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Transportation Power

Are Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles the Future of Autos? (go.com) 350

Posted by EditorDavid from the buying-what-you're-celling dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this article from ABC News: What if your electric vehicle could be refueled in less than 5 minutes? No plug, no outlet required. The range anxiety that's stymied sales of EVs? Forget about it.

Three EVs can meet these demands and allay concerns about owning an emissions-free vehicle. There's just one drawback. You can only find them in California.

Welcome to the world of hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). A tiny market that includes Toyota's Mirai, Hyundai's Nexo and Honda Motor's Clarity Fuel Cell, these "plug-less" EVs are the alternative to their battery electric cousins. Drivers can refuel FCEVs at a traditional gasoline station in less than 5 minutes. The 2021 Mirai gets an EPA estimated 402 miles of range on the XLE trim with the Nexo close behind at 380 miles. Neither cold weather nor heated seats deplete the range, another added bonus.

"Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are superior driving machines compared to traditional vehicles," Jackie Birdsall, senior engineer on Toyota's fuel cell team, told ABC News... "When people hear electric they only think battery electric," Birdsall said. "The battery electric vehicle market is pretty saturated. If we want to have sustainability and longevity we need to be diverse...." Birdsall said 2021 Mirai owners will receive $15,000 in free hydrogen, or enough money to cover the first 67,000 miles. It costs about $90 to fill up the car's 5.6 kilogram tank. These giveaways could help change consumers' minds — at least in California — to try an FCEV.
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Are Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles the Future of Autos? More

Are Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles the Future of Autos?

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  • Cost of Hydrogen (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sid crimson ( 46823 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @08:55PM (#60827350)

    My understanding is that the cost of generating hydrogen is not lower than solar, nor is it cleaner than solar or oil. Like electricity, it does move the pollution elsewhere.
    Not to mention, it pretty much means all cars powered by it are high explosive devices.
    So, where is the win with hydrogen?

    • Re:Cost of Hydrogen (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tsa ( 15680 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:03PM (#60827376) Homepage

      It’s much lighter than batteries, so you can get a longer range easier. You can use it in heavy transport amd in planes.
      The fact that it is explosive doesn’t matter much; hydrogen tanks can be made very strong and hydrogen is so light that it disperses in the air very quickly.

      • It’s much lighter than batteries, so you can get a longer range easier. You can use it in heavy transport amd in planes.
        The fact that it is explosive doesn’t matter much; hydrogen tanks can be made very strong and hydrogen is so light that it disperses in the air very quickly.

        Just curious.... is hydrogen inside of a very strong container lighter than the same "range" worth of hydrogen?

      • Hydrogen is fairly difficult to contain at pressure, particularly while trying to keep costs low.

        Then, there is that whole problem with no existing infrastructure to create, store or deliver it to the pump.

        So, yeah I think that electric has a real leg up on hydrogen, unless you think the fossil fuel industry is going to wave a magic and and its infrastructure all to hydrogen.

        • Then, there is that whole problem with no existing infrastructure to create, store or deliver it to the pump.

          That's why hydrogen is a non-starter. You need to build out a parallel to the entire current gasoline production, distribution, storage, and sales network.

          Or you can upgrade existing electricity capacity and go straight BEV for a fraction of the cost.

      • Re:Cost of Hydrogen (Score:5, Informative)

        by Zobeid ( 314469 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:43PM (#60827498)

        The longest range of hydrogen and electric cars on the market today are very close, both of them right around 400 miles per the EPA. Meanwhile, the electric car has the convenience advantage of being chargeable at home, plus there are fast-charging stations popping up everywhere. You can drive coast to coast in an electric car with minimal hassles (relative to a gas car), and you can daily drive it with fewer hassles than a gas car, and you can't really say either of those things about hydrogen cars. I struggle to understand what the selling point is, why anybody would even want one.

        • I have concerns about hydrogen too, from a safety perspective. Electric works for local travel and commuting. I have a hunch that as we shift too much to electric, though, we will see some real disadvantages emerge that don't occur on a regular basis. For example, what happens when tens of thousands of people need to evacuate an area quickly and most need to be prepared to travel more than 400 miles to another state (e.g. fleeing from California forest fires, or Florida hurricanes). It's a key reason I

          • Forget emergency. Each car consumes 11kW per hour to charge its battery. Lets say you have two cars and there is no such thing as gas. Thats 23kW/hr during charging. If every house had one of these what do you think is going to happen to the power grid? CA already has rolling blackouts from homes using 8kW loads during the summer.

