Johnny Bacigalupo and Rob Hussey have been hit with a £17,000 bill to fix their Tesla after it was damaged in the rain - they have been told to pay even if they say it's not their fault
Agreed. BEVs make sense as short-ranged urban commuter cars. You don’t want a car with a giant, expensive battery. But this is a niche, so you quickly realize that something else must be the answer.
For a lot of cases, it is either mass transit or e-bikes. But if you must have a car, it must be something that matches the functionality of ICE cars while being zero emissions.
Since when is a 300 mile range “short range”? And it only takes a half hour or so at a good charger to regain the majority of that range. Modern electric cars are perfectly reasonable for long distance trips, provided there’s charging infrastructure, of course.
To get a long-ranged BEV, you need a giant battery. That means massive repair bills down the road. Only by limiting range to a small number can this be avoided. Saying that BEVs can have 300 miles of range is missing the point. It is just too expensive to get there.
There is now technology that can let you refuel in 5 minutes, give you 300-400 miles of range, while also being a type of EV. As a result, it no longer matters that BEVs are “good enough.” It is simply not the most practical idea. Something else is flat-out better.
Your alternative is not better, because it’s not in mass production. When it’s in production it might be better.
But there are still a lot of problems to work out with hydrogen fuel, and the infrastructure is extremely expensive and complicated compared to simple charging stations.
It will be mass produced. The main difference is that there will be much less need for raw materials. So it will be much cheaper.
There’s very little left to solve for hydrogen cars. It’s mostly outdated bullshit coming from competing industries. The only real problem left is getting it to mass production. Once that happens, hydrogen cars will be as cheap as ICE cars, and hydrogen fuel will be cheaper than gasoline.
You’re completely ignoring the fact that it takes 3 to 5 times as much energy to actually drive a hydrogen car, because of the (in)efficiencies of the hydrogen production, supply and consumption chains.
And given that the driving of a car is what consumes the most energy in its lifetime, the much higher efficiency of a BEV ‘pays off’ the higher production costs, both monetarily and ecologically.
That’s just bullshit from BEV companies. At best, it’s something like 2x. At worse, it will take less energy, because you have waste energy from renewables. Wind and solar farms have a tendency to produce energy all-at-once, and shut down all-at-once too. You need massive amounts of energy storage to solve this. And the cheapest way of doing this is with hydrogen.
So as a result, you just get a lot of super-cheap hydrogen that otherwise can’t be used. BEV don’t solve this problem at all, leading to a lot of wasted energy.
Finally, fuel cells are also electrochemical systems, just like batteries. The notion that batteries will always be more efficient is just another lie from the BEV companies. In the long-run, this will be a unanimous win from fuel cells, because they will be equally efficient while also been much cheaper.
Maybe the future is not relying on any one technology as our only option.
Nah, that doesn’t make sense at all.
Agreed. BEVs make sense as short-ranged urban commuter cars. You don’t want a car with a giant, expensive battery. But this is a niche, so you quickly realize that something else must be the answer.
For a lot of cases, it is either mass transit or e-bikes. But if you must have a car, it must be something that matches the functionality of ICE cars while being zero emissions.
Since when is a 300 mile range “short range”? And it only takes a half hour or so at a good charger to regain the majority of that range. Modern electric cars are perfectly reasonable for long distance trips, provided there’s charging infrastructure, of course.
To get a long-ranged BEV, you need a giant battery. That means massive repair bills down the road. Only by limiting range to a small number can this be avoided. Saying that BEVs can have 300 miles of range is missing the point. It is just too expensive to get there.
There is now technology that can let you refuel in 5 minutes, give you 300-400 miles of range, while also being a type of EV. As a result, it no longer matters that BEVs are “good enough.” It is simply not the most practical idea. Something else is flat-out better.
Your alternative is not better, because it’s not in mass production. When it’s in production it might be better.
But there are still a lot of problems to work out with hydrogen fuel, and the infrastructure is extremely expensive and complicated compared to simple charging stations.
It will be mass produced. The main difference is that there will be much less need for raw materials. So it will be much cheaper.
There’s very little left to solve for hydrogen cars. It’s mostly outdated bullshit coming from competing industries. The only real problem left is getting it to mass production. Once that happens, hydrogen cars will be as cheap as ICE cars, and hydrogen fuel will be cheaper than gasoline.
You’re completely ignoring the fact that it takes 3 to 5 times as much energy to actually drive a hydrogen car, because of the (in)efficiencies of the hydrogen production, supply and consumption chains.
And given that the driving of a car is what consumes the most energy in its lifetime, the much higher efficiency of a BEV ‘pays off’ the higher production costs, both monetarily and ecologically.
That’s just bullshit from BEV companies. At best, it’s something like 2x. At worse, it will take less energy, because you have waste energy from renewables. Wind and solar farms have a tendency to produce energy all-at-once, and shut down all-at-once too. You need massive amounts of energy storage to solve this. And the cheapest way of doing this is with hydrogen.
So as a result, you just get a lot of super-cheap hydrogen that otherwise can’t be used. BEV don’t solve this problem at all, leading to a lot of wasted energy.
Finally, fuel cells are also electrochemical systems, just like batteries. The notion that batteries will always be more efficient is just another lie from the BEV companies. In the long-run, this will be a unanimous win from fuel cells, because they will be equally efficient while also been much cheaper.
Battery technology will be improved. Look at how much better today’s lithium ion batteries are than the NiCad batteries of the 90s.
At some point, we’ll develop something that doesn’t wear out for tens of thousands of charge cycles.
And fuel cells will also improve. Why not invest in an alternative? At the very least, you have a backup plan.
Also, fuel cells are electrochemical devices just like batteries. They arguable are batteries. So there’s no reason to not accept fuel cells.
Batteries will improve. So there’s no reason to not accept them.
I smell an angry Nikola investor.
They will just end up being a niche idea that won’t solve climate change.
No car will.
Short range urban commuting is the domain of subways and ebikes