Thank you! I wonder why my link didn't work.
It always dumbfounds me when "fool cell" fanboys claim that cheap electricity will make fool cell cars practical, while ignoring the fact that cheap electricity would make BEVs even more competitive against fool cell cars than they already are!
There is, at least theoretically, about one-and-a-half orders of magnitude of further improvement in energy density possible with batteries. In theory, batteries could be as energy dense as diesel or gasoline. I don't expect in practice that they will ever achieve that high an energy density, but it's difficult to believe that batteries won't eventually reach at least 3x or 4x current energy density, and almost certainly even better improvement in cost.
Not so with using hydrogen as an energy carrier. It's rather hard to "improve" or invent a better version of the hydrogen molecule!
And, you only need to make one set of batteries for the lifetime of the car. For fool cell cars, the fuel in the tank has to be replaced several hundred times. For a PHEV that uses a fuel cell range extender, of course you wouldn't have to replace the fuel as often, but that means lower demand for hydrogen fuel, which means far fewer hydrogen fueling stations, leaving them too rare for driving in most areas of the country, which again is one of the things which makes it utterly impractical to use hydrogen as a major transportation fuel.
The potential for reduction of carbon emissions by using H2 as an energy carrier are, at best, only about 30-40% less than using gasoline. Why this mad desire to use what is
very nearly the worst possible choice for a fuel, merely because in theory it produces no carbon emissions at the actual tailpipe of the car? Why not advocate for something far more practical, such as biodiesel or synthetic methane? Some fuel that isn't so massively energy-inefficient, and doesn't require massively expensive fueling stations to handle a massively impractical fuel? I'll tell you why: Because
Big Oil shills promote using hydrogen as fuel. They promote it precisely because they know it is a dead which will never, ever threaten the use of gasoline and diesel!
Now, that's not to say you yourself are a Big Oil shill, JJD. But you should be aware that, by advocating for the "hydrogen economy" hoax, you are being used as what is called a "useful idiot" by Big Oil shills. I advise you to wise up.
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The reason we have seen a dwindling of fool cell fanboys over the past few years is that even for those engaging very hard in wishful thinking and science denial, it's hard to ignore what's happened in California. Despite all the propaganda from the California Fuel Cell Partnership and all the wishful thinking from fool cell fanboys, the price of H2 has stubbornly refused to magically fall as more and more H2 fueling stations have been opened. In fact, it has gone up a bit, even as shortages in the fuel become more acute.
Why is that happening? Well, as one person who (like me) refuses to engage in science denial put it:
"If only the world weren’t governed by the unfair and cruel laws of thermodynamics and economics, the hydrogen economy could rule the world." – HVACman, comment at InsideEVs.com, July 8, 2015
