Hydrogen can be perceived as a threat to battery manufacturers because fuel cells are essentially refuelable batteries. Why electric vehicle manufacturers perceive hydrogen as a threat is more of a mystery because the addition of a fuel cell to maintain the battery pack nearer to a full charge dramatically extends battery life and travel range while eliminating or shortening charging time on journeys, which is the showstopper for EVs, restricting them to local use and forcing multicar ownership.

Yet instead of embracing hydrogen technologies, we are constantly barraged with obstification from the EV industry.

“Hydrogen is only an energy carrier,” they say, as if batteries weren’t.

Then they hammer on about how inefficient the hydrogen production process is while ignoring the fact that we spend ten billion dollars a month on wateful military endeavors to keep foreign oil flowing to our ports. And they whine endlessly about how dirty hydrogen is when 90% of their EVs are being charged from coal plants.

It’s high time for the EV community to recognize hydrogen as an opportunity, not a nemisis. They need to realize that the electric vehicle industry is not part of the battery industry. They need not be so willingly directed by the needs of the battery industry to sell more batteries. They should instead be on the alert for the most attractive mix of electric tech to provide unimpeded travel and operational transparency. This is how electric vehicles will replace internal combustion.

I don’t see that “electric vehicle manufacturers perceive hydrogen as a threat”. Quite the contrary. At their current and foreseeable cost and performance hydrogen fuel cell cars are obviously no competitive threat at all to BEVs.

I am sure that EV manufacturers would be delighted to look at fuel cells as range extenders if the fuel cell “industry” could deliver a product that makes economic sense. The fuel cell developers haven’t even come close—even leaving aside the huge hydrogen infrastructure problem.

Range limitations of BEVs will never “force multicar ownership”. Households that own more than one car do so and will always do so because they feel they need more than one car. An individual motorist whose miles consists of 95% commuting and one or two longer range trips (vacations) a year can economically own an BEV for commuting and just rent an ICE for the rare longer trip.

I see no “obstification” about hydrogen from the EV industry or anyone else. Pointing out the ridiculousness of endlessly repeated H2 platitudes like “hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe” is hardly “obstification”.

It is high time that certain hydrogen advocates stop whining about their imagined victimization by battery manufacturers and BEV developers.

It is high time that the hydrogen community recognize the immense advantages of the existing electric grid over a hypothetical hydrogen infrastructure.

It is high time that the hydrogen community stop acting out of self interest and stop confusing politicians and the public with fuel cell car fantasies.

It is high time that the hydrogen community take a clue from Ballard, which has given up on fuel cell cars.

I absolutely agree. Charge time tends to be discounted by people selling electric cars, but for consumers it’s a big deal. No one wants to wait in Barstow, Nyack or the Coalinga for three hours.

It is all fine and true that your average consumer would prefer to buy the vehicle that fills up in the shortest amount of time, all things being equal.  However, that’s the problem, based on what you are saying (and the current state of these technologies) all things are not equal.  The efficiency difference in the vehicle powertrain will show up in the consumer’s costs.  So, after we’re done with cheap oil, telling the same consumer that they have to fork over an extra chunk of change to be able to fill up in that short a period of time can obviously change their mind.

This all, of course, is ignoring PHEV’s (and perhaps, in the future, ultra-cap powered EV’s) ability to re-fuel as quickly as gas / ICE powered vehicles.  None of these technologies is a done deal—so hydrogen may yet win out (fuel cell stacks get much cheaper + source energy to hydrogen to mechanical energy conversion efficiency improves greatly), and because of this I’m in favor of investing in R&D on anything that shows promise like hydrogen energy transmission has.  However, if I’ve got to make bets on what technology will win out (and governments and industry have to do this) in order to spend my R&D money wisely, the majority of my money is on battery electric / PHEV.

@David Redstone, as the previous CMO for Tesla, I am well aware of those statistics, but the point of my article is that EV proponents (including myself) tend to underplay the complexity and challenge of changing the consumer mindset, as is evidenced in your comment. It sounds like you are saying it is a no-brainer to deal with these issues in the manner you raise, but I think it’s going to be tougher than that when you get past the early adopters.

@Brian Rosenfield, I don’t believe Hydrogen is the answer - I believe PHEVs are a stepping stone and pure EVs are the best ultimate solution but the point I am making is to drive mass adoption of EVs we really need to understand and address the customer pain points that we will encounter in the future.

What percentage of the miles driven in cars and light trucks in the U.S. involve trips of less than fifty miles? What percentage of U.S. households have more than one vehicle so that one can be a pure battery electric (“BEV”) devoted to commuting, local shopping, driving the kids around etc. with another vehicle available for longer trips (vacations)? What percentage of U.S. cars and light trucks spend ten or more hours parked in the garage every single night?

Tens if not hundreds of millions of vehicles in North America alone are used exclusively or nearly so for local driving. A vehicle with 100 HP weighing under 3000 lbs. and having a range of 100 miles is more than adequate for short trips. A pure BEV that can be plugged in for (slow) recharging every night can easily meet the range and comfort requirements of the local driver, and can do so without a tailpipe.

Consumer psychology is going to have to change. The billions spent by automakers on indoctrination (i.e. advertising) should be more than enough to induce that change, just as it was enough to get consumers to believe that they were wimps unless they drove 5,000+ lb. vehicles that can do 0-60 in 3 seconds and go 600 miles on one tank of gas while towing a yacht. Besides, plugging in the car upon arriving home from work each night doesn’t require that big of a change in consumer psychology.

I think that the appeal of hydrogen has less to do with the “refill time” issue and more to do with the erroneous belief that hydrogen is “green” and that the only emission from a hydrogen car is water. Most people probably realize that generating the electricity required by a BEV involves burning fossil fuels. Many fewer people seem to understand how energy intensive the production, compression and distribution of hydrogen is, or that hydrogen production is almost entirely dependent on fossil fuels, or that using hydrogen as a transportation fuel moves CO2 emissions from the tailpipe to the smokestack. After all, as consumers have been told ad nauseam, “hydrogen is the most common element in the universe!!!”

Daryl really points out that the long term, hands down winner here is electric drive, regardless of the original (and/or supplementary) fuel sources for it.

Series hybrids complement pure electrics, for consumers, right now. Consumers don’t care what the fuel source is, so long as it is cheap and easy to access (which implies easy to make) and use. Right now hydrogen fails that combination horribly compared to electricity. That may change later - no consumer really cares, so long as their ride is cheap, fun and works. What this highlights is that electric drive is the obvious winner. The fuel sources for electric drive are infinitely flexible, so let them change as different sources become cheaper and innovations have different timings. Multiple solutions work just as well with electric drive.

My electric vehicle has a real world maximum recharge time of about an hour and a half (using a standard 110v household outlet) and it’s my daily driver, in a real world, direct contradiction to what Daryl says. Why? Because my to work and back home commute mileage plus some after work romping off road with it is still less than its range. My zero minutes to refill is way less than Daryl’s five minutes with his gasser. What my electric vehicle does in my garage between 3 and 5 am automatically each night using a cheap timer is its own business.  

Believe me as a high performance electric vehicle owner, once you taste massive torque with linear acceleration, you will sell your soul to keep an inexpensive high performance electric drive vehicle in your life. Consider this consumer’s mindset permanently changed. I paid cash for my Zero X and after market light kitted it, so it is street legal and registered.

Here in CT we have a corrupt government program called the CCEF that is in lust with hydrogen technology…  The CCEF spends lavishly in the two local companies that are involved and the firms that ‘buy’ the fuel cells with government handouts.