A Model 3 or Model Y powered off electricity generated from natural gas will entail about 1/5 as much CO2 as a gasoline car but only at the smoke stack. Whether it is powered off battery backed solar or dirty natural gas its powertrain will last about 5-9x as long as a gasoline ICE car. Even on natural gas you could have 5 Model 3s and only produce as much CO2 as a gas car. But when you look at the extended duration of power train life you might well multiply the savings on manufacturing in lbs of CO2 by 5x-9x even as the Tesla's will be much greener in manufacturing than a ICE car despite nonsense claims to the contrary. And the reduction that AEVs will bring as TAAS gives you another mulitplier of 10x-18x in the reduction of needed cars- seems obvious that ICE and hydrogen won't work for TAAS. And when it is battery backed solar powering the Tesla energy can be had for 1.1 cents a kwh and dropping for home solar or even utility solar whereas you'll never get it under about 6 cents a kwh for natural gas at production or coop rates and 12 cents at retail (why would we ever allow the premium over rural coops in cities- 21cents a khw!???) But with hydrogen with say a Mirai you don't do better than gas hybrids on co2 savings its only like 2.5 hydrogen cars per gas car and its always just natural gas in disguise. Is that what we want to base our green efforts on (?) never doing better than a standard Prius, is that were we want to be stuck? A Mirai is 40% of gas co2 or Prius level c02 with potentially less local emissions depending on where the natural gas plant is. Mirai and hydrogen tech is a nominal improvement over current hybrid and it is worse on price even when supply gas is shipped by pipeline. It will never get better. This is why Germany's new plan 150 billion$$ same as Obama plan of 150 billion for green energy in 08 is looking more and more disappointing. One cycle of range on a gas car is 290 or so lbs of co2 and with a Mirai its like 120 lbs and with a Model 3 or Y its 60lbs (on natural gas.) But with the Tesla you can get the natural gas and the carbon out of the picture essentially entirely while radically reducing the cost of miles and charging (SCE at this point should pay its customers discount to switch to green not the converse- see Buffet's new battery backed solar Nevada plant and the 50% lower than natural gas prices in that project to provide 7% of LAs power.) But we still see Germany including the subsidies for this long tail pipe comparative scam to shield natural gas at the same rate as BEVs and we seem them subsidizing obsolete PHEVs- maybe they know what they are doing they known customers will see the higher prices, lower performance and much lower levels of room for improvement and much less actual green (moving a hybrids tail pipe) and remember diesel gate and not buy in and the bureaucrats can claim they didn't constrain choice. And look only a pittance of 2 billion to be spent by the end of 2021- weak! Hydrogen is another bridge fuel idea like natural gas. It is a bridge of a bridge, so transparent it is painful. There seems to be this idea that natural gas investors should be rewarded or protected for having done something virtuous. But isn't the case. Lets say something like vacuum energy comes along and replaces battery backed solar would solar investors be in the same spot? No, not at all for two reasons. 1. Battery backed solar is generally not adding to heat pollution. 2. Battery backed solar was mimicking nature and the best true bridge we had along the way to a level of energy that allows us to make some mistakes. Natural gas was never that, it was just about trying to extend the injustice of fossil fuels and to a lesser extent possibly cut some of the geopolitical control associated with fossil fuels making them less import dependent. Hydrogen is just stealth natural (toxic) gas in disguise. Hydrogen as it is pushed is never intended to go from grey (natural gas inefficiently converted- meaning more natural gas) to blue (blended green plus natural gas) to actual green (even as it may use some local fresh water supplies.) It is never going to get there. The ideal model for hydrogen might be wind generated piped hydrogen that is somehow cost competitive but right now that is said to be 3x the cost of natural gas in disguise hydrogen. And in the mean time we know natural gas has its issues with water rights (compounded by hydrogen) and water contamination and mercury and seismic stability and with its methane release being 25x worse than CO2 per unit. And with hydrogen H20 also is bit of a green house gas but that may be negligible. So lets do some current tech comparisons. Hydrogen appears to have much less room for improvement than battery tech which is bad because its already substantially inferior. Notice that that Nikola Semi for instance is now down from 1200 miles claimed to about 500-750 miles the same range as the Tesla Semi (last checked was 600 plus by tweet) but with super limited refuel points and the Nikola is a hybrid electric at this point just like the Mirai in the sense that it carries a huge electric battery. That battery plus the hydrogen tank and reformer in the case of Mirai keeps it from having a back set of recurperative electric motors take up a ton of space. The 2021 Mirai is almost upon us and its more Model S sized apparently and apparently has (curiously) about 400 miles of range but it won't have anything like the performance of a Model S. And like with all hydrogen while there is a temporary speed of refill advantage there will never be chargers at all destinations like with electric. So if we compare the 2020 Mirai to a Model 3 or Model Y we seek it is about the same price as the performance variants but has nothing like the space and only half the speed. Same with the Nikola it is a lot slower 0-60 under full load- a full 10 seconds slower and the Model 3 and Y are about 3x quicker 0-60 than Mirai. Its worse than the storage comparison between a solid state drive and a HDD. Right now as I understand it that hydrogen tank loaded and the reformer on the vehicle weight half what a BEV battery weighs for equivalent space but they take up more room. And they last half as long. Whereas the body of BEVs will soon enough be feeding solar into the batteries. It not like an electric aquafoil could be used to gather water out of the air (with body solar) and the covert it to hydrogen and compress it for storage- no just feed it from a pv cell into a battery all solid state. Hydrogen was a necessary exercise but battery backed solar at utility or roof top (even integrated designs that have the battery integrated into the pv cells are coming) is already at about half the cost of floor for NG even with NG under max subsidy and no subsidy for green and it will continue to drop until its cheaper than 1/1000 cent a kwh. Hydrogen it is DOA. Pipelines are interesting but they will never compete even with present superconducting high voltage power cables already in the grid and can never compete with energy that is already distributed like solar. We will never get green with natural gas. Natural gas itself is an obsolete stranded asset. Constructing brand new battery backed solar is cheaper and a million times more reliable than existing already built natural gas. There are no silly polluting spun costs and no supply markets and geo-political ups and downs and market manipulations just decades of rock solid flat price curves and Seba's God Point. Hydrogen is noisy inelegant and has too many moving parts and it has all the price problems of natural gas an Prius like performance but for a premium, its like a long tail pipe on a Prius.
