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They aren't poor excuses. There are fundamentally hard problems about the distribution of clean hydrogen that have not and likely will not be overcome in a way

They aren't poor excuses. There are fundamentally hard problems about the distribution of clean hydrogen that have not and likely will not be overcome in a way that is broadly competitive with other technologies. Sure, you can use methane as a "transportable hydrogen", but then it's not clean any more. You can make your hydrogen relatively cheaply from natural gas, but then it's not clean any more. This is not due to lack of focus or funding. Toyota, the largest auto maker in the world, has spent decades trying to make hydrogen-powered cars a reality. And in any honest assessment, it has failed dismally at doing so (indeed, it has spent so much focus and funding on hydrogen that it is woefully behind its competitors in battery electric vehicles).

_hypx 4y ago
That is the excuse I'm talking about. We are not having a discussion over whether those problems exist, it is about whether we should spend money on tackling them. After all, we are at in dire need of a battery with higher energy density. And yet the answer has consistently been "sure, it may be exactly what we're looking for, but somehow we already know that it is impossible despite spending very little R&D on it."
- cpgxiii 4y ago
  Lots of money has been spent on this front already, and it has gone nowhere. There is no magic way to suddenly make hydrogen a nicely-behaved, high-density storable fuel. Military and space applications, who are willing to work with much more troublesome fuels, have tried to improve on hydrogen on-and-off since the dawn of rocketry. The only practical improvement on LH2 is liquid methane. And guess what, that's exactly the same story with terrestrial transport. Around the world, natural gas powers a lot of vehicles. It is a great storable means of distributing hydrogen - safe enough and well-understood enough that much of the developed world is content at piping it directly into their homes. What it is not is carbon-emission free.
  - _hypx 4y ago
    Read what I said to the other guy. We are not having a conversation over whether those problems exist. It's about the motivation to solve them. And the problems of today should give us massive motivation to do so. Even trillions of dollar is not "too much money."
    - stetrain 4y ago
      It’s not a lack of motivation to solve the problem. It’s the lack of a viable pathway to solve the problem regardless of funding. Are there specific avenues of research and development that have a decent shot at bringing roundtrip grid>hydrogen>motor efficiency on par with other EVs, and which are currently starved of funding?
      - _hypx 4y ago
        Yes. The fact that hydrogen fuel cells are technically a type of battery, meaning that there is no rationale for why it can't do that. Hence why "efficiencies" is just an excuse. In fact, this entire argument is a made-up one to begin with. People are being willfully ignorant of the fact that both lithium and hydrogen are on the same column on the periodic table. That they should both behave very similarly to each other in all matters related to battery chemistry.
        mlindner 4y ago
        Hydrogen in fuel cells isn’t used in any way similar to how lithium is used in batteries.
        _hypx 4y ago
        Both are being used as the charge carrier in their respective batteries. If you contemplate a li-air battery, the reactions are basically the same.
        cpgxiii 4y ago
        > Hence why "efficiencies" is just an excuse. No. There is no reason to believe that the efficiency can be significantly improved. If the efficiency of clean hydrogen is bad enough and will always be that bad, it's very possible it is more efficient to power vehicles through easily transported liquid hydrocarbons (which are almost certainly always going to be better in effective volumetric and mass energy density) and spend the power saved to run centralized carbon capture. > both lithium and hydrogen are on the same column on the periodic table. That they should both behave very similarly to each other in all matters related to battery chemistry Hydrogen is a notoriously difficult element to work with, that behaves in complex and poorly understood ways, even now. Aerospace applications, arguably those with the most experience in handling hydrogen, routinely struggle with its challenges.

_hypx 4y ago

That is the excuse I'm talking about. We are not having a discussion over whether those problems exist, it is about whether we should spend money on tackling them. After all, we are at in dire need of a battery with higher energy density. And yet the answer has consistently been "sure, it may be exactly what we're looking for, but somehow we already know that it is impossible despite spending very little R&D on it."

cpgxiii 4y ago
Lots of money has been spent on this front already, and it has gone nowhere. There is no magic way to suddenly make hydrogen a nicely-behaved, high-density storable fuel. Military and space applications, who are willing to work with much more troublesome fuels, have tried to improve on hydrogen on-and-off since the dawn of rocketry. The only practical improvement on LH2 is liquid methane. And guess what, that's exactly the same story with terrestrial transport. Around the world, natural gas powers a lot of vehicles. It is a great storable means of distributing hydrogen - safe enough and well-understood enough that much of the developed world is content at piping it directly into their homes. What it is not is carbon-emission free.
- _hypx 4y ago
  Read what I said to the other guy. We are not having a conversation over whether those problems exist. It's about the motivation to solve them. And the problems of today should give us massive motivation to do so. Even trillions of dollar is not "too much money."
  - stetrain 4y ago
    It’s not a lack of motivation to solve the problem. It’s the lack of a viable pathway to solve the problem regardless of funding. Are there specific avenues of research and development that have a decent shot at bringing roundtrip grid>hydrogen>motor efficiency on par with other EVs, and which are currently starved of funding?
    - _hypx 4y ago
      Yes. The fact that hydrogen fuel cells are technically a type of battery, meaning that there is no rationale for why it can't do that. Hence why "efficiencies" is just an excuse. In fact, this entire argument is a made-up one to begin with. People are being willfully ignorant of the fact that both lithium and hydrogen are on the same column on the periodic table. That they should both behave very similarly to each other in all matters related to battery chemistry.
      - mlindner 4y ago
        Hydrogen in fuel cells isn’t used in any way similar to how lithium is used in batteries.
        _hypx 4y ago
        Both are being used as the charge carrier in their respective batteries. If you contemplate a li-air battery, the reactions are basically the same.
      - cpgxiii 4y ago
        > Hence why "efficiencies" is just an excuse. No. There is no reason to believe that the efficiency can be significantly improved. If the efficiency of clean hydrogen is bad enough and will always be that bad, it's very possible it is more efficient to power vehicles through easily transported liquid hydrocarbons (which are almost certainly always going to be better in effective volumetric and mass energy density) and spend the power saved to run centralized carbon capture. > both lithium and hydrogen are on the same column on the periodic table. That they should both behave very similarly to each other in all matters related to battery chemistry Hydrogen is a notoriously difficult element to work with, that behaves in complex and poorly understood ways, even now. Aerospace applications, arguably those with the most experience in handling hydrogen, routinely struggle with its challenges.