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Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist
1) "Well to wheel" hydrogen takes 2-3 times the energy (ie. A fraction) to move a km as compared battery if you put in the losses for both. That's not a falsehood, it's been proven over and over
2) If we're not moving on from fossil fuels then hydrogen is even more incredibly stupid and expensive.
As for others wondering why there's still companies putting money into it, it's largely due to sunk costs. O&G companies have assets they can use if we go hydrogen and they can control the fuel. Japanese car makers sunk billions into developing it. But make no mistake, the small hydrogen vehicle market is shrinking when it needs to be expanding exponentially. The war is over
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I agree with much of your current take on H2 fuel cells vs electric but there are some points contrary that I think you are missing.
Currently there are only ~2-3% EV vehicles stock worldwide so nothing has changed enough to state electric vehicles have won and the war is over. As you have noted O&G companies have an invested stake in the current economy/infrastructure and I think they will be forced too or be incentivized to improve the value of H2 from O&G. They can utilize the fact that pollution is mitigated to one refinery and H2 can replace fuel for cars and many different applications that batteries aren't able to on a large scale. When people talk about moving to electric vehicles completely do they consider how little electricity we still use for fuel purposes in general?
As noted electric energy from coal can be very polluting. When people say
H2 takes 2-3x times the energy to produce electricity note you are using current technologies with no references noted. Things change rapidly especially when $$$ gets put into a sector of research. Pipelines and gas stations can easily be retrofitted for a H2 gas economy. For the masses they could easily transition to a H2 economy and most wouldn't even notice. I don't think we can transition to complete electric as fast without an intermediate.
I'm rambling but point is that things can change fast. From a chemical view photosynthesis is one of the most important natural phenomenons and there is no reason we can't eventually better it on a larger scale.