            • Each car consumes 11kW per hour to charge its battery.

              On a typical pre-Covid weekday, I drove about 30 miles. My EV uses about 0.3 kwh per mile. So that is 9 kwh total.

              My car is set to charge from 2 to 4 am when electricity rates are lowest. I have a 30 amp 220 v plug in my garage.

              30 x 220 = 6.6 kw. So my car can recharge in about 90 minutes.

              For charging two cars, an obvious solution is to stagger the charging times. But even two cars will pull only 60 amps and my house has a 100 amp feed.

              Thats 23kW/hr during charging.

              Actually, about half that.

              CA already has rolling blackouts from homes using 8kW loads during the summer.

              AC use peaks from 2 pm to 7 pm. EVs char

      • Fuel cells work even better than a simple compressed tank.

      • Re:Cost of Hydrogen (Score:5, Insightful)

        by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @10:37PM (#60827646)
        The benefits of Hydrogen are lost at around 400Wh/kg for batteries... and we are getting close to that threshold. The efficiency is miserable as well for hydrogen, so you are stuck with something that is very hard to recover on cost.

    • Not to mention, it pretty much means all cars powered by it are high explosive devices.

      Not necessarily high explosive but yes they are costlier. Part of the cost is the infrastructure required to build a supply chain for hydrogen. The one segment of the market that could be converted are mass transit like buses or fleet vehicles like taxis. Basically anywhere today where CNG is viable, hydrogen could be used.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by XXongo ( 3986865 )
        No. Hydrogen by itself is not an explosive, and definitely not high explosive (it does not detonate on a shock). Hydrogen mixed with oxygen can be an explosive, but so is gasoline.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by quenda ( 644621 )

        It's better to combine hydrogen with carbon to make synthetic methane. We have the infrastructure already to store and transport it with ease.

        Of course we do not have a practical methane fuel-cell yet (hydrogen ones are not that great!), so you will need to use hot combustion. Maybe a stirling engine, or burn the methane in a cylindrical chamber, with a piston at one end, which could be mechanically linked to the wheels. Additionally, this method allows use of far cheaper, less-pure, natural methane. Or heavier hydrocarbons which are safer, easier to store, and can be synthesised from bio-fuel.

        • Or just use a regular engine... plenty of cars in eastern europe run off cng, which is methane.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Strider- ( 39683 )

          Of course we do not have a practical methane fuel-cell yet (hydrogen ones are not that great!)

          Well, there are fuel cells for a variety of hydrocarbons, up to and including propane, methanol, and similar. Prior to StarLink, I was looking at building a couple of mountaintop repeaters to get fast internet to a couple of remote sites, and what we were looking at was primary solar power, with propane fuel cells as the backup for when the solar panels get buried in snow.

          That said, the fuel cells tend to work by using a hot catalyst to reform the propane back into hydrogen and similar volatiles, and using

      • Most of the hydrogen we have is produced from hydrocarbons.

      • Adding carbon is not going to go well with the carbon footprint types. But you really need to read up on fuel cell technology because they dont have to burn the catalyst in order to get the hydrogen out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      If you use solar to generate the electricity to generate hydrogen, it would logically be exactly as clean as solar. One could crack water at the pump to crusted the hydrogen in real time, thus eliminating transport costs. The only question is how to filter the water so it is clean enough to use. That could be energy intensive. The hydrogen will burn to remake the water that was used. No pollution. Certainly not compared to petrol. The only issue with hydrogen is storage in the car. We could store methane

      • If you use solar to generate the electricity to generate hydrogen, it would logically be exactly as clean as solar.

        It might be. But if the solar power is diverted from feeding the grid to making hydrogen from water, and the effect is that more fossil fuels are used to make up the displaced solar power, then it's not green.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fermion ( 181285 )
        You would probably be surprised how much hydrogen is routinely used around you, especially if you live someplace that has certain manufacturing industries, like some synthetic diamonds. The process is well developed.

