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Comment by jazzyjackson | Hacker News Reader

If electricity is cheap enough, what does it matter if its only 10% efficient? just means it is expensive to store energy.

Maybe its greenwashing, but it is also a hedge against battery tech. I know most people here have already made up their minds that BEV is the only way forward, but does it hurt to have competition?

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As long as they don’t ask for a handout to catch up when hydrogen flops, sure. This is the problem we face with limited resources: we can’t give equally to all, so we have to prioritize by probable outcome based on currently available information (see renewables, fission, fusion as well).

But that's what's happening with electric too? Heavily subsidized in most countries they're sold

Somewhat true, but EVs are delivering today. There are ~2 million EVs being manufactured annually at current run rates (Tesla + legacy auto), and EV charging networks are already robust throughout the developed world (home charging, fast dc charging), while also rapidly growing by the day. Hydrogen has shown immaterial progress in the last two decades, and there are only a handful of hydrogen fueling stations.

They are not equal. Combustion for light vehicles is arguably dead. Toyota was too risk adverse and is paying the price.

They need way fewer subsidies to be competitive with fossil fuel burners though since they are a lot cheaper. Furthermore no (almost no and no financially sustainable) green H2 exist so cars run with grey H2 which ruins car companies fleet emission profile (barely better than diesel) so they can't be sold in big numbers in Europe.

H2 burning motors like this one have even worse electricity to mile ratios then hydrogen fuel cells.

If you are going to use hydrogen, use a hydrogen fuel cell. Not a V8 internal combustion engine.

I was hoping the article would include a comparison to that option, but sadly, no. Is it safe to assume that a fuel cell + electric motor has much higher efficiency than this hydrogen ICE, at comparable weight?

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