this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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Lol. Blaming Tesla for all of hydrogen's woes is just buying your head in the sand.
I've been following hydrogen vehicle development long before Tesla even existed. The field has effectively stagnated since the 90's. Same promises for the past 3 decades with no substantial improvement. The hydrogen car of today is still the same hydrogen car of 1995 with a better infotainment system. Cost, storage, distribution, range are all problems that have yet to be solved and again are still not substantially better than what we had in the 90's. Every "revolutionary" hydrogen technology from the labs have basically gone nowhere.
It seemed like a viable competitor to batteries in the 90s and early 2000s because battery technology and prices weren't up to snuff. But hydrogen has stagnated while batteries have improved. Hydrogen is a "solution" that is 2 decades behind at this point
It's the primary source of this type of rhetoric. And you sound like someone who fell for it hook, line and sinker.
Battery powered cars are well over 100 years old. They only exist in number right now because of huge subsidies and because governments are mandating they happen. They would not be popular at all otherwise. If we subsidized hydrogen cars to the same extent, we'd be talking about the success of hydrogen cars right now.
The problem is that battery cars are not a viable alternative to most types of ICE cars. People have drank so much kool-aid that they forgot this obvious fact. So they engage in this delusion where the BEV industry is somehow already ascendant, when in reality it is barely a viable business. Which is also why Biden is raising tariffs on Chinese EVs (the OP BTW). Only China is subsidizing BEVs to the levels needed to make it work. Something few other countries are willing to do.
You keep saying stupid phrases like "people drinking the kool-aid!!!" while you're doing nothing but pouring out Kool aid yourself.
In case you weren't aware, Hydrogen cars ALSO got massive subsidies. They received these subsidies far before Tesla even existed, before BEVs took off, when hydrogen looked like the more viable alternative.
They had the head start, they got government subsidies, government backed infrastructure, AND manufacturer incentives. They had the public opinion back then too, with celebrities like Top Gear endorsing hydrogen over batteries. They are STILL getting government incentives today.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-04-04/california-s-hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars-lose-traction-against-battery-models
It's still not enough. The bottom line is that it's still inconvenient, expensive, and highly limited. If they spent the US military budget to force the issue, they could, but why?
Battery vehicles won because they met consumers' needs, not some grand conspiracy against hydrogen, and not because everyone hangs on Musk's every word.
Even 10 years ago, I could buy an EV anywhere in the country and it would meet 99.5% of my driving needs if my home had a garage. Hydrogen cars were STILL limited to a 100 mile radius to the nearest filling station, which is basically the California coast. And you had to pray the filling stations didn't run out of hydrogen. It didn't matter how much the vehicles themselves cost. Whether they were $200,000 or free, with a hydrogen car you could only go 100 miles from the pumping station, and only when the pumping station was full. With batteries, you were always full all the time, and you could always go 100+ miles from home. Even before any fast charging stations were built, if you took a short road trip and stayed in one location for a few days, you could go 250 miles away and slow charge at your destination simply by bringing an extension cord.
Electricity is cheap, too. Hydrogen was, and remains, expensive. EV buyers could look forward to not paying ridiculous gas prices. Hydrogen buyers had to look forward to paying MORE per mile than gasoline.
You keep whining about batteries not being the perfect solution to every single vehicle on the planet. Guess what? Average consumers are not driving every single vehicle on the planet. Average consumers are buying midsize crossovers. They drive to work and around town, and maybe do a road trip once a year. They can charge at home and never worry about whether or not the local filling station will run out of electricity. BEVs have won the suburban consumer segment, period.
As charging stations get built out, they will soon meet urban consumer needs, too.
Hydrogen might have some place in industrial processes or long haul trucking, possibly aviation maybe. But it makes absolutely no sense for regular consumers.
Hydrogen got a tiny fraction of the subsidies that batteries got. We probably looking at well beyond $1 trillion for the latter, if you include everything, such as all the subsidies and government loans from China. If were serious about making hydrogen a thing, we would've increase subsidies by a factor of something like 100x.
Battery cars have not "won." In fact, they are barely alive as a self-sustaining industry. ICE cars still dominate, and if anything they are gaining ground with blended solutions like hybrids or PHEVs. This is what I mean by "drinking the kool-aid." BEV fans are making claims that fly in the face of reality. And it's more than likely that if we take away the subsidies, the BEV industry would quickly collapse and shrink to a tiny niche.
The problem is that BEVs only really make sense as urban commuters for people with garages, and smaller ideas like e-scooters or e-bikes. It's not really something that make sense for larger vehicles or long-distance vehicles. And trying to force the issue just means a lot of SUV sized BEVs, which are definitely not a solution to anything. By admitting they're not perfect is admitting we should scale back BEV subsidies and start seriously promoting alternatives.
Again, you are obviously deliberately downplaying the limitations of hydrogen. BEVs make sense for "smaller" vehicles... And by "smaller" that means everything up to a midsize SUV, currently. Which is basically 80% of the consumer car market.
As battery technology improves, the upper limit of what makes sense for batteries only expands.
Hydrogen has a problem scaling DOWN. They are already range limited with a full size sedan. Hydrogen tanks and storage improves when you scale UP in size, and have huge amounts of empty volume to fill. So hydrogen only makes sense for semi trucks or larger.
So no, you're still spewing kool-aid that there was some conspiracy against hydrogen and that BEVs only exist because of subsidies.
BEVs already made sense 10 years ago for SOME consumers, regardless of subsidies. That niche existed, and expanded, because BEVs offered CONVENIENCES to their buyers. Hydrogen, even at their peak hype, offered zero conveniences and only additional inconveniences. No amount of government incentives are changing the fundamentals of hydrogen vehicle ownership.
Then you are creating an imaginary set of problems for hydrogen. We already have hydrogen cars that can go 400 miles. The range problem is already a solved problem. Future innovations will improve this even further. We already have hydrogen drones and bikes too. So there is no problem scaling down. Not to mention SUVs make up nearly 80% of the market these days. You're basically inverting how the real world car market works.
As we run into the fundamental problems of batteries, such as needing charging stations everywhere, and very high powered ones if we want fast charging, it will eventually become obvious that no amount of advancements will solve some of those issues. We will want to look at alternative solutions.
And again, BEVs are not competitive right now. They are a artificial market propped up by governments around the world. ICE cars still rule the world. And likely BEVs will retreat in the market as subsidy reductions and trade wars make them even less uncompetitive.