      • If you get a pressure failure of the tank you will be dead. Pressure vessels do not fail gracefully. If the best case you'll be riding a rocket. There was a myth- busters episode on the failure of the valve on a compressed air tank. The tank went through the wall.

    • My understanding is that the cost of generating hydrogen is not lower than solar,

      Solar is an energy source. Hydrogen is an energy storage medium. You can't really compare the cost of the two. Hydrogen can be made from solar.

      nor is it cleaner than solar or oil. Like electricity, it does move the pollution elsewhere.

      If hydrogen is made from solar energy-- by, say, electrolysis-- it is exactly as clean as solar, because it is solar, just stored in the form of hydrogen.

      (most hydrogen today is not made by electrolysis, though; it's made by stripping hydrogen atoms off of natural gas. Because natural gas is dirt cheap.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fazig ( 2909523 )
      The argument I've heard being made for fuel cells with hydrogen or some hydrogen containing fuel powering the motor of a vehicle is that it makes refueling potentially a lot faster.

      One of the main inconveniences of electric motors with batteries vs internal combustion motors with a combustible fuel, is you can't 'refuel' your electric car within a couple of minutes and then continue on driving for hundreds of kilometers/miles until you have to refuel again for a couple of minutes.

      Refueling a hydrogen po
      • As an EV owner, I will say that I don’t really care about refill times. I drive around 2-300 miles a week, and my “tank” is full every morning when I leave my house, without ever needing to stop somewhere to refill. On the extremely rare days I drive over my 300 mile range, I time one of my errands to match up to an EV charger and add another ~40-60 miles range to finish the day.

        When my EV isn’t big enough for a job... I rent a car that is suitable for the task at hand. I

    • Hydrogen needs to be thought of as a battery in this case. Energy is stored in the form of free hydrogen in order to burn in a vehicle. As far as explosive, when Internal Combustion Engines were entering the market they made the same claims. There was fierce challenges by steam driven cars claiming that ICE would explode on you. Hydrogen is simply a fluid that gives you range, refueling times, and infrastructure that rivals gasoline without the greenhouse gasses of automobiles. Even hydrogen produced by fos

    • Most of the world does not have a robust electrical distribution system which would be required for charging electric cars (for when wind or sunshine isn't good enough in your local area). But the world does have a very efficient existing fuel distribution network. It just needs a different type of fuel to distribute. And electric generating capacity can but built easily on the coasts to create hydrogen by hydrolysis. And hydrogen by hydrolysis is becoming more efficient. I think it is a practicality thing

    • Hydrogen cars offer the best selection of the worst downsides: EV up-front costs, ICE fueling costs, ICE fuel sourcing and environmental problems (since practically all hydrogen is currently produced as a fossil fuel byproduct - for now, it's practically a fossil fuel), plus a uniquely dangerous fuel source - it must be stored under extremely high pressure to get a practical energy density, burns with nearly invisible fire, escapes through solids, and will embrittle steel on the way out.

      The only reason this [desmogblog.com]

    • Faster refueling/recharge which translates to longer miles traveled per day on big trips. The cost of converting an existing ICE to hydrogen is only a couple thousand while there really is no conversion available for existing vehicles. Not everyone has a home let along a garage in their home. Many with homes might have a car port or detached garage, but more people park in lots or driveways. This makes charging at home impossible. People cant even have inflatable christmas decorations because some fucking

  • TLDR; The answer is, âoeNo, they are not the (Score:5, Insightful)

    by macmurph ( 622189 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:09PM (#60827400)

    Hydrogen is energy intensive to make.

    The vehicles have terrible acceleration.

    Hydrogen gas tanks must be inspected every six months.

    Fuel cells are expensive.

    There is no fueling infrastructure.

    EVs are superior in nearly every measure such as manufacturability, safety, reliability, interior space, existing charging infrastructure, and efficiency.

    • Re:TLDR; The answer is, âoeNo, they are not t (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Lightn ( 6014 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:17PM (#60827420) Homepage

      The end-to-end efficiency of hydrogen cars (25-35%) it terrible compared to battery electric (70-90%).

      https://insideevs.com/news/406... [insideevs.com]

      Home charging needs to become ubiquitous. Once people are use to it they won't want to go to a gas station or equivalent unless they have to, like on long trips.

      • Much easier to store, and about as (in)efficient as hydrogen.

