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.
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.