The arguments I’ve seen have specifically been about hydrogen in the context of EVs (specifically almost always as a way to dismiss EVs).
- The trade-offs work in favor of EVs, hydrogen has a similar distribution problem to gasoline (fueling stations).
- Hydrogen requires production somehow, electricity we already have the grid and people can charge at home
- The things hydrogen is good at (lighter weight than batteries, faster refueling) are starting to become less relevant as battery and charging tech improves.
- The argument that you need an equivalent charging infrastructure isn’t really true since you only need that for long tail long range trips (and also we have that now).
The reason I personally dismiss people talking about hydrogen or supporting it (Japanese automakers) is it ignores the obvious current success of EVs in addition to the arguments above and it often feels like a disingenuous argument in bad faith. Specifically, someone is anti-EV and bringing up hydrogen as misdirection to make some EV thing harder to implement.
The success and market uptake of hydrogen vs. EV seems to be empirically obvious at this point. I suspect because EVs could get over the chicken/egg charging infrastructure issue because early adopters could just charge at home (and most trips are short range).
> - The argument that you need an equivalent charging infrastructure isn’t really true since you only need that for long tail long range trips (and also we have that now).
To add: Hydrogen stations are fairly unique. It's really expensive to build such stations (millions). Plus heavy restrictions on where they can be placed. Putting up a charge station is really cheap in comparisons (think it was something like 10k for on a public street with 2 charge ports), plus you can place them pretty much anywhere (way less safety restrictions).
What I dislike about EVs is how expensive they're to charge if you're not using your own electricity. At least, that's the situation in NL.
The chicken or egg problem with charging is one of the reasons I tend to down-weight the opinions of EV owners when talking about the future of transportation.
People that own EVs have to deal with the lack of supporting infrastructure, and have a vested interest in steering public opinion to go in a direction they have already personally committed.
That doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong about the future, just that they have incentives that could cause them to hang onto some bad ideas because they adopted early (and want to save face).
- The trade-offs work in favor of EVs, hydrogen has a similar distribution problem to gasoline (fueling stations).
- Hydrogen requires production somehow, electricity we already have the grid and people can charge at home
- The things hydrogen is good at (lighter weight than batteries, faster refueling) are starting to become less relevant as battery and charging tech improves.
- The argument that you need an equivalent charging infrastructure isn’t really true since you only need that for long tail long range trips (and also we have that now).
The reason I personally dismiss people talking about hydrogen or supporting it (Japanese automakers) is it ignores the obvious current success of EVs in addition to the arguments above and it often feels like a disingenuous argument in bad faith. Specifically, someone is anti-EV and bringing up hydrogen as misdirection to make some EV thing harder to implement.
The success and market uptake of hydrogen vs. EV seems to be empirically obvious at this point. I suspect because EVs could get over the chicken/egg charging infrastructure issue because early adopters could just charge at home (and most trips are short range).