        But best start by making ammonia for fertilizer using non-carbon sources.

        For the time being just use petrol. All these other technologies use electricity produced by burning coal (or possibly gas). Until we get to mainly non-carbon power electric vehicles in any form are just money wasted that would be better spent on producing more non-carbon electricity.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lkcl ( 517947 )

        Home charging needs to become ubiquitous. Once people are use to it they won't want to go to a gas station or equivalent unless they have to, like on long trips.

        sadly this isn't going to happen. a friend had a pair of 2nd-hand Renault EVs (bought because the batteries were old and the newer models had a 200 mile range). plugging them into the house supply tripped a *SIXTY* amp breaker not just once, not twice, but MULTIPLE times throughout the day.

        consequently the vehicles were an absolute liability. they could not be relied on to be charged up in the morning because overnight the breaker tripped.

        now think of whether the National Grid is capable of coping with t

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by shilly ( 142940 )

          Your friend's story sounds totally implausible. A Renault Zoe uses a very clever charger that can draw from 3kW up to 43kW in AC power, with electronics figuring out how much is safe to draw. I've never heard of *any* Zoe ever tripping a 60A fuse, and I've been a member of an owner's club for 5 years and have had 3 myself, and always charged at home.

          In addition, the National Grid have themselves done the analysis and are very confident that they can cope with the upsurge in demand.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lkcl ( 517947 )

      Hydrogen is energy intensive to make.

      you may be interested to know that i've an acquaintance who developed the electrolysis units that went into Pepsi fleets. using KOH auto-catalysis, and 2V @ 350 W, they're getting an HO mix at the rate of 1 Litre of gas per hour. if you do the numbers on that, it's significantly less than the current costs.

  • I am not against it .. but, at what pressure is the hydrogen stored? How does the tank handle accidents/punctures? Is it more efficient energy-wise to produce hydrogen than to charge a lithium ion battery?

    Can't decide without knowing those basic facts.

  • OK, I base my car buying decision first on autonomous features (Tesla wins), followed by energy efficiency (Tesla wins), followed by interior looks/UI (Tesla wins), and finally exterior looks (Tesla wins).

    The Mirai is a zero on sensor coverage and autonomous accident avoidance features.
    The Mirai is a zero on internal looks .. not inspiring at all. And you can't watch a movie in it.
    The Mirai is UGLY because of that damn front grille. It is frigging ugly, it is slap-the baby-momma ugly. Damn that grille is ug

    • To be fair, the EV market does have entrants from KIA and Nissan that are about half the price of Tesla (and probable less than half the value) to fill the mid range price slot.

      They all have advantages over the H2 car

  • Only one drawback? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:20PM (#60827426) Journal

    There's just one drawback. You can only find them in California.

    It's not just the cars that you can only find in CA: it's also the fuelling stations. In fact, the fuelling stations don't even cover all of California.

    Then, there is the limited life with some components requiring mandatory replacement at 15 years. Then, there is the expense: once you are past the free hydrogen period that the manufacturers typically include, hydrogen becomes an expensive fuel.

    Finally, why bother? Hydrogen fuelled cars are not green: most hydrogen comes from steam reformation of fossil fuels, producing CO2 in the process. Battery EVs are not totally green either, but depend on how green the grid is. Because of their better efficiency Battery EVs are greener than Hydrogen FCEVs in most of the USA.

  • No. (Score:5, Informative)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:30PM (#60827460) Journal
    It is possible to make hydrogen using renewable electricity. But, it is more profitable to sell the electricity to the grid, instead of making hydrogen.

    By the time fuel cells catch up to present day battery electric vehicles, battery tech would have advanced even more. Hydrogen refueling is not like you filling 15 gallons of gasoline in two minutes out of a simple nozzle. These pressurized hydrogen hoses, with cryogenic coolling takes much longer. And the dispensing tank takes several more minutes before it can accept another car. Its capacity is one car every 30 minutes.

    Hydrogen infrastructure costs money. Battery car charging infrastructure is basically an outlet in your garage wall. The simple 120 V 20 amp outlet you plug your toaster into has the capacity to dispense 30,000 miles a year. With 10 hours charging overnight on average it can easily give you 12,000 miles a year.

