United States | News & Politics

Hydrogen is really bad as an alternative to batteries for transport. The energy efficiencies go out the window — too much energy is lost both making the hydrogen for use and for using that hydrogen. My recollection is it's about a 50% loss each at each step, meaning about 3/4 of the energy input is wasted. This is comparable to an ICE vehicle. Again by my recollection, BEVs are in the ~90% net efficiency range. The vast majority of the energy input is used for moving the vehicle, rather than being wasted.

In a world where we are decades from fully de-carbonizing the electric grid, wasting such enormous amounts of energy on hydrogen is pure foolishness. Especially when, in order to be practical, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will require even more infrastructure than BEVs require.

Hydrogen as it stands is a really bad option. For specific uses like airplanes or small/medium warships it might make sense: entities that are too small to justify nuclear power but where battery density is unlikely to be sufficient for a long time. But in general it's overhyped and just not a great choice.