Why Haven’t Hydrogen Vehicles Taken Over the World Yet?

Hydrogen fuel cells are promoted as efficient and carbon free, but what happened to hydrogen cars?

Read More:
Gas guzzlers reborn: Why your next car could run on hydrogen
“Now, there are signs of a comeback. A recent survey of more than 900 global automotive executives by consulting firm KPMG found that 52 percent rated hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as a leading industry trend. Japan has announced plans to put 40,000 hydrogen vehicles on the road in the next five years, and South Korea 16,000. Germany wants to have 400 refuelling stations for hydrogen vehicles by 2025 and California has already opened 35.”

Fuel Cells
“Fuel cells work like batteries, but they do not run down or need recharging. They produce electricity and heat as long as fuel is supplied. A fuel cell consists of two electrodes—a negative electrode (or anode) and a positive electrode (or cathode)—sandwiched around an electrolyte. A fuel, such as hydrogen, is fed to the anode, and air is fed to the cathode.”

Toyota plans to expand production, shrink cost of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles
“TOYOTA CITY (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) is doubling down on its investment in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, designing lower-cost, mass-market passenger cars and SUVs and pushing the technology into buses and trucks to build economies of scale.”

[thejesuschrist]

I'd be more than happy to take the wheel of a Hydrogen car any day!

[dropj]

We need hydrogen container ships and aircrafts. That would really make a difference

[adityamishrafb]

I was going to tell sodium a hydrogen joke but.. NaH

[dnomyarnostaw]

You forgot the latest hydrogen news.
Taiwan is building the new twenty station test network using the new Australian catalyst invention that creates Hydrogen from Ammonia . Two big Ammonia carrying ships are being built to ship Solar generated Ammonia from Australia.
Things are moving quickly.

[mysteriousplankton]

Don't ignore the fact that e-vehicles create a terrible environmental impact because of Cobalt mining used for manufacturing those large batteries. I guess they forgot to tell you that in the advertisements.

[timaustin]

Overlooking the big issue for renewable hydrogen:

Energy loss.

Electrolysis is very inefficient. You waste a LOT of electricity as heat - far more than grid loss and losses from battery charging.

You can go 3 times as far in a Tesla than you can if you used the same amount of electricity to electrolise Hydrogen for a Mirai.

That's not sustainable.

[blazebluebass]

PEM does not stand for polymer electrolyte membrane . It means proton exchange membrane.

[TheJaboogie]

What about inefficiency of compressing or condensing hydrogen then the car not recovering energy from the pressurisation? Or the inefficiency of turning hydrogen into a liquid state.

[jvp]

1:30 the electricity for electric cars comes from the same power plants

[mrcet]

Excellent topic and video!

The other big disadvantage of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is that they’re only around 55% efficient, whereas battery-electric drive trains are around 90% efficient.

Also, 400KW battery-charging is starting be deployed, which will get a battery-electric vehicle, typically, a couple-hundred miles in 10-15 minutes. That’s not quite refueling kinds of speeds, but not far off!

But most importantly, modern battery-electric vehicles (for most people) almost never need to be quick-charged. Most people can drive a Chevy Bolt a week without having to recharge and many people just charge up at home nightly anyway.

As an aside, regarding efficiency, both fuel cells and batteries are considerably more efficient than a pure-gasoline drive train’s typically 20% efficiency. Modern engines do have considerably higher *peak* efficiency (e.g., ~40% on the Prius), but are rarely given the opportunity to run under peak-efficiency conditions.

[RandomGuy-nmbm]

Guy listed hydrogen busses but manages to forget London's whole fleet and germanies hydrogen trains

[rea]

It'd be interesting to know what is the grey energy cost of these as well. Because most of the time new technologies need more resources or rarer ones and are too complex to be recycled or fixed. Then what's the point of having a "green" car if it polluted like hell before you even bought it and if you can't fix or recycle most of its parts?

[schnabs]

The efficiency of hydrogen from production to being used in a car is way way worse than a battery vehicle

[Master_Therion]

"Why Haven’t Hydrogen Vehicles Taken Over the World Yet?"

Spoiler Alert




If I ever buy a hydrogen car I'm going to put a spoiler on it and name it Spoiler Alert.

[AndrewFalgout]

If Tesla hadn't made the Super Charger network, the Model 3 and S would not be practical for most people. New tech has growing pains associated with it. Also, you can charge your electric car at your house, which beats being at the whim of the daily gas price or OPEC deciding to create a shortage to increase prices like in the 80s.

[dschledermann]

Hydrogen is a dead end. What happened is that battery electric is simpler, cheaper, safer, easier, more practical and environmentally way more friendly.

[garthberry]

Hydrogen Fuel cell vehicles also have battery packs similar in size to hybrid vehicles. Range of current commercial hydrogen powered vehicles is about the same as equivalently priced battery EVs. Given they have batteries anyway and you can't recharge them while they are not being used there doesn't seem to be any real advantage for Hydrogen over battery EVs.

[klardfarkus]

Hydrogen is not free. It takes energy to produce hydrogen so it is just converting electricity to a gas and introducing innefficiency

[username]

Hydrogen is expensive compared to using electricity or gas.

[mc]

Newsflash: we use power plants emitting CO2 already to charge electric cars, what kind of argument is that against H...Ignorance is bliss, half knowledge a curse😡😡