this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2025
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Unless they have a fusion reactor they're not telling us about, so that they can electrolyze water hydrogen is never going to be a viable power source. Currently all hydrogen is acquired through fracking, which makes the entire exercise somewhat pointless.
I think hydrogen has a future, but more for long haul trucking than personal cars. The general idea is to generate a ton of solar power during the day and use the excess to produce hydrogen, and then use the hydrogen to fuel heavy equipment, trucks, and cover for low solar production days.
This solves many of the issues with hydrogen:
Hydrogen remains a solution desperately in search of a problem.
If your aim is to generate locally, why not just use batteries? They're cheaper, more efficient, and more reliable. Why have the lossy and very high maintenance electrolysis and hydrogen storage/transfer process involved?
Battery-powered vehicles require an unreasonable amount of water to control a fire. 1 burning Tesla needs 1 fire truck of water, so imagine what a bigger vehicle would need.
I don't think the size of the vehicle matters, but where it's placed. A sufficiently large battery (e.g. something powering a warehouse) is unlikely to be right next to a bunch of important stuff, so they'll just let it burn out. A Tesla, however, is much more likely to be next to a bunch of other cars, so they need to contain it.