The (relevant) comparison was H2 versus BEVs — ie comparing decarbonized solutions apples-to-apples. I have edited to make that more clear.
> why not pursue hydrogen investment as a possible alternative?
Because hydrogen, for all its marketing, doesn't actually solve the problems people have with BEVs. Better BEVs do.
I guess it depends on the definition of "people". If you mean private automobile owners, then I agree that batteries will eat hydrogen's lunch. For everything else(70% of oil use), it's an open question. In the future, you might even see a migration of H2 technology from large applications to small automobiles, like we've seen with diesel engines.
I'm just following your lead. You were the one who brought up "gas stations."
>For everything else(70% of oil use), it's an open question
Not really. Road use is ~50% .[1] It's all going BEV, like it or not.
Agriculture is another 10%. Ditto.
The technology improvement curves speak for themselves. ICE and H2 have both plateaued near their theoretical limits.
I intentionally said "ground vehicles," not private cars.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/307194/top-oil-consuming...
If battery densities end up meeting the needs of airplanes they meet the needs of ships easily enough. Plus, there's interesting new research on wind power for ships, which I find is a lovely irony to see ships return to wind power after all these years (though it may look quite different than the classic age of sail with primary propulsion still being electric turboprops).
Still, either a vehicle is more or less drives continuously or batteries will be the better alternative. But that is only for that sector.
Recycling of batteries is very efficient at >95%[1], and will only get better with time.
As for addressing only one sector, welcome to the world of high-complexity problems. Climate change is a "1000 cuts" type, not a "magic bullet" type.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/14/jb-straubels-redwood-mater...
Exactly, and I wish I understood why people thought this was a smart point.
EVs are a link in the chain that in and of themselves have no fundamental energy dependence on fossil fuels. They have an incidental reliance on fossil fuels to the extent that electricity is generated from fossil fuels. But they're a piece of the infrastructure puzzle that in and of themselves is fully solved and compatible with decarbonized infrastructure. I would like to think that one goal in advancing public understanding of EVS should be educating people to the point that this particular talking point never gets used ever again.
In general I would say I actually agree with this. It can be perfectly feasible to use an energy source that's terribly inefficient in some intuitive sense, but as long as it's economical to do so, poses no environmental harm, and you're getting significantly more energy out than you're putting in, you can be as inefficient as you want.
Now that said, I don't think that this kind of general truism is terribly responsive in this particular case, because it's nevertheless going to be true that inefficiency, and whatever sense you construe it, can indeed be a deal breaker and I think that's what GP is intending to communicate with respect to h2, biofuels, etc.
Fossil fuel comes out of the ground with the energy already in it, hydrogen doesn't exist in a free form and the energy must be put into it coming from somewhere else.
Most hydrogen now comes from natural gas at maybe 75-80% efficiency through reforming, then it must be compressed, then it must be burned at similar efficiencies to fossil fuel or used in a fuel cell with slightly better efficiency than ICE.
It's way worse in efficiency than fossil fuels, you could just use the natural gas directly in a combustion engine and be way ahead. Solar/wind/nuclear to electrolysis is even worse, just charge a battery.
Hydrogen is a energy storage mechanism like a battery not a source of energy like fossil fuel.
Look at well to wheel efficiency BEV are far ahead of hydrogen.
PS: Please don't post some Bloomberg article about this. They are wrong and did not correctly reference the state of battery technology back in 2010.
Looking at efficiency alone is not enough.
> They're simply so much less expensive
Not yet they aren't. The upfront cost of an EV still makes it more expensive than an ICE vehicle. Also, they batteries are guaranteed to degrade, so the used market has very bad prices for EVs. At some point, they will probably be less expensive for most automobiles, but hydrogen can still play a part in trucking, trains, planes, boats and specialty operations.
Only about 64% of oil is used for transportation [1] and out of that, only about 50% for automobiles and light trucks [2] (even though for light trucks, motorcycles and other applications, EVs are not going to win probably). So BEVs could replace about 30% of all oil usage. The rest of 70% is up for grabs, so why not pursue hydrogen investment as a possible alternative?
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/transporta...