this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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We are nowhere near capable of replacing all cars with battery powered cars. Their supporters are just handwaving away the problems. In particular, we have no straightforward way of both converting the grid to 100% renewable energy, while also massively increasingly electrical demand for things like BEVs and every other electrification proposal. In reality, it's just a big fantasy.
The "success" of battery cars right now is really due to huge subsidies and a willingness to overlook fundamental problems (such as mining challenges, child and slave labor, no way for non-homeowners to charge conveniently, etc.). If we actually looked at those problems honestly, we'd realize that they are as big or even bigger than the challenges of building a hydrogen infrastructure.
This gets much more problematic once we look at heavy transportation or industry. We have no method of electrifying airplanes or ocean-going ships and many other things. So all of the expense of electrifying cars is just one part of a much larger decarbonization process. And that larger process absolutely requires a hydrogen infrastructure somewhere. So we pretty much have to build a hydrogen infrastructure anyways. As a result, dismissing hydrogen is just not taking climate change seriously.