Hydrogen production can’t be done in your backyard. But electricity can (and I forgive you if have no backyard, these next few points may be less relevant if that is the case).
Unlike hydrogen, electricity production is affordable, scalable, and ubiquitous. And that small detail changes the benefits dramatically.
- The idea of being your own gas station, from the grid, or from your own solar, is really compelling. No one likes being at the mercy of fluctuating energy prices, or, as in this case, unreliable and scarce availability of fuel.
- Many people don’t like going to gas stations (e.g. women and personal safety). Totally doable outside of road trips.
- If you are generating your own electricity you will need batteries anyway. Might as well put wheels on them: two birds one stone.
- Even if you don’t generate your own power, you still want power security during outage. Since the battery is on wheels, you can drive it to a place that does have power to top up.
Again, I can see that these are less compelling points if you live in a super dense area and utilities and supply chain are really dependable. But this is hardly everywhere.
daqqad@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Most people in the world cannot put solar panels on their roof today. Even if you exclude all the places people don’t own cars I still think my statement will be true.
laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
Whether that’s true or not, it doesn’t invalidate their points
frezik@midwest.social 9 months ago
Hydrogen production can’t be done in your backyard
I can put two electrodes in salt water and run it off an old power brick and generate hydrogen. It’s not efficient, industrial hydrogen isn’t primarily made that way (it mainly comes from oil instead), and hydrogen has a list of other problems, but it can be done.
Patch@feddit.uk 9 months ago
The trick isn’t making hydrogen, it’s capturing it, refining it (so that it isn’t mixed with a tonne of air), and compressing it into a pressurised storage tank for later use.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Many people don’t like going to gas stations
Honestly, and I don’t want to sound selfish here, but never having to get out at a gas station in the middle of winter again is the biggest draw of an EV for me. Especially since I rarely drive more than about 60 miles.
SupraMario@lemmy.world 9 months ago
You… actually can.
www.airproducts.com/…/hydrogen-onsite-generators
Lots of companies make stations like these. Granted they’re not cheap.
jaemo@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Yes! A clean platform that needs METRIC GIGATONS of carbon positive infrastructure to set up and maintain. That is why I call shenanigans on your zero harmful emissions claim.
VS
We already have wires, and batteries are more than good enough for a vast swath of the everyday commuting public.
daqqad@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Hydrogen can be generated any time. Like when nuclear or solar or wind energy is otherwise going to waste. We don’t have and likely won’t have batteries that could replace it for decades.
Modern batteries are absolute shit and definitely not good enough. I think a good indication that batteries are anywhere near useful will be when you can fly on battery power across the Atlantic.
laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
Wait, so … They’re nowhere near useful when we can already use them for daily commuting easily because of some arbitrary goalpost for an unrelated transportation method? How does that even make sense?
Infrastructure for hydrogen fueling requires production facilities, trucks to transport, and stations set up, to even start moving one vehicle let alone taking over any percentage of commuter traffic of any significance. EV fueling infrastructure requires… Pretty much the same grid we already have, at least as a functional baseline (yes, it needs improvements, but we’re not switching overnight so we have the time we need to make those changes; meanwhile, it’s already functional)
frezik@midwest.social 9 months ago
We don’t have and likely won’t have batteries that could replace it for decades.
Wrong. There are tons of options for grid storage batteries that are gearing up for mass production right now.
jaemo@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Ok chief, you know best. Better sit out buying a vehicle until the dust settles then I guess.
Meanwhile, I’ll be charging my ‘not good enough’ EV and trying not to let the fact that it doesn’t measure up to your standards weigh to heavily on me.
SupraMario@lemmy.world 9 months ago
They make solar stations that will pull hydrogen right from the atmosphere. What carbon are you talking about…and you do realize the same power that would be used to make hydrogen in your example would also be charging batteries.
jabjoe@feddit.uk 9 months ago
That is a waste of solar. It’s more efficient to put in batteries then kinetic. If there is no more batteries to put it in, you transmit the power over wires.
With hydrogen it’s wasteful to create from electricity, then wasteful to turn into kinetic. Its wasteful to store as it’s the smallest atom so escapes easily, it’s low density so needs compressing. Then, to move it, you have to move storage around instead of just transmit over wires.
wewbull@feddit.uk 9 months ago
Hydrogen isn’t in the atmosphere. It’s 20.9% oxygen, 70% nitrogen and some trace other gases, none of which are hydrogen.
