In my opinion hydrogen fuel cell-powered cars are significantly better from a technological standpoint than electric cars.
A day after Barack Obama threw $2.4 billion at electric cars, Toyota (TM) is reminding the world that there’s another alt-energy vehicle waiting in the wings, touting its hydrogen fuel cell technology to John O’Dell at the Green Car Advisor.
The Japanese automaker says it recently put a fuel cell based SUV, the Highlander, through its paces. The car ran 431 miles on a 6-kilogram tanks of hydrogen–equaling 68.3 mile per kg, which is like miles per gallon. Mileage like that demolishes electric cars, which seem to be settling into a range of 40-150 miles per charge.
The fuel cell car is powered by an electric motor that converts hydrogen and oxygen into electricity.
I doubt they’ll run into the same production barriers that have dogged hybrids and electrics, though. Manufacturing electric motors in production quantities is a known quantity. Manufacturing batteries that are light enough, powerful enough, and cheap enough to be practical has proven elusive.
Here’s the thing: picking a technology and subsidizing it gives it a leg up over other, potentially superior technologies. That’s why I think the approach that’s being taken today in which Congressmen who couldn’t pass a middle school science test are making decisions about technologies based on what they’ve heard about and whoever’s got the best P/R is absurd.
While I agree that subsidizing battery-powered electrics is bad economic policy (if the government has a need to inflate the deficit some on green technology, make it technology-neutral, for example, subsidizing cars that don’t emit CO2, regardless of what that technology is), there are a lot of problems with putting hydrogen cars on the road. There are electric plugs everywhere, so the limited range is mitigated by the fact that you can presumably ‘plug in’ at say, both ends of a commute.
Try finding a hydrogen station. For those cars to be successful, we’d need a significant investment — probably with government support — to put hydrogen fueling stations everywhere. But the real issue is: where do we get all this hydrogen? Elemental hydrogen is really hard to find, and what we do have largely ends up coming from splitting hydrocarbons — a process that isn’t green, and doesn’t really help kick our oil habit.
My point is that picking any technology is bad public policy. BTW, there may be infrastructure problems for electrics, too. Just any old electrical socket might not do the trick. They may need recharging stations.
Additionally, a technology that can’t be mass-produced is useless however convenient the technology might be.
You think hydrogen fuel cells won’t run into production barriers? Maybe, but there will definitely be distribution barriers, depending on how you want to make your hydrogen (either from natural gas, or from cracking water).
Not like batteries. There’s no Moore’s Law for batteries: they’re running up against basic properties of matter. Hydrogen production is mostly just a question of where you get your energy from.