    All the commercial hydrogen available today comes from fossil fuels. All this talk about hydrogen is desperate attempts by the dying fossil fuel industry to somehow get some government cash to develop R&D. Plain PR spin by them that is all.

  • TL;DR No, they aren't. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Chuq ( 8564 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:45PM (#60827502) Journal

    To make hydrogen cars useful you need to:

    * Build refuelling stations at a cost of a couple of million each (double if you want the electrolysis onsite)
    * Build them *everywhere* that they need to go – both in the suburbs where people live *and* the long distance routes.

    Compare this to electric, where the density of public chargers within a city can be a lot lower due to home charging being predominant, and the ability to use any source of electricity in any location. And when you do install a fast charger, it's a fraction of the cost – tens of thousands for a single unit or hundreds of thousands for a higher end site with multiple ultra-rapid units.

    Fast charging infrastructure is the difference between fast and slow travel in an EV; hydrogen infrastructure is the difference between possible and impossible travel.

    So with hydrogen:

    * The cars cost more
    * The fuel cost more
    * More filling stations are required
    * The filling stations are more expensive to build
    * You can't self generate your fuel at home

    The only upside talked about is refuelling speed, and even then people seem unaware that after every refuel the hydrogen dispenser needs to re-pressurise which takes 20 minutes. There's no advantage. Everything about hydrogen cars is money wasted, and while people can spend money on whatever they want, often it's taxpayers money being wasted. People get in the ear of governments and convince them to flush money down the toilet.

    [I should include: hydrogen has a lot of excellent uses, including other transport – but for cars it's a waste of time]

    • You can self-generate at home... but as you point out... why the hell would you when it is so much easier to just get an EV.

  • Real Engineering did a great video on this about a year ago. If certain technical and logistic issues can be overcome hydrogen will be the power source that replaces oil/gasoline.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • Heated seats don't deplete your range?

  • My BEV takes 10 seconds to fuel, 5 seconds to plug in and 5 seconds to up plug, so why would I waste 5 minutes fuelling up? Of course reality gets in the way of that 5 minutes fuelling time as it would be a 20 hour trip on the back of a truck to get a HFCV from my home to the only fuelling station in my country, 600km away, I think we should at least count the 20 minutes for the 4 stops to put diesel in the truck.

    Of course the HFCV fan boys are going to go "ra ra Toyota is the best company in the world

    • If EVs are superior, they'll win in the court of public opinion. If another tech turns out to be superior, then EVs won't win.

      I'd just as soon see the automakers trying lots of different things - that's how tech advances.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        Yep, I would agree with that. They tried HFCV for 40 years and BEVs even longer. The difference is one is starting to get market share and the other lots of press hype. I'm all for automakers trying different things but don't spend 40 years telling me you will have a solution "real soon now" when it is clearly not ready for main stream use. Likewise I am a BEV fan boy but I'm quite happy to let the market prove I'm right. I don't see the need for subsidies on BEVs or bans on ICEVs as on current trends

        • > Likewise I am a BEV fan boy but I'm quite happy to let the market prove I'm right. I don't see the need for subsidies on BEVs or bans on ICEVs as on current trends BEVs will do fine as the prices continue to fall

          I'm inclined to agree that they'll do just fine on their own merits, eventually. However, we've got a serious environmental CO2 problem on our hands, and are already way behind schedule getting off of fossil fuels fast enough to avoid major problems. So I think as a society we do have a veste

  • I followed the developments from companies like the Ballard Corporation [ballard.com] since, what, the late 90's/early 2000's? Long time.
    In any case it's been under development for a long, long time. If it was practical -- which, sadly, it's not -- we'd have fuel cell powered vehicles all over already. There are not only problems with the production and storage of hydrogen, and hydrogen tanks in vehicles, but the proton-exchange membrane fuel cells are far from maintenance-free, and not cheap to maintain as well.
    Last t
  • 'Drivers can refuel FCEVs at a traditional gasoline station in less than 5 minutes.'

    Erm, whut? Even nikola's Trevor Milton never claimed anything that stupid.

