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Will hydrogen overtake batteries in the race for zero-emission cars?
- audunw 3y agoShort answer: No. Will it have a role in trucks? I used to think so. But it’s also perfectly viable to do long haul trucking with a standardised battery swap system. And that’s arguably an easier infrastructure problem to solve than building out hydrogen gas stations. It’s also easier to do battery swapping with trucks than with cars. I’m not optimistic about battery swapping with cars, but NIO has gotten even that to work. The one thing everyone is missing in this discussion is synergies: almost all technology will revolve around batteries in some way in the coming decades. The more we invest in batteries the more we make everything better. Ironically that goes for hydrogen vehicles as well since they need batteries for buffering and regenerative breaking. A battery swapping station can also double as efficient grid storage. If the station expects fewer customers it can feed some energy back on the grid. And there’s synergies around recycling/reuse of batteries at the end of life. I think the next 3 decades will be a race for each nation to secure the materials it needs to have enough batteries to run its economy. The first country to reach that goal can be fully self sufficient in terms of energy, in a sustainable way.
- simonblack 3y agoNo. Liquid fuels take up a thousandth of the space of gaseous fuels. Even special absorption technologies to reduce storage requirements for gaseous fuels aren't efficient enough to be useful. Not given enough emphasis in the debate is how do you generate that hydrogen in the first place? How much CO2 emission does it take to make that 'zero-emission' hydrogen?