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Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame
And yet, that same website has the following stories about Hydrogen in August alone:
- Genesis Outlines Its Dual Electrification Strategy: The company will rely on battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
- Rumor Claims Mazda Working On Hydrogen-Fueled Rotary Engine: According to a new report from BestCarWeb.jp, Mazda’s new rotary will be able to run on hydrogen fuel.
- Study Finds Electric Vehicles Are Key To Paris Agreement Goals: Both electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicle adoption can help us become climate-neutral by 2050.
- BMW iX5 Hydrogen Coming To IAA, Small Series Made From Late 2022: The iX5 Hydrogen combines a high-performance hydrogen fuel cell with the fifth-gen eDrive system for a total of 368 horsepower
- H2X Is Back With A Ford Ranger Hydrogen Fuel-Cell EV Pickup Truck: Testing and demonstrations are said to commence in November.
- GM Announces Two New Commercial EVs, Accelerates BrightDrop EV600: A new battery electric van and hydrogen fuel cell medium-duty truck are coming.
- Startup Shows Ford Ranger-Based Hydrogen Fuel Cell Pickup: H2X Global is a new company based in Australia whose goal is to develop and sell hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles.
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Why would anyone be developing FCEVs if there was a global collapse in the market? Why would anyone bother making passenger vehicles if the market has collapsed and is dead?
Adoption rates aside, I'm not sure saying the market is "dead" isn't somewhat gaslighting the situation.
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I've kind of ranted on this already, but here goes:
The only benefit to H2 Fuel Cell over battery is refueling times. It's much more expensive per km to fuel no matter what you do, it takes 2-4x more energy (at least probably more) well to wheel, the energy is very expensive to store (5000-10000psi gas and temp -253 C for liquid), more difficult to distribute and fill up a vehicle's tank (due to temperature changes with pressure changes), more expensive to transport, more expensive to store, and has more parts to go wrong. Worse yet is the fact that virtually all hydrogen currently made (95-98%) is made from methane or coal which produces a lot of CO2, and methane leakage from extracting and refining as well as escape from steam reforming may actually make H2 production as it is worse than burning gas. Hydrogen as a fuel is a dream for the O&G companies as it allows for continued operation in their current form. Just slap CCUS on it and keep going. Except that still doesn't stop some of the GHG emissions as some CO2 is still made and methane leaks are currently a major contributor to global warming as methane is 85x worse over a 20 year period than CO2.
We need an awful lot of green hydrogen to replace the methane/coal sourced hydrogen we currently use to make fertilizer or we'd all starve to death. That's a challenge all on it's own, never mind trying to make green hydrogen for road transport. We'd need 2-4x as much renewables as with battery just to make the hydrogen.
There are only 2 hydrogen cars available for currently for purchase (was 3 but one is now discontinued) with no new actual models announced that I can find, and global sales are diminishing not increasing. There are about 60-80 models of EVs depending on how you count available today and dozens more announced to go on sale in the next two years. Total Fuel Cell sales globally last year was 8500, there were 3,000,000 EVs sold last year and that's expected to be over 6M this year.
There are about 500 H2 fueling stations worldwide and they're very expensive to build. Comparatively, there are billions of electrical outlets and they're cheap. There's an estimated 7.5M EV chargers currently operational and billions of dollars is being poured into building more.
Sure things can suddenly change, but why would they?