Yeah, sure. We know how to do this, its called electrolysis; we even know how to build fuel cells that can both generate energy and act as electrolysis systems.
> And if you think about the amount of gasoline infrastructure that exists, we'd have to pretty much duplicate that, or convert that, into hydrogen shipping infrastructure, which is a pretty tall order.
No, we don't. Because -- as many currently existing hydrogen stations, like the public one in Emeryville, do -- you can very easily do the electrolysis at the filling station. So you just need water distribution infrastructure (which is one of the basic necessities of civilization) and electricity distribution infrastructure (which, as you note, is likewise a solved problem), and then you don't need any additional hydrogen distribution infrastructure.
> So the story for electric car adoption is "You don't have to take trips to the gas station anymore!", but the story for fuel cell car adoption is "You have to take trips to a new type of gas stations that don't exist yet!".
Well, except that they do exist now.
I really have to wonder if this is just a show put on by Toyota. The viability of H2 production is dubious at best, and at worst if you consider our drive towards a low carbon economy.
You mean, other than the fact that it absolutely is produced that way in existing fueling stations, and much of the drive for hydrogen as part of a clean energy solution relies on the use of electrolysis (or, possibly, splitting water with nuclear reactor heat) as the generation mechanism.
> The process is horribly inefficient but more importantly the cheapest way to produce hydrogen is through steam reformation of coal (or organic material to a way lesser extent).
Its certainly a cheaper way to produce it, but its not necessarily cheaper as an overall process, because then you do need an expensive distribution infrastructure. More, the necessary distribution infrastructure, even if end-to-end efficiency including distribution costs is better, has a much higher startup cost than distributed electrolysis.
Also, distributed electrolysis buys you directly in to any improvements in efficiency, greenhouse gas reduction, etc., for large scale energy production, whereas relying on steam reformation of coal, natural gas, etc., leaves you not only maintaining more dedicated distribution infrastructure, but with a separate carbon-intensive generation infrastructure that needs its own improvements.
And what infrastructure do you need? A gas truck with a pressurized tank on it. The cost of hydrocarbon based h2 will displace electrolysis in large scale production.
And your last point about distributed load efficiency gains, electric cars are already able to balance load and feed into a grid. It's always going to come down to cost, I'm going to buy the cheapest h2 around and it's going to come from steam reformed coal.
On the other hand, electrolysis can be significantly more distributed than gasoline, you don't need a limited number of refineries anymore. Hydrogen can be generated city-wise, at the station, or even (with further efficiency hit) at-home.
Hydrogen is not a great way to go, especially when you consider that batteries and electric motors are already very efficient. Working on energy density in batteries would be more cost effective then chasing after H2.
[1]http://gcep.stanford.edu/pdfs/hydrogen_workshop/MacQueen.pdf
Even with stationary at-home electrolysis systems, if you don't store more than one fill-up in the system, there's marginal additional risk compared to having a hydrogen-fueled vehicle in the first place.
Imho, the only way to do this would be to have solar assisted charging stations in parking lots across the country.
This is in other words a complete non-issue. But I'd love to hear plans on safeguarding inevitable hydrogen leaks in residential areas. Should we tell people to get rid of their garages?
So what you've proposed is:
Burn gasoline (30%) * Charge batteries (80%) * Drive e-car (80%) = 19% efficient
Consider that hybrids or HEVs can improve substantially on the efficiency of just a pure ICE. I guess the problem with using an ICE for driving directly is that you are often forced to run it at RPMs and states where it is nowhere near that hypothetical 30% efficiency, simply to get the acceleration the user demands.
In the case of hydrogen infrastructure, we have nothing. If you're the first guy to buy a hydrogen car, you can't fill it up anywhere, there's an enormous amount of investment and work needed to get to that first hydrogen gas station, and I don't see that happening. Who would put up the money to make that bet?
Well, more than nothing, but not a lot just now. Though more is in development.
> If you're the first guy to buy a hydrogen car, you can't fill it up anywhere
I'm going to guess that the first several tens of thousands of people to buy consumer electric vehicles in the US will be clustered around the places where the existing infrastructure is [1], so that this won't be even approximately true (there'll be an interesting trade off until infrastructure builds out in that FCVs will have a longer single charge/tank range than EVs, but a much more limited area of operations since there'll be limited refueling locations especially outside of the "home" areas.)
[1] e.g., in California, http://www.cafcp.org/stationmap
But I'm seriously tired of the fact that all articles about fuel-cells enthusiastically exclaims that "it's only byproduct is water!!!!", as if hydrogen was some sort of magic alternative to hydrocarbons. It's not, it's an energy transmission medium, not an energy source.
For fuel-cell cars to work, you would need to have energy some place that consumes water and splits it into hydrogen and oxygen, releasing the oxygen into the air, and the hydrogen into containers that can then go into some sort of infrastructure such that individual cars can be filled up with it as necessary.
And if you think about the amount of gasoline infrastructure that exists, we'd have to pretty much duplicate that, or convert that, into hydrogen shipping infrastructure, which is a pretty tall order.
But for electricity, we already have the infrastructure. If you have a house, you have a place for filling up your electric car, and you have a method for paying for the energy that your car consumes, and there is a way to move the energy from wherever it is produced to your house.
So the story for electric car adoption is "You don't have to take trips to the gas station anymore!", but the story for fuel cell car adoption is "You have to take trips to a new type of gas stations that don't exist yet!". That's quite a hurdle...