Hydrogen is produced either by splitting water (the H in H²O) or splitting hydrocarbons like Methane which produces CO² (the carbon part bonding with oxygen from the atmosphere, making that stuff we’re trying to cut back on).
That second method is why the fossil fuels companies are so keen on it. Hydrogen can be a repacked form of natural gas.
frezik@midwest.social 9 months ago
Hydrogen is better for cars VS batteries in every meaningful way in 2024.
Lol, no.
severely underdeveloped technology of batteries we have today.
Lol, no.
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
Hydrogen is a great way of storing and transporting energy.
If we could find more efficient ways of manufacturing hydrogen, it may be very worthwhile as a storage technology for power plants when there is a surplus of energy.
Or for powering equipment that needs a ton of energy but can’t be tied to the grid…freight ships come to mind.
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
Wait what? How in the fuck could an HOA prevent you from charging your car or installing a charger inside your space? The charger lives inside your garage, so it doesn’t effect curbside appearance and isn’t within what they can control.
At absolute worst, if you have no garage and street parking, wouldn’t you just be running the cord over to your vehicle? Non-commercial charging stations aren’t normally weather proof, so that wouldn’t be outside, and again, none of their business. If they have an issue with an extension cord running across your lawn, or a cable slightly larger than a hose, then they’d have to make sane rules about how long it can be left out, like not just leaving it plugged in for a whole weekend straight. Otherwise they’re making it against the rules for people to use corded yard equipment or use a hose.
I might be missing something here, but I don’t see any way an HOA could do anything against it.
daqqad@lemmy.world 9 months ago
No offense, but your response means you’re either the luckiest person in the world and live in a utopian HOA or much more realistically have zero experience with the stupid fucking cancer that is currently infesting more and more properties.
It took me years of paying lawyers and dealing with some of the stupidest and most stubborn people on the planet to try to install a charger near my spot in a shared garage. At my expense and with all requirements met, it was still easier to move than convince those fucking assholes that we’re in 2020 and cars use electricity.
No HOA on this planet will let you just run a cord even if you don’t consider that this would likely restrict you to level one charging and expose you to power theft.
june@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Sure. All that’s great.
But I’m talking about infrastructure, not technology.
daqqad@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Infra is result of people jumping on wrong tech. Batteries don’t belong in cars in their current state of development.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Instead you rely on Shell to provide hydrogen to you when there’s no pre-existing infrastructure to deliver it and… Oh, looks like they decided to put an end to it, have fun with your brick on wheels 🤷
hightime@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Instead you rely on Shell
that’s the whole point tho, for them to sell you special fuel, that you can’t get yourself, like you could with solar panels. this is more serious threat for fleets of trucks, those companies are already building their solar farms to charge their trucks. that’s somewhat catastrophic for companies selling fuel nowadays. of-course they’ll push their magic fuel solution, forcefully. who do you think pays the hydrogen shilling campaigns?
daqqad@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Shell is one of many companies providing hydrogen fuel stations. Infra may not be where it should be, but I blame that on all the people who jumped on battery powered cars at a time battery tech is years of not decades away from being good in vehicles.
laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
I’m genuinely curious why you think battery tech is decades away from being good in vehicles when it’s working very effectively in vehicles right now and over the last decade. In what way are they ineffective currently when they can have 250+ miles of range now when most people don’t put that many miles on their car in a day? And at least for the people who have the option to put a charging station in their home (which is not at all cost prohibitive), refueling is a matter of plugging it in when you get home which takes like fifteen seconds rather than ten to twenty minutes (or more) to stop somewhere along the way? (This is assuming, of course, that there is a station along the way, which likely isn’t the case at least right now for hydrogen)
frezik@midwest.social 9 months ago
Green hydrogen–where it’s produced entirely using renewable resources–currently costs at least twice as much as producing it from hydrocarbons. Depending on the details, it can be seven times as much. Pink hydrogen–water electrolysis powered by nuclear–is barely much better.
The vast majority of production comes from hydrocarbons. Most of it currently goes to the agricultural industry for making nitrate fertilizer.
This is entirely the oil industry trying to open up a new market before it loses its current one.
Ejh3k@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Not to mention all the ecological damage mining for battery components does. I’m with you, hydrogen is the way to go
Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz 9 months ago
300kg of battery -> environmental catastrophe
The other 1,500kg of car? Made of unicorn kisses and butterfly dreams.
