hydrogen maybe the only economical way of transporting goods on medium and long distances - you don't wanna drag 5 tonnes of batteries with you.
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If we can figure out how to electrify the interstate highway system, trucks won't even need massive batteries. They'll just need enough to get from the freeway to their pickup/dropoff locations.
Honestly I don't understand why that isn't already a thing, even ignoring the environmental benefits and just focusing on economics. The amount of diesel big trucks consume is expensive. Maintenance is expensive. Even manufacturing trucks with big diesel engines is expensive.
It's a thing, called the electric locomotive, circa 1920.
There are many electric trains but they have gas turbines burning diesel that converts the fuel to electric power to power the wheels. For storage liquid is king for now especially when you're 2000km from any town.
Trams. Trolleybus. Trains. These things are useless to people who have a truck.
Unfortunately I think diesel is going to win over hydrogen for a long long time.
Did you miss the memo about the climate emergency?
Or trains.
The only thing stopping battery electric trucks from taking over long haul trucking is constrained battery supply. You will see battery electric trucks on the road in large numbers within the first half of this decade.
Electric long-haul trucking is nowhere close to being a reality and the limiting factor is not battery supply.
Weight: Electric semis will have a reduced load of over 4 MT (~9,000 lbs) due to increased weight in the batteries
Range: Even with a ~500 mile range, that is not even close to satisfying long-haul trucking needs
Recharge: With a 150kW supercharger, you are looking at 7+ hour recharge time
Charging infra: You can charge your electric car at home, you aren't gonna be charging your semi at home. Many owner-operators store their trucks in a truck yard along with dozens of other trucks. Even just 10 trucks @ 120kWh = 1.2MWh, large company fleets will be even harder. On the road, this will be even less feasible in the short term
In the end, what you have is a more expensive truck, with a decreased payload capacity, that cannot drive as far, that will have more downtime due to charging, and will require massive updates to electric infrastructure.
The only case where they might make sense are in shorter routes, with a vertically integrated company like Amazon going from one distribution center to another where truckers can switch trucks on arrival and let the previous one charge. But even then, it will be a long time before running these trucks will be as profitable as the existing ones.
5 tonnes was not an exaggeration. Batteries weigh a lot.
Right now energy density of them is enough for decent passenger car experience. But it’s not competitive in big trucks.
On the other hand, Tesla is selling a semi-trailer, which they claim is compelling. It will be interesting to see how it is received, but I think it’s too early to claim it can’t be competitive.
hydrogen maybe the only economical way of transporting goods on medium and long distances
The word "only" in your sentence is only meaningful in a world in which diesel fuel and natural gas don't exist.
Check out this map from the US DOE: https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/natural_gas_locations.html
Why there must be dozens of natural gas (both LNG and CNG) fueling stations around the country. There are even a handful in Canada. Almost nothing, but still way ahead of hydrogen.
If you look at pure hydrogen (same map), there appear to be a few dozen stations in the entire country, all in California.
In comparison, the number of electric stations (same map) is huge.
Pure hydrogen is in last place. It's a joke. Toyota has wasted billions of dollars on it. Nobody is going to build out a hydrogen infrastructure given all the alternatives.
Hydrogen as a transportation fuel is deader than the parrot in the Monty Python sketch. No amount of wishful thinking can change that.
Because there aren't many hydrogen refueling stations currently in the United States, no one is going to build any more, so it is a joke and dead?
It definitely is dead.
There are 168,000 gas stations in the US. Supported by a huge network of oil fields, pipelines, and refineries.
There are now 26,000 EV charging stations open to the public. In addition, there are literally billions of wall outlets that can be used to charge EVs. All supported by hundreds if not thousands of generating stations and an enormous power transmission network.
There are hundreds of natural gas (LNG + CNG) stations.
Given that existing multi-trillion dollar infrastructure, what would the business plan for building out hydrogen look like?
How many EV charging stations were there in the US five years ago. Ten years ago?
About business plan: start selling to fleets of taxis and short haul trucks. They are sensitive to fuel cost and consumption, but only need one or two stations in the whole metropolitan area. Do that in major cities. After that you only need a few stops between the towns.
Natural gas, as all fossil fuels, are dead within a few years. It’s amazes me that people still haven’t seen that writing on the wall.
Only idiots buy new fossil fuel cars today. They won’t have any resell value in a few years.
> They are sensitive to fuel cost and consumption,
And incredibly sensitive to price per mile. You add 800lb of batteries to a step van that delivers bread and you lose so much cargo capacity that you're no longer profitable or it bumps you up to a different class of vehicle with different regulatory requirements that make you no longer profitable.
Believe me, tons of fleet operators are drooling over the idea of EV fleets that recharge overnight and the cost savings from drastically cutting the required regular maintenance. The economics just aren't there yet.
>But idiots buy new fossil fuel cars today. They won’t have any resell value in a few years.
Idiots vote so.....
> And incredibly sensitive to price per mile...
Which is why they choose hydrogen fuel cells instead of batteries. The energy density is much higher, and refuelling much faster.
And even if you consider electric vehicles, I guess you know that Amazon have ordered 100,000 vehicles.
Fortunately you don’t have to rely on politicians to do the right thing regarding electric cars. The total cost of buying and driving an electric car is already on the brink of being cheaper, and in two or three years there won’t even be any competition.
> Given that existing multi-trillion dollar infrastructure, what would the business plan for building out hydrogen look like?
I don't know, maybe something like CNG or EV stations two decades ago?