• stealthnerd@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Where does all of the anti hydrogen rhetoric come from? Hydrogen has its issues for sure but so does electric. Hydrogen has advantages to electric, namely range and refueling time, which may make it a better choice, at least for certain applications.

    What’s so horrible about Toyota investing in it? At least someone is giving it a shot and they actually have a production automobile that uses it.

    Here we are going all in on electric with a grid that can’t support it, charging times that are too slow, driving range that’s too low and housing that can’t accommodate it but hydrogen is somehow a crazy idea?

    • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I get the feeling the same people who were anti nuclear are now pushing anti hydrogen without realizing they’re falling right into fossil fuel’s division.

    • zurohki@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      Because there’s no real attempt to roll out hydrogen infrastructure and almost all the attempts we’re seeing to paint hydrogen as the future are actually just anti-EV FUD. Hydrogen is the future! … but it isn’t ready yet, so keep buying gas cars for now.

      Same goes for nuclear, at least in my country - the political party that’s now talking up nuclear while in opposition didn’t say a word about nuclear while they were in government. They were trying to fund new coal plants. They’re talking about nuclear to slow down renewables, they don’t actually plan to build new nuclear plants. They want to protect their big donors in the coal industry.

      Hydrogen fuel cells probably have a future somewhere, but it isn’t in cars. The filling stations are too expensive and the hydrogen itself is too expensive.

      Battery EVs are about to pass the range of fuel cell EVs, you know? They can’t actually hold that much hydrogen. And they only fill faster if the filling station has a long break between vehicles - fill a couple of cars in a row and you’ll be there for 20 minutes.

    • Hypx@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It comes from brainwashed BEV owners and companies. In reality, it is a huge greenwashing industry designed to distract from the fact that fossil fuel consumption continues. It is only a matter of time before the BEV fad ends and we begin taking real ideas more seriously. Hydrogen will be one of them. So will nuclear in all likelihood.

      • stealthnerd@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It will be interesting to see how this all plays out that’s for sure. Every time I drive by a rest stop on the highway I imagine what the gas lines would look like if those people were instead lining up to spend 20+ minutes minimum at a charging station.

        Even if you put a charger in every parking space it would likely be a problem. Those lots fill up as it is and I can’t even fathom the electrical feeds required for that.

        I think the people saying “oh it’s just electricity we already have that” are a bit dilusional. It’s going to require enormous investment into infrastructure and even then it may not be feasible.

        I think it’s one of those things that seems great when only a handful of people are doing it but will become a nightmare as more EVs end up on the road.

        Its great for those who have a dedicated place to park their car, can charge at home and only commute a short distance back and forth to work but it falls short for many.

        • Hypx@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          It reminds me of those who think “food comes from the grocery store!” And not realize that there is an entire infrastructure behind that. Electricity is the same. It will take trillions of dollars to move all cars to electricity. Realistically, it won’t happen. There are too many pitfalls and challenges in the way. The most likely outcome is that we stop pushing BEVs so hard and move in another direction.

    • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Because Toyota spent something like 15 31 years developing a shitty performing, very expensive hydrogen car that they then sold hardly any units of and there are still no filling stations to fill them.

      If you think battery electric cars are expensive, how about spending $75,000 on basically a Toyota Corolla? Sure you can drive 600 mi on one tank but…

      To say that Toyota fucked up is an understatement.

      • DauntingFlamingo@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Toyota is one of the largest auto makers in the history of the world. They’re practically their own government, and have more than enough money bankroll a burgeoning technology tree. To say they fucked up by testing a brand new technology and developing it in-house, seemingly on their own until recently (BMW and Mercedes have both joined Toyota in their development process within the last 5 years) is bonkers.

        Any new technology or idea generally has a long road to maturity. You wouldn’t say the quest for quantum computing or the unified field theory are complete wastes of time and money when we’re discovering things along the way. Hydrogen may not work out for your consumer vehicle, but it absolutely works better than electric for those trans-oceanic container ships and shooting rockets to the moon.