3 ms·
Well, green hydrogen costs about 3-4x the kwh it takes to charge an EV battery for the same distance. At 3-4x the cost, it's just not worth doing it. Besides, t
by jillesvangurp 5y ago
Well, green hydrogen costs about 3-4x the kwh it takes to charge an EV battery for the same distance. At 3-4x the cost, it's just not worth doing it. Besides, the infrastructure is simply not there. If you run out of battery, there are gazillions of options for getting a charge. If you run out of hydrogen, you can probably count the number of fueling points within the maximum range of the vehicle on one hand.
At that cost, hydrogen may never be worth the trouble. At least not for anything where battery is an option, which appears to be just about anything with wheels lately. The Tesla semi is about to hit production. 500 miles on a single battery for a heavy truck. Hard to argue spending 4x the energy on hydrogen for that. They are not the only truck manufacturer trying to target that market. At 4x the operational cost, the longer charging times are inconvenient but acceptable. And even those are coming down.
Green hydrogen (as opposed to converting coal/methane into hydrogen) is a very small market as of yet. Long term it might prosper. But short term, the best applications are probably those where batteries are just not feasible. By short term, I mean the next 30 years or so. Heavy transport, shipping, aviation, industry, etc. Plenty of growth opportunities there before even trying to compete with normal EV road traffic; which is becoming routine and very cost effective right now.