ExLisper@linux.community 9 months ago
Also, hydrogen grows on trees apparently.
wewbull@feddit.uk 9 months ago
- No mined precious metals in hydrogen fuel cells, no… None at all.
- You know what all fuel cells vehicles also have in them? Batteries, because the fuel cells changes them and the batteries drive the motors.
Yes, the batteries are smaller, but you also need the fuel cells catalyst. It’s not a clear win for the HFC car.
SeaJ@lemm.ee 9 months ago
A huge portion of our battery materials come from the Atacama Desert. There is no life at all in a lot of it.
You do know that we get most of our hydrogen from burning fossil fuels, right?
Nudding@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Unfortunately they’re both death sentences. It’s either public transport or climate apocalypse.
Ejh3k@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I am well aware we are doomed.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I got the infrastructure argument when EV battery range sucked and charge times took hours. But now that EV range is getting close to gasoline cars, and charging can be done in minutes with a super charger, hydrogen doesn’t make much sense.
It could’ve been dope if only a company like Toyota made some desirable cars and built out a great station network.
Virulent@reddthat.com 9 months ago
Hydrogen never made sense. It is simple thermodynamics.
LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee 9 months ago
I think the ideal sustainable chemical fuel would be propane generated through genetically engineered algae. Propane can easily be compressed into liquid and transported and it burns clean.
Have something like solar panels filled with photosynthetic algae producing propane that is constantly extracted as a gas. Once we have done the genetic engineering of a “steady state algae panel” it would be quite low tech to have these on your roof and store them to heat with in winter.
frezik@midwest.social 9 months ago
Algae is, at best, around 10% efficient at converting light into energy. You can use solar power to produce hydrogen at better efficiency than that, but even that’s pretty poor. The best is to just use that electricity as it is, and second best is to put it in a battery.
scarabic@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I was excited for hydrogen back in the day but it seems like we’ve known for years that it isn’t the way to go. Why is anyone still fucking with it? Do these cars get 2,000 mile range or something?
zurohki@aussie.zone 9 months ago
Hydrogen was the future in the 90s, when the alternative was lead acid batteries. Nowadays hydrogen fuel cell cars don’t actually top the charts on range, battery EVs have taken the crown.
Hydrogen promised to be a drop-in replacement for fossil fuels. You still needed big industry to make and distribute it, you still needed filling stations to sell it to end users, you still took your car somewhere to fill it up. Everyone could just keep doing their thing. But it was going to be so expensive to switch over that everyone dragged their heels and kept using fossil fuels, so now we’re entering the post-hydrogen car era without it ever arriving.
If we’d had hydrogen fuel cell cars 30 years ago, today we’d have manufacturers putting bigger batteries and charging plugs on them to make plug-in hybrids and move away from expensive hydrogen.
GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 9 months ago
I think this highlights it perfectly. The other reason teasing hydrogen was so popular with the established fuel companies, is that it meant we’d still “need” them, because it used similar distribution networks.
But the other side of their money making systems meant that they didn’t move quickly enough, and we may have just moved on past now.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 9 months ago
You also have to get hydrogen in any significant hydrogen from natural gas wells, which is why Shell was behind it. It was not a true solution.
barsoap@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Hydrogen will be a big chunk of the future but probably not in cars, or generally car-sized vehicles, unless we’re talking stuff like catastrophe relief (and with that ambulances, fire trucks etc) because it’s a good idea to be able to fuel those things even if the grid is down.
We’ll need hydrogen infrastructure and production anyways for steel smelting as well as the chemical industry, those are things that just don’t run on electricity, no way. With that in place hydrogen is going to be available pretty much all over, similar to how you get natural gas anywhere nowadays. And then you have an unelectrified railway somewhere, electrifying it would cost a fortune and not amortise, but a fuel cell locomotive? Sounds easy and reasonable. Flow batteries are also an option in that kind of operation but you really need a lot of space to get power output from those so they wouldn’t work for an ambulance.
So if you’re a car manufacturer with your head screwed on right you’re probably not developing and selling hydrogen cars now because they believe they’re the future, you’re doing that to have affluent liberals pay for your ticket to play in the future market of hydrogen utility vehicles.
Also of note: European car manufacturers at least seem to be completely fine with there being fewer cars on the streets. First, they can also make money off building public transport infrastructure and running car shares, secondly, cheap everyday cars aren’t that profitable, if the cars they then do get to sell are fancy with high profit margin that’s completely fine with them. Their suppliers care even less, a seat manufacturer doesn’t care whether the seat ends up in a car or a train.
