Fuel Cell Cars are Still a Niche Product

Fuel Cell vehicles produce zero emissions. And new vehicles such as the Nexo clean air as they pull it in.

I suggest you actually read the whole article properly. In the very first subsection I write:

Most hydrogen on the market today is made from natural gas reforming. That means a hydrogen car running on hydrogen today will indirectly produce 3x as much CO2 emissions despite only having water come out of the tail pipe.

Thus presently battery electric vehicles are far more environmentally friendly than hydrogen cars.

No one ever talks about our electrical grids which are archaic. Our current electrical grids cannot support an entire society of plug in vehicles.

That is a solvable problem. There is plenty of time to upgrade the grids. In Norway we still have not experienced a problem with this despite having 10 times as many electric cars per capita on the roads than most other countries.

The inferior infrastructure is such a terrible excuse for the future of this vehicle. Infrastructure will be built up, and unlike EV charging ports, H2 infrastructure will keep people working.

Digging holes and filling them also creates jobs. I don’t think this is an argument in favor of hydrogen cars unless it can provide quality jobs or provide services and goods which actually benefit society.

With moderate socialist inclinations I don’t see any particular value in work itself. What I value are contributions for the betterment of society. Lots of people work, without making society any better, while there are people contributing a lot without working. A lot of important activities that people do are not labled work, while many pointless activities are labeled work.

The only reason for you to actually value creating lots of pointless jobs, is because you live in a capitalist economic system where that is the only way for people to get an income.

I know this article is trying to be positive, but it’s getting really old how EV people hate Fuel Cells so much just because their charlatan god Elon Musk made a comment against his companies biggest competition.

I don’t think this is a well thought out characterization of why people don’t believe in Hydrogen cars. I stopped believing in Hydrogen cars many years before Elon Musk talked about them in public. It was after listening to people for over 20 years claim that Hydrogen cars were right around the corner and would revolutionize the car industry. Hydrogen cars are about as overrated as Fusion Power.

Hydrogen cars are not even remotely a competition to Elon Musk. I don’t think he could care less about Hydrogen car makers do. They represent a tiny insignificant part of the market. These are Elon Musk’s competition in order:

1. Fossil fuel cars.
2. Other battery electric vehicles, from other producers.

Keep in mind Elon Musk really only cares about destroying the fossil fuel industry. He did not start Tesla specifically to become the biggest car maker, but to end fossil fuels in the transport sector. If Hydrogen cars are successful I think he will just be happy, not angry. They are on the same team against fossil fuels.

Elon Musk simply talks down Hydrogen cars because in most cases they are a pretty dumb idea. He does not want to see people waste resources implementing a dead end technology. Hydrogen is a terrible fuel in almost every way:

1. Terrible to store and transport. It needs cryogenic cooling. It leaks out of almost any tank over time due to how small hydrogen molecules are.

2. Low energy density, which means you need big tanks.

Electro-methanol and electro-methane are much better fuels. Easier to transport and store. Higher energy density. Can use existing infrastructure. They have the benefit that they can be used either with solid oxide fuel cells or regular combustion engines.