• coyootje@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is my main problem with hydrogen cars. I think it’s a very cool concept that might eventually overtake pure electric cars but there’s almost no places to get hydrogen yet.

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      It isn’t going to overtake electric cars, too inefficient.

      But it might be the future for airplanes, which need a lot more energy density.

      • n2burns@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        But it might be the future for airplanes, which need a lot more energy density.

        Specifically density by weight. By volume, which is more important to cars, hydrogen also loses.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It also requires dedicated infrastructure. EVs can have charging stations at basically anywhere with a power hookup (or a genset. A grocery store here puts small VAWTs to charge off of in their parking lots. And every new-ish building has added charging stations to some of their spaces.

      Hydrogen cars would need refueling stations with dedicated pressurized gas hookups, tanks, and fill machines. And the tanks and the tankers to keep the tanks full.

      Finally the ultimate problem is it’s rather low energy density.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        And all that infrastructure is a problem that doesn’t need solving with EVs. An entire industry we don’t need to build/rebuild

    • rentar42@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Why do you think it’ll overtake electric cars? The energy efficiency of hydrogen cars is significantly worse, as they introduce some extra steps in pipeline of energy-generation -> movement.

      The only major advantage they have is “ICE-like” fuelling, which has a bunch of major caveats attached to it (as in: it’s nowhere near as simple a system as ICE refuelling. Everything from generation, to transport to getting-it-in-the-car is way more complex and thus expensive and error-prone).

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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      1 year ago

      Something else no one has said yet (I think) is that most hydrogen is produced from natural gas, so this is in no way a climate solution. It’s been sold as one and it’s bullshit.

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I dunno, everything I’ve always seen on it made it seem like a hyper-specific solution that’s more suited to a few edge cases that could have their specific infrastructure.

      For the average consumer, the recharging of EVs is actually Not A Big Deal™️. It seemed like one at first. Now all it does is ensure I take hourly short breaks which I should have been doing anyways, basically. The only big upside of Hydrogen is the ability to refill very quickly, but you pay with a whole bunch of downsides like inefficient generation, inefficient transportation, secondary infrastructure, energy inefficiency, etc.

  • drudoo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Weird that this hasn’t been on the local news. I see Drivr cars all the time.