In a vacuum, sure, hydrogen for personal vehicles is great. In reality, though, you’re down at about 30% efficiency between the H2 geting extracted from wherever, and you gassing up your car.
Additionally, if more than 5% of that H2 escapes into the atmosphere at any time, it actually does more damage to the planet than fossil fuels, by preoccupying the hydroxyl radicals in the sky that would otherwise be breaking down greenhouse gases.
Add on to that, that if I actually had to pay for hydrogen fuel, it would cost me 6x as much per mile to run my Hyundai Nexo than a Prius. H2 in SoCal is currently $36/kg at the pump, having doubled or nearly tripled in price in the last 18 months. (Somehow, in Korea it’s only $2/kg.)
H2 fuel cell tech has its place as a fuel (but not in combustion engines like BMW is trying to do though… that’s just a farce). Trucks/long-haul vehicles, planes, ships all would be better off running H2. It fuels up fast, is way lighter than any battery, and is pretty darn energy dense. But for around-town driving, BEVs right now are just a much better option. Their problem is heavy batteries and comparatively longer fueling time than gasoline/hydrogen.
Fossil fuels are just amazingly energy dense, and we’re not going to replace them 1:1 any time soon. Every alternative involves massive tradeoffs.
Source: I own a 2022 Hyundai Nexo hydrogen SUV. Love it as a car, but most of the H2 fueling stations are broken down half the time (you need to check an app to see which one, if any, are currently working), and the price of the fuel in the US is no longer viable. When my free fuel card expires in 2025, I’ll be getting either a BEV or PHEV. Lucid or Polaris are looking nice.
In a vacuum, sure, hydrogen for personal vehicles is great. In reality, though, you’re down at about 30% efficiency between the H2 geting extracted from wherever, and you gassing up your car.
Additionally, if more than 5% of that H2 escapes into the atmosphere at any time, it actually does more damage to the planet than fossil fuels, by preoccupying the hydroxyl radicals in the sky that would otherwise be breaking down greenhouse gases.
Add on to that, that if I actually had to pay for hydrogen fuel, it would cost me 6x as much per mile to run my Hyundai Nexo than a Prius. H2 in SoCal is currently $36/kg at the pump, having doubled or nearly tripled in price in the last 18 months. (Somehow, in Korea it’s only $2/kg.)
H2 fuel cell tech has its place as a fuel (but not in combustion engines like BMW is trying to do though… that’s just a farce). Trucks/long-haul vehicles, planes, ships all would be better off running H2. It fuels up fast, is way lighter than any battery, and is pretty darn energy dense. But for around-town driving, BEVs right now are just a much better option. Their problem is heavy batteries and comparatively longer fueling time than gasoline/hydrogen.
Fossil fuels are just amazingly energy dense, and we’re not going to replace them 1:1 any time soon. Every alternative involves massive tradeoffs.
Source: I own a 2022 Hyundai Nexo hydrogen SUV. Love it as a car, but most of the H2 fueling stations are broken down half the time (you need to check an app to see which one, if any, are currently working), and the price of the fuel in the US is no longer viable. When my free fuel card expires in 2025, I’ll be getting either a BEV or PHEV. Lucid or Polaris are looking nice.