
Meet the fast-charging, affordable ‘future’ car that Elon Musk hates - Libertatea
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/02/25/meet-the-fast-charging-affordable-future-car-that-elon-musk-hates/
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bradleyland
What a ridiculous characterization.

Elon Musk doesn't hate hydrogen fuel cells; he sees their very obvious
physics-based limitations and calls them out for it. This is a very
disappointing piece coming from the Washington Post. It's plainly anti-
intellectual. They quote some very matter-of-fact statements from Musk, but
their rebuttal is composed entirely of non-sequiturs.

Musk: Best-case hydrogen fuel-cells fail to meet the specs of current-case
batteries.

WP: Hand-wavy quote from Toyota SVP alleging that you can't take Musk's
statements at face value because he has a dog in the hunt.

Utterly ridiculous. Musk's statements are based in fact. Later in the article,
WP glosses over what should be a real eye-opener for anyone looking at the
matter with a critical eye:

"Though its emissions are greener, hydrogen is now mostly sourced from natural
gas, which carries its own environmental impacts."

Granted, battery technology isn't exactly clean either, but hydrogen sourced
from natural gas is a complete smokescreen. It is impossible to recover 100%
of the energy available in natural gas when extracting hydrogen. The only
reason to do it is so that you can feel good about the fact that your hydrogen
end-user device is zero emission. It also has the down side of funneling
dollars to the existing oil-based incumbents. It might seem irrational to base
ones belief on what appears to be a vendetta, but the oil industry incumbents
haven't exactly been good stewards of the resources they trade in.

