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I'm long hydrogen vehicles due to the convenience factor. Convenience trumps efficiency. EVs are great if you own a house with a driveway and get to charge ov

I'm long hydrogen vehicles due to the convenience factor. Convenience trumps efficiency. EVs are great if you own a house with a driveway and get to charge overnight. Outside of USA, how common is that really? Most people live in apartments in cities, where a parking spot is hard to find.

joshuaheard 6y ago
You also have the problem of range with an EV, which can only go a few hundred miles. You would need to swap out the batteries to have an instant charge. With hydrogen, you could have ubiquitous automated solar powered gas stations.
smt88 6y ago
> EVs are great if you own a house with a driveway and get to charge overnight. I think denser cities will eventually have battery-swapping stations, where you just get a new battery whenever you're running low. They then fast-charge your depleted battery and give it to a new customer later. The big obstacles are compatibility and preventing people from abusing the system to get batteries in better condition for free, but I think countries with more central planning (like China) could force those issues.
- pm90 6y ago
  You could also use regulations to standardize battery design and performance criteria right here in the US. Just like we have regulations that dictate what can and can’t be “gasoline”. Make batteries a commodity.
pm90 6y ago
Garages are also not very common in non US countries. As the population urbanized further into denser cities this will make this problem even more acute. We absolutely need a better solution.
pixelbash 6y ago
I can see charging being built directly into parking buildings/apartment carparks and factored into the parking cost. Would be pretty convenient always being fully charged when setting out. At this stage parking buildings have maybe 4 chargers but 1 is out of order and the other 3 are in use. But that's a scaling issue. Will be interesting when parking buildings start drawing megawatts overnight though.

joshuaheard 6y ago

You also have the problem of range with an EV, which can only go a few hundred miles. You would need to swap out the batteries to have an instant charge. With hydrogen, you could have ubiquitous automated solar powered gas stations.

smt88 6y ago

> EVs are great if you own a house with a driveway and get to charge overnight. I think denser cities will eventually have battery-swapping stations, where you just get a new battery whenever you're running low. They then fast-charge your depleted battery and give it to a new customer later. The big obstacles are compatibility and preventing people from abusing the system to get batteries in better condition for free, but I think countries with more central planning (like China) could force those issues.

pm90 6y ago
You could also use regulations to standardize battery design and performance criteria right here in the US. Just like we have regulations that dictate what can and can’t be “gasoline”. Make batteries a commodity.

pm90 6y ago

Garages are also not very common in non US countries. As the population urbanized further into denser cities this will make this problem even more acute. We absolutely need a better solution.

pixelbash 6y ago

I can see charging being built directly into parking buildings/apartment carparks and factored into the parking cost. Would be pretty convenient always being fully charged when setting out. At this stage parking buildings have maybe 4 chargers but 1 is out of order and the other 3 are in use. But that's a scaling issue. Will be interesting when parking buildings start drawing megawatts overnight though.