
What 2020 Would Look Like If Automakers Had Seriously Invested in Hydrogen - aSplash0fDerp
https://jalopnik.com/what-2020-would-look-like-if-automakers-had-seriously-i-1840418331
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djsumdog
Hydrogen is a junk technology. What is the easiest place to get hydrogen?
Petrol and other hydrocarbons. Extracting it from water would take more energy
than using existing fossil fuel. The tech was expensive, would probably stay
expensive, and was pretty bad environmentally. Hydrogen is also really
difficult to transport in the amounts needed to fuel fleets of cars. It died
because it sucked.

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eb0la
Electric is simpler and less risky.

For automakers, the _worst_ problem of electric vehicles is that
maintainance/service is easy and they make more money servicing vehicles that
from selling... but it can be fixed: 1- renting batteries (and still charging
annual service fee). 2- renting whole cars by the minute using a mobile app.

The problem with Hydrogen is that's still an _explosion_ motor with a
different fuel, and you have to develop a new kind of motor for it plus a way
to store and consume the hydrogen cells safely.

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8bitsrule
Yep. Many people know that Hydrogen and Hindenburg start with the same letter.

There are no hydrogen wells. So you'd have to use a _lot_ of energy to make
hydrogen fuel in the needed quantities. And then (because it's such a light
gas) highly-pressurized containers (collision-survivable) are needed.

Instead, use that energy more directly.

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lechemin
Question - what about using solar panels to fund the energy? i.e. a large
solar farm

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aSplash0fDerp
Hydrogen is more than an automotive fuel source and can be used to supplement
renewables with powering homes, generators/batteries and much more.

[https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-fuel-
basics](https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-fuel-basics)

DIY hydrogen farming is also an interesting prospect for harvesting excess
renewable production.

Hopefully we'll see more breakthroughs with technology to make it worthwhile.

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natch
Hydrogen is very inefficient compared to using electricity (more) directly via
a battery. The fueling is relatively fast, in rare locales where the stations
are available, but then fueling speed for electric vehicles is not an issue if
it can be done at home and at fast chargers, which are highly available in
many states of the US and a rapidly growing number of countries.

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exabrial
Yep,and as an engineer that's hard to imagine people that don't think of the
efficiency as a primary feature.

Efficiency misses the point, it's convenience: a 3 minute fill-up instead of a
60m fill-up.

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natch
Since you mention a different point, let’s look at that.

When you charge at home filling up takes 6 seconds: 3 to plug in, and 3 to
disconnect. Sure in between these two 3-second periods you have dinner and
sleep, but you were going to do that anyway. It’s not taking any extra time.
This is the normal case for most owners day to day.

Putting your priority of convenience first, I would take 6 seconds versus 3
minutes any day. So electric beats hydrogen by a factor of 30 on the metric
you regard as more important.

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rasz
Hydrogen embrittlement and permeability - nuff said.

