Anyone else read this?

[Dan]

Afaik fuel cell cars work out more efficient than straight hydrogen burning.
The cell gets far more useful energy out of the fuel, therefore even if only 60% if then transfered to the wheels via the electric motor it's more efficient.
Physically a rechargable battery will never be as good as a straight chemical to energy reaction in the vehicle "carrying around your own power station"

A hydrogen internal combustion engine is still pretty good, some vehicles would benefit from using either systems.
As you say platinium used as the catalyst in the cell is quite hard to get hold of, there is a company (can't remember name sorry) that has developed a more efficient way of obtaining it, with larger production it probably wouldn't be as prohibitvely expensive.

I never mentioned hydrogen combustion. I mean that the fuel cell itself is about 50% efficient, still much higher than a combustion engine. But just keeping electricity as electricity is way more efficient. And it's not like we have lots of hydrogen just lying around. You have to put energy in to get it, you need to compact it. And then you need some sort of hydrogen distribution system.

What you said about a battery not being as good as a straight chemical to energy reaction doesn't make sense. A hydrogen cell is essentially just another type of battery, only it doesn't recharge with electricity in, it recharges with hydrogen.

My ultimate point was that if you consider the electricity coming out of the power station, you're getting about 20% of it going to your motor with a hydrogen cell vs more like 80% with a regular battery.

With a battery, you only have small losses due to resistance in the power lines, and then the loss due to the battery's efficiency. With hydrogen, you have the energy loss in piping the electricity to the hydrogen making plant, you have the loss of electrolysing water to make hydrogen, you have the loss of transporting that hydrogen to gas station or to people's houses. You then have the loss of the hydrogen fuel cell efficiency turning that energy back into electricity. In both cases you are getting electricity going into your car's motor, but for a hydrogen fuel cell you are using way more energy overall. The only advantage of a hydrogen fuel cell is energy density. And battery technology is always improving, so that battery energy density could increase in the future, whereas hydrogen cannot, they can only increase the fuel cell efficiency up to a certain limit.

 

[ríomhaire]

Trust on companies delaying this as much as posible.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

The hydrogen producing companies could also go into other sectors as well. For example, besides just making soft-cell fuels, they could develop hard fuels for the space program. NASA's fuel bill will decrease, allowing them to spend funds in areas such as research and design.