  • Let’s not consider the price of the Mirai vs a Prius for now, only cost per mile. Prius is about 50 mpg combined at $2.70/gal in SoCal at Costco that’s $0.054 per mile. The Mirai given is the article is $0.223 per mile. Average American drives 13,500 miles a year and average car on the road is 11.9 years old, that’s 160k miles that the average car has driven. For the Prius, fueling would cost $8,640 over 160k miles. The Mirai even with the $15,000 in “free” fuel would cost $22k

    • Prices do change. The newest stations in California are $13.15/kg and the 2021 Miria gets 73 MPGe putting the cost per mile at $0.18. The station was subsidized, but the fuel is not. If the driver were not getting free fuel, the cost at the stations would be a lot lower.

      Using electrolysis, the cost to produce H2 can drop as low as $4/kg, although $8/kg is more likely. At $8/kg, parity with gasoline is pretty close.

      And this ignores the lower maintenance vs an ICE. A FC car is an electric car. Regen brak

  • That ain't cheap. How can that compete with EVs or gasoline? Another rich person's toy.

  • We can pass over this little gem:

    The range anxiety that's stymied sales of EVs?

    Tesla sales is limited by supply and manufacturing capacity, not demand. This statement is not based on fact.

    But how do you go from talking about range anxiety to:

    You can only find them in California.

    To assert that a hydrogen car is BETTER in this category? I can drive my Y pretty much anywhere in North America. If I had a hydrogen car I can only drive in parts of California. Mr. Spock please explain.

    Last year the hydrogen plant in San Jose blew up. I saw it from Fremont where I live. After that I

  • No. They are not.

  • Idiots (Score:2)

    by nyet ( 19118 )

    How is it that literally nobody mentions energy density and specific energy?

    Fact is, carbon bonds are king. Hydrogen bonds are meh at best.

    There is a reason hydrocarbon chains are so popular for energy storage.

    If we ever manage to efficiently create carbon chains from solar (or electrical) energy, and sequester the resulting CO2 when we extract the stored energy, hydrogen cells will be even more useless.

  • my understanding of fuel cells, from 10 years ago, is as follows:

    * the pressurisation takes 90 seconds, requires 100% power to be drawn. if this is not possible the cell must for safety reasons be de-pressurised immediately.
    * the catalysts required are (were) platinum. the cost is USD 1,500 per kW of electricity.
    * hydrogen is extremely dangerous, burning explosively at the right stoichiometic ratio. you've seen the mythbusters episode. leaks in the hydrogen supply are far more dangerous than natural gas

  • Fool cells are in constant need of replacement and those are costly.
    The H2 will be more expensive than buying electricity directly.
    Each fuel station, not location, but station, is more expensive than any 10 250+KW fast chargers.
    And then finally, we have already seen how these stations work. Explosion anybody?

  • Hydrogen fuel-cell cars are 100% technically viable and could be made to work... but at this point, electric cars have such a large head-start, and so much more money being thrown into improving them, that it's unlikely that fuel cells will ever catch up to the point where they can become competitive.

    E.g. in 5 years fuel-cell cars will be better than they are now; but in 5 years battery-powered cars will be much better than that, so it won't make much difference. It seems that the market has spoken.

  • Range anxiety (Score:3)

    by cnaumann ( 466328 ) on Monday December 14, 2020 @11:53AM (#60829394)

    How does this eliminate range anxiety? A hydrogen powered cars can ONLY be refueled at a hydrogen station. A BEV can be refueled (albeit slowly) anywhere there is electricity, which is pretty much everywhere. A portable generator would even do if needed.

    It may be possible to do V2V fueling of hydrogen cars (it is also possible in theory to do V2V fueling of BEVs) but that is not currently the case.

    Do we even need to talk about $90 for 400 miles? A gas vehicle can do 400 miles for $40 of gas (30MPG / $3 gallon) and a BEV can do 400 miles for $15 (4 miles per kwh / $0.15 per kwh).

    How many cars per hour can a hydrogen station actually fill?

    I am just not seeing it.

  • Fuel Costs? (Score:3)

    by laie_techie ( 883464 ) on Monday December 14, 2020 @12:28PM (#60829532)

    From the summary, a fuel cell can go approximately 400 miles and costs $90. I have an older gas van which can go 400 miles on a tank of gas and it costs less than $45 to fill up. Are good feelings about helping the environment worth doubling my fuel costs? For what it's worth, I like the idea of swapping out the battery or fuel cell instead of recharging because people don't want to spend an hour (or longer) charging (except overnight).

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