Quote:
Originally Posted by edsuski
Why Hydrogen?
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You almost wrote it yourself:
Quote:
Originally Posted by edsuski
The bottom line is that it would take more energy to drive a mile on hydrogen that it would to simply charge a battery. Battery charging infrastructure is 100% deployed (11-13 amps at 120V). Long trips would require another energy source such as gasoline, E85 or even a hydrogen fuel cell. If we simpy relied on gasoline or E85 – then the infrastructure for it exists today.
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Fossil fuel may be available much longer than we are expecting today, but we keep exploiting it much faster than it can ever regenerate, so it definitely will disappear some day. And we should have a substitute ready by then. Another issue are the toxic emissions we cannot get completely rid of as long as we keep burning fossil fuel.
As far as I know, emissions produced by burning E85 are even more toxic (There is not only CO2!), and food prices are already exploding because farmers are producing E85 instead of food. This may be not a big issue in the US or the EU, but third world countries are running into a really severe problem.
Hydrogen fuel cells do not produce any toxic emissions, hydrogen does not compete with food for farming ground, and hydrogen is renewable in the sense that it is still contained in the steam emitted by the fuel cell.
Quote:
Originally Posted by edsuski
It simply does not make sense to use the hydrogen fuel cell when 78% of the commuting in the United States could be accomplished with zero oil using a battery with only 40 miles range.
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This is ok as long as you are not using your car for anything else that getting from home to work. After work, you cannot visit granny in the neighbouring town becuase you first have to recharge your car for several hours. The journey to your holiday resort in Florida will take five times as long because you must recharge several times.
This may change as soon as really strong batteries (400 miles per charge in real life) or faster recharging (max. 15 min) are possible, but I do not see them appear at the horizon.