From FB group TSLA Shareholders
Doug Halkenhauser
You said, “…[hydrogen] is worse on every single metric.”
Am I supposed to believe you, or the other major car makers Toyota, Honda and Hyundai???
It’s obvious that your claim is being ignored by the companies that are important. If you were to talk to those tens of thousands of decision makers who decided to choose hydrogen and tell them that, they would say “who the hell do you think you are?” and proceed to laugh at you!!
You badmouth hydrogen, but offer *nothing* that can replace it in some cases. This is the problem with you, Musk and other armchair experts.
I know what the pro’s and con’s of hydrogen are. In detail. Do you?
Do you know why the car makers decided to use hydrogen? Yes or no.
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The metrics behind hydrogen are discussed in this YouTube video by Engineering with Rosie. They talk about the hydrogen energy per kg versus energy per cubic meter. Therein lies part of the problem. That’s why hydrogen is stored in cylinders at extremely high pressure — 10,000 PSI or 700 BAR for vehicles. For fixed storage it’s not necessary to have such small storage cylinders at such high pressure so pressure can be lower.
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Update May 21
Doug Halkenhauser
Said “hydrogen cons:
1.) Fairly low energy density…”
That hasn’t prevented the HFCVs from filling the tank with sufficient fuel to get adequate range ~~300 miles.
2.) Fuel cells operate at higher temperatures.
So do ICEVs. That hasn’t prevented ICEs from serving for more than 100 years.
3.) Still need batteries.
Or some form of kinetic energy recovery. It could be supercapacitors, but in any case the batteries are a fraction of BEV size.
4.) H2 is very difficult to contain and transport.
That is not entirely true. H2 is made and then liquified or compressed and transported all around the US using heavy trucking or high pressure pipelines.
6.) No infrastructure.
There is already a very large amount of infrastructure for making, transporting and handling H2 for production of ammonia for fertilizer.
There is *no* need to transport H2 to the fueling station. All H2 can be generated on site; the only raw materials needed are water and electricity.
The H2 refueling infrastructure is being partly financed by the government in California. There are 45 H2 fuel stations with more being built.
7.) The H2 pumps are expensive.
The prices of Lithium-ion batteries were expensive a few decades ago but the prices have fallen dramatically. Attribute this to Wright’s Law.
5.) H2 is currently refined from natural gas.
It’s a fully mature process and has been available for many decades, but will have to be changed to electrolysis as soon as possible to eliminate fossil fuels.
Hydrogen advantages
Hydrogen requires only electricity and water for consumables. It doesn’t require expensive metals such as lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel. The hydrogen electrolyzer requires metals and membranes but nothing high tech. This technology has been used for more than a hundred years. High pressure pumps are needed to store the hydrogen in high pressure cylinders. All this can be done at the fueling station location.
