You don't technically need one. You can make hydrogen locally if you had too.
Also, a hydrogen infrastructure would be cheaper than a comparable electrical infrastructure. People have forgotten or never realized how complex the grid really is.
You don't technically need one. You can make hydrogen locally if you had too.
Also, a hydrogen infrastructure would be cheaper than a comparable electrical infrastructure. People have forgotten or never realized how complex the grid really is.
This sounds like more magic batteries from the future rhetoric. An endless loop of fantasy ideas that never materializes into something usable. Right off the bat, you suspect it will be expensive to be viable for BEVs: https://www.goldenstatemint.com/blog/samsungs-silver-solid-state-battery-technology-1-kilogram-of-silver-per-car/
Note that you can build an entire energy storage system using hydrogen. People are simply refusing to accept that this is effectively a type of battery. People have a misplaced loyalty to existing technology, even though they would've laughed at its limitations just 15 years ago.
You are imagining BEVs with ever larger and ever less cost effective batteries.
The problem is that the BEV was never intended to replace all cars. To even push this idea just means extremely expensive and non-environmental friendly batteries. You are just wasting your time on pushing greenwashing.
In reality, hydrogen is the only possible solution for most of transportation. Electricity should be reserved for directly electrified vehicles like trains or trolleybuses. Batteries powered vehicles only happened due to massive subsidies. It will revert back into a tiny niche or disappear entirely once those subsidies go away.
That's just an indirect way of power a car via hydrogen. Sure, it can work. But it just implies that having cars directly powered by hydrogen are the better idea.
Because a fuel cell is type of electrochemical device. It is literally a type of battery. So whether you are using a li-ion battery or a fuel cell, you are turning chemical energy into electrical energy. Also, the process of distributing hydrogen is comparable to the grid and has similar losses. The latter of which will see a dramatic reduction in efficiency as more renewable energy go onto the grid. Specifically due to the need for energy storage.
There are no experts saying hydrogen for cars is stupid. You are just hearing a lot of pro-BEV marketing and their fanboys. Of course, some of them pretend to be experts, but they are not.
In the long run, BEVs are going to die off because they are not economical vehicles. They cost far more than conventional cars and require huge amounts of new minerals for the raw materials used to make them. If the goal is just to have an EV, then the answer is a type of EV that does not so much raw material nor cost so much. That leads to ideas like PHEVs or FCEVs.
You are not reading my post. The entire set of steps is exactly the same number of steps as charging a battery. Both are electrochemical processes and have similar losses. In theory, we can make a fuel cell that operates just as efficient as a li-ion battery.
The other point is that the process of moving hydrogen around is cheaper than moving energy via electricity. Losses of distribution are similar too. People are forgetting how big and complex the grid is.
Which is about the upper limit of a reasonable powerline. I'm pretty sure they had to resort to HVDC to get it that long. Note that I did not say it was impossible, only impractical. You lose a lot of energy when it gets very long.
I also know that Quebec is making hydrogen with their hydropower. Clearly, they know something you don't.
Pipelines go for thousands of km too, and send far more energy with smaller losses than wires. This is due to physics: A pipe is a hollow tube and scales up better the larger the diameter of the tube. Wires do not scale up as well.
A battery car does not "skip the middle part." It relies on a huge and resource intensive battery to store energy. This is electrochemical energy storage, and works the same way as how a hydrogen car stores energy. As a result, there is no fundamental advantage to using a battery. As costs comes down and as fuel cell technology advances, it is likely that there will be zero or next to zero efficiency advantage for the battery car.
We do not send much electricity over that amount of distance. More than several hundred km, and most conventional wires are cannot send much power through them. For thousands of km, we have to use HVDC, but that is very expensive. In reality, we tend to switch to pipelines instead of wires for long distance energy transfers.
Put it this way, if wires could really send power thousands of km without any hiccups, then why do natural gas pipelines exist in quantity? After all, most of them are just delivering natural gas to a gas turbine to make power. So why not put all the gas turbines in one area, and use wires instead? Because in reality, pipelines are much better at moving energy than wires over long distances.
Only for certain types of steel. And there are many materials that are impermeable to hydrogen. This is mostly a marketing argument rather than one based on fact. Pipelines are far cheaper and send far more energy than high voltage wires.
You have inverted reality here. It is much easier to transport hydrogen long distances versus electricity. Pipelines are cheaper than HVDC cables. You can actually ship hydrogen across oceans if necessary. It is electricity that has to be made locally, but hydrogen can made anywhere it is cost effective.
Using hydrogen as a bulk energy carrier will enable the hydrogen infrastructure. Unlike wires, you do not have to physically link it to every home. You can have last-mile solutions like using trucks. You also only need to convert existing fuel stations. So the scale is much lower, and likely much cheaper too.
Hydrogen cars are proving to be safer than gasoline cars. The fuel is lighter than air, so it does not linger like gasoline does. There are no known serious car fires in FCEVs. Even li-ion batteries have the same problem of gasoline, namely that the energy source of the fire stays in place. As a result, many people have died or been injured.