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
That’s a lot easier in countries whose cities are closer together and were devolved centuries before the car was invented.
barsoap@lemm.ee 9 months ago
You should look at pictures of Amsterdam in the 70s, 80s, completely car-dependent. Europe made the same mistakes as the US regarding the car, difference is we noticed the mistake and what you see now is decades of rolling back those decisions.
Also cities being further apart is actually an argument for more trains.
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
Yeah, I would love to have fewer cars on the streets too.
Unfortunately it looks like most Americans are going to be priced out of private car ownership long before we have any sort of suitable alternatives.
That’s not something I’m looking forward to. When enough people can’t afford to get to work but have no other way to get there.
Can’t be investing in new mass transit or walkable cities when the highways are in a state of disrepair. Nobody even takes mass transit anyway.
I would. Believe me I hate the 1.5 hour drive into the office and 2.5 hour drive back. Except they changed the train schedule on me so there are no routes that work with my schedule, and once I add in the slowdowns and congestion on the subway, it’s almost faster (and certainly more convenient) to drive. And then everyone else has the same idea and then the highways are even more congested. And then there’s less funding for mass transit because nobody wants to use it.
So glad I get to work from home 99% of the time. I’m not going back to that drudgery.
redfox@infosec.pub 9 months ago
I am also interested in the flow batteries.
scarabic@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I’m curious how you see hydrogen being used in smelting. Hydrogen fuel cells do just produce electricity. Are you talking about something else, like combusting the hydrogen?
barsoap@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Iron ore + hydrogen = Iron + water. It’s used to tear oxygen off the ore. Currently that’s done with carbon, generally of fossil origin. thyssenkrupp is already doing it at scale. Not all the hydrogen they use right now is green but unlike the old furnaces the new ones are ready to be carbon-neutral, they just have to switch over fuel sources no need to mess with the furnaces themselves.
It is possible to do the reduction directly with electricity but that’s less energy-efficient than going via hydrogen.
hamsterkill@lemmy.sdf.org 9 months ago
Because batteries suck for any application where weight (ie. energy density) matters. Running long haul semis off batteries is not a super practical thing. Even with consumer cars, there are people for whom hydrogen will be a better fit.
Basically we’ve been in a world where the happy medium of energy density and efficiency (gasoline) was used for everything. Now we likely need to split those things up into what energy density is more important for, and what energy efficiency is more important for.
scarabic@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I thought for a long time that aviation might be the application where hydrogen actually wins out. Density-to-weight is crucial. But I don’t see much activity on that front. It has the same problem as all other applications: you’d need the hydrogen infrastructure to be available everywhere. Batteries will always have one benefit: they’re easier to transition to because we already have electricity pretty much everywhere. Electric autos haven’t been overly handicapped by the lack of charging stations because many can just charge at home. Hydrogen aviation would require large regional or even international coordination to ready the fueling infrastructure. And that little issue about the compressed flammable gas keeps nagging… seems like it would make surviving a plane crash even harder.
hamsterkill@lemmy.sdf.org 9 months ago
There’s a lot of activity on the hydrogen-fueled aviation front.
popsci.com/…/hydrogen-fuel-cell-aircraft-explaine…
The infrastructure issues for planes are way less. You need fuel available at airports, which significantly fewer and farther between than consumers require for cars. Planes (and least of the jet variety) already use specialized fuel they keep available at airports. The phase-in is a lot easier too, since most running planes only travel between a few airports in their route — so you’d only need the hydrogen fuel available at the airports hydrogen planes are using to start.
There’s certainly a lot of challenges to solve there too, but hydrogen remains the most promising solution for decarbonizing air travel.
linearchaos@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The problem we have is energy density. Gasoline is pretty damn dense energy-wise. Storing 20-30 gallons of gas in a tank That’s easy and safe to refill is hard to replace.
Lithium ion and lithium iron phosphate batteries are slow to refill.
Hydrogen is kind of neat. You can make it from splitting water with solar or nuclear. It’s also a byproduct of the oil industry. And you can fill a tanker up or even an entire train and move fuck ton of hydrogen from one place to another. You can pipe it, people can generated for themselves and get a byproduct of pure oxygen.
But alas, it’s still hydrogen. Give it access to the air in a little bit of fire and it makes a big boom. The infrastructure is very expensive to build out, and we’re not swimming so much and renewables then it makes sense to bottle it up and sell it to people.
