Quote:
Originally Posted by FormulaFox
Producing hydrogen on a wide enough scale to fuel cars on the needed level is the only real hurdle that needs to be overcome. Get over that and it's only a matter of time before enough companies see the benefits to start investing in the infrastructure and cars specifically designed to run on it..
Electric cars have limitations when it come to long-distance travel. There's going to need to be something for that sort of use in addition to pure electric city runabouts.
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Not going to get into a full-scale debate on this, but a few things.
Unless you manage to have efficiency levels of over 100% (and thus creating free energy) then producing hydrogen will always take significantly more electricity than just running the car on the electricity anyway due to the efficiency losses during conversion, thus producing a net loss. Almost no gains have been made in hydrogen production efficiency for the best part of a decade.
Electric cars do have limitations on long-distance travel (as well as charging time and the ability to do them at home for anyone without a driveway). However, whilst hydrogen has made no efficiency gains, electric cars have gone from being able to do 50 miles on a charge and take 24 hours to recharge to doing 350 miles on a charge and doing a recharge in 1 hour. The gains they have made there are staggering. Whilst hydrogen does have some benefits, by the time it has solved the issues it has, we'll have been driving electric cars for 20 years. Like the old joke about nuclear fusion, hydrogen cars are always a decade away. Meanwhile, charging points are popping up around the world and all major car manufacturers have announced an EV.
As we move towards a renewable-powered grid where the energy is produced closer to the consumers, it makes even more sense to use electricity rather than hydrogen to power the cars, as it'll save transporting it large distances. And on that note, electricity already has a massive distribution network - something hydrogen would have to build from scratch, adapting petrol stations as they go.
I'm not advocating electric racing or saying this is the best for the environment or any of that nonsense, but realistically hydrogen road cars are not going to happen outside of a niche few vehicles.
Hydrogens strengths for motorsport fans is that it allows us to retain the ICE and therefore the sound, gears etc, which is an important part of the show, feel and atmosphere. I'd much rather watch hydrogen-powered prototypes than electric ones.