I mean don't EV's have issues? Lithium is expensive to mine, electricity is usually produced by burning coal, and can our current grid even handle 100% electric vehicles? I mean it's better than gas, but it's not the end of the road of vehicle power is it?
Because we are not talking about propane. We are talking about a tank storing highly pressurized hydrogen, which is way more difficult to handle than propane. In a moving vehicle, not a grill.
> Lithium is expensive to mine
Yes. It can be mined once and then reuse countless times, however. Hydrogen is expensive to manufacture too, and it's "burned" so you always need more.
Expect prices to go down as more infrastructure to mine and refine is put into place. This is even ignoring technological advancements in extraction - which tend to happen once there's demand.
> electricity is usually produced by burning coal
This is highly location-dependent. True for some places, not true at all for others. That's also becoming less true by the day.
_Even_ in the case where 100% of the grid power worldwide came from coal, EVs would still be a win. The generator on a huge power plant is far more efficient than any car engine. And the pollution is concentrated on a few places - places we can improve. Additionally, there are no emissions on population centers, meaning an enormous improvement on quality of life and a decrease on deaths due to respiratory illnesses.
Then, once you upgrade the power plants, the entire vehicle fleet gets an instant upgrade.
If it's in your means (essentially, if you own your property) you can generate power from renewables on site and power your vehicle that way. Try doing that with hydrogen.
> and can our current grid even handle 100% electric vehicles
Yes according to the US Department of Energy.
> I mean it's better than gas, but it's not the end of the road of vehicle power is it
Just until we find something better, then we'll _easily_ change our vehicles to store electric energy using the new storage device. That's the good thing about electric motors, they don't care where the power comes from.
> This is highly location-dependent.
It really isn’t. Electricity moves through a network: for example using more electricity in France might cause a coal power station to be started in Poland. The same occurs for any network.
Additionally, when you add an EXTRA kWh of load, what really matters is where that extra kWh is generated. Think of it that all the electricity on the network is already being used (all the green electricity is virtually guaranteed to be used).
When you add one marginal kWh of usage, that kWh is often genersted 100% from gas or coal.
Obviously there are a lot of different situations where the above points are not relevant, and where an efficient coal station might be better than an ICE. I am just saying that many people are ignorant of how the electricity networks work.
I know. We haven't interconnected the entire planet. So it still depends on what region we are talking about. Even inside a country some regions might be barely connected (see the Texas power grid).
> might cause a coal power station to be started in Poland
It also might cause a natural gas station to be started up. Again, that depends on the location. Usually it would cause a natural gas power plant to start up. It could also be pumped storage hydro, or even batteries.
Since you are talking about lack of knowledge, it's useful to point out that coal is very unlikely to be used as a peaker plant, just like we don't start nuclear power stations for the same purpose. Generally they are used for baseline power.
We aren't going to be starting coal plants because France is using more power. Some countries might decide to build more though, to account for the predicted energy usage growth.
Pressure for propane tanks, 100-200 psi.
Pressure for hydrogen tanks, 5000-10000 psi.
It's not the same.
Sure, EVs and hydrogen each have their pros and cons. But that is meaningless without numbers. So far, it seems like the numbers work out a lot better for EVs.
Maybe someone comes up with a great idea and hydrogen becomes the future of cars. But there is zero evidence of that today.
I'm not insistent, I'm just asking why it's not possible or practical to swap out a hydrogen tank in a vehicle. I guess that's heretical.
Here's a company that sells tanks. You can use it for welding among other things. There's one in just about every city.
https://www.airgas.com/resources/gases101/hydrogen
Fork lifts currently use them too.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/21/musk-calls-hydrogen-fuel-cel...
A hydrogen tank that is part of your car, however, may be subject to a high speed crash coming in at a random angle.
BBQ grill propane tanks can explode, but they are typically stored on porches, an environment where they are not often hit by SUVs.
So are lithium ion batteries. Here's an article on a recent Tesla burn:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/01/tesla-model-s-plaid-caught-f...
I wasn't arguing that hydrogen wasn't dangerous, I was arguing that a hydrogen tank was easier to swap than a 1200 lb. battery.
[1] https://www.thedrive.com/news/37872/now-with-three-hydrogen-...