Janovich@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It can make sense for limited uses like cross country trucking (or maybe airlines) where battery will probably never have the range and you live and die by the schedule and refuel stops need to be relatively quick. Refilling semis at a limited number of truck stops with hydrogen stations can be useful if you can also get non petro-derived hydrogen. But for soccer moms and commuters it makes zero sense. Just charge smaller batteries at home and work and have a good interstate charging network for longer trips. We just need to normalize taking breaks on a road trip. It’ll help make more relaxing drives anyway and people already drive angry.
frezik@midwest.social 9 months ago
I’d just as soon see the majority of long haul trucking be replaced by electrified rail.
Likewise with a big chunk of the airline industry.
linearchaos@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I really wanted to see solar to hydrogen storage and then a hybrid fuel cell plus battery powerwall. Use all the solar that you get in the morning and not have to burn a battery pack out every 5 to 10 years.
You could do the same with the car, throw a small fuel cell plant in there a couple liters of hydrogen and a decent but not too big battery pack. When you park your car at work or at home it just sits there and slowly charges when you’re not paying any attention. If it gets into a true low state or you know you’re going to need it the next day to go further you can plug it into your home electric. It’s just absolutely reasonable to put enough solar on a lot of houses that you could be completely sufficient from the grid.
june@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yea it’s such a weird direction to go right night. Manufacturing and delivery of hydrogen for fuel cells is complex, expensive, and poses some unique dangers with the temps and pressure of the hydrogen. It’s cleaner, assuming manufacturing of the hydrogen uses green energy, but right now most energy production isn’t green.
It has its advantages but some pretty big disadvantages too. I don’t think it’s the way to go just yet. Maybe eventually but not today I don’t think.
echodot@feddit.uk 9 months ago
I could see it being used to power ships and aircraft, but it is way too complicated to deal with it for Joe average and his SUV. The stuff has to be a cryogenic temperatures to be usable, do you really want your average idiot dealing with cryogenic liquids when they are absolutely going to spill it on their foot?
It’s too dangerous, youneed serious people in hard hats and yellow fluorescent jackets to deal with it safely.
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 9 months ago
I don’t understand why people think we have to pick a single solution for all vehicles on the road. We can have BEV and hydrogen at the same time.
wewbull@feddit.uk 9 months ago
It’s about infrastructure. You can half-arse two things, or whole-arse one thing.
redfox@infosec.pub 9 months ago
I agree this is a significant factor. I saw some documentaries talking about the decisions we made with the power grid pros/cons wise when you consider ac/dc. No the band 😋
We use so much technology that requires direct current that we have at spend a bunch of resources converting it back from ac. The whole efficiency of transportation from large central generation vs smaller local less efficient stations.
The documentary said some industrial areas in Germany? were considering providing local grid based direct current.
I’m curious what the cost benefit analysis says about going back to local DC and not needing so many transformers.
echodot@feddit.uk 9 months ago
We can as long as the infrastructure is built. But hydrogen cars is a boondoggle
scarabic@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Consumers adopt beeer technologies more readily when they aren’t holding back waiting to see which of two competing standards will win.
There are efficiencies to doing things one way versus two ways.
Plus, if one way is clearly superior, having two only adds unnecessary complexity. If hydrogen was competitive I’d say great - let’s do it all. But on its own merits it just doesn’t hold up versus the alternatives. No ones banning it but why should anyone pursue it?
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 9 months ago
Seems like the winning standard I’d ICE then as it’s worked well for over a hundred years and all the infrastructure is in place. Why should anyone pursue any other option?
frezik@midwest.social 9 months ago
We did explore both options over the last 10-20 years. Batteries won for cars. Holding out otherwise is silly.
Hydrogen might be what ends up powering long haul trucking, but I’d prefer that be replaced by electrified rail, anyway.
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 9 months ago
Who’s “we” here? Seems like major manufacturers are still pouring money into both technologies, meaning nobody but you and these other closed-minded commenters feel that they have everything all figured out and hold all the answers. GM and Honda just announced new investments into hydrogen vehicles as well.
This line of thinking is why EVs were crushed out of existence long ago until Tesla made them popular again just a few short years ago relatively speaking.
weew@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
No, they get shorter range at a higher price than batteries.
People push for it because they are either middlemen who want to sell the hydrogen and get a cut of ongoing profits, or Luddites who believe EVERYTHING must operate exactly the same way gasoline cars do or else they’ll never switch.