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Hydrogen powered vehicles will approach 100% of all transportation. That is because it is the only that scales across all sectors, as well as being the only one

by _hypx 3y ago

Hydrogen powered vehicles will approach 100% of all transportation. That is because it is the only that scales across all sectors, as well as being the only one that is really sustainable. Even things like methanol or syn-fuels will be made from it, making them part of hydrogen infrastructure. Also, the people who make claims like yours are basically suggesting that standardization will die. That every transportation sector will use its own separate infrastructure. That is a massive waste of money, and one that ignores history. One common standard, or at most a few closely-related standards, will displace a mishmash of disparate solutions.

yongjik 3y ago
"Scaling across all sectors" is, at best, irrelevant. For decades, most developed countries have run their trains on electricity and their vehicles on gas and diesel, and it caused no problems. If anything, having multiple energy sources for different parts of infrastructure allows a sort of fault tolerance (e.g., from rising oil prices).
- _hypx 3y ago
  Most freight trains are diesel. Electric trains are usually passenger lines in dense areas. Also, this is direct electrification, so they just use the grid. But batteries imply another separate infrastructure on top of that. If batteries could power everything, then this might be acceptable. But they can't, so we are left with chemical fuels again. So we are supposedly forced to simultaneously invest trillions into batteries and trillions more into green chemical fuels. That is highly infeasible and unlikely to happen. Redundancy is best solved with chemical fuels. This is because you can store them for long periods of time. So if this is a major factor, it will shift heavily towards that direction. And green fuels can be made with just renewable energy plus some common material. In hydrogen's case, this is just water. Synthetic fuels need some kind of green CO₂ source, which is doable if it can be pulled from the air somehow. So this already is protected from oil prices.

by _hypx 3y ago

yongjik 3y ago

"Scaling across all sectors" is, at best, irrelevant. For decades, most developed countries have run their trains on electricity and their vehicles on gas and diesel, and it caused no problems. If anything, having multiple energy sources for different parts of infrastructure allows a sort of fault tolerance (e.g., from rising oil prices).

_hypx 3y ago
Most freight trains are diesel. Electric trains are usually passenger lines in dense areas. Also, this is direct electrification, so they just use the grid. But batteries imply another separate infrastructure on top of that. If batteries could power everything, then this might be acceptable. But they can't, so we are left with chemical fuels again. So we are supposedly forced to simultaneously invest trillions into batteries and trillions more into green chemical fuels. That is highly infeasible and unlikely to happen. Redundancy is best solved with chemical fuels. This is because you can store them for long periods of time. So if this is a major factor, it will shift heavily towards that direction. And green fuels can be made with just renewable energy plus some common material. In hydrogen's case, this is just water. Synthetic fuels need some kind of green CO₂ source, which is doable if it can be pulled from the air somehow. So this already is protected from oil prices.