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That's nice, but is there any real advantage to hydrogen over batteries, or have batteries at this stage left hydrogen in the dust? Cost? Weight? Overall effic
by hugh4 11y ago
That's nice, but is there any real advantage to hydrogen over batteries, or have batteries at this stage left hydrogen in the dust?
Cost? Weight? Overall efficiency? No numbers are given for any of these, but they've all traditional weakpoints of hydrogen.
Hydrogen also requires a lot of fancy infrastructure, whereas batteries can be charged (slowly) practically anywhere.
One advantage is that you could refill your tank in a long road trip, hypothetically, if you found a hydrogen filling station, faster than you could recharge your electric car. But that's a rare use case.
Anything I'm missing? Or is hydrogen just a zombie technology?
- toomuchtodo 11y agoYou are correct. Hydrogen is dead technology for mobility.
- tachyonbeam 11y agoIt's even more dead because electric vehicles have a huge lead at this point. Tesla has released several working vehicles that are plenty capable enough for most people and has its network of superchargers in place. Other companies have already started developing competing options. At this point, battery capacity will keep going up, price will keep going down and electric infrastructure will keep improving. I don't see hydrogen vehicles standing much of a chance now, in a few years even less so.
- _rpd 11y agoIt is very hard for hydrogen to overcome it's 25% grid to motor efficiency [1]. It means that it will always be significantly more expensive per kWh delivered to a motor. However, the market may value quick refueling very highly. [1] http://iqsoft.co.in/images/The%2021st%20Century%20Electric%20Car_img_3.jpg http://iqsoft.co.in/images/The%2021st%20Century%20Electric%2...
- avmich 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell#Efficiency_of_leading_fuel_cell_types https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell#Efficiency_of_leadin... "According to the U.S. Department of Energy, fuel cells are generally between 40–60% energy efficient." I feel like I'm reading a beauty contest gossip :) . Strong opinions, weak arguments...
- _rpd 11y ago> fuel cells are generally between 40–60% energy efficient Which is reduced to 25% grid-to-motor efficiency when electrolysis and compression (required for practical energy densities) are taken into account. As illustrated in the linked graphic. Electrolysis is assumed since other methods (e.g., methane reformation) generally generate greenhouse gases, but there has been some work on algae bioreactors [1] that might become economically interesting. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_hydrogen_production_(Algae) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_hydrogen_production...