| > Energy efficiency is important relative to other distribution methods. The point is that energy efficiency is only one factor among all other. For example, it makes little difference if you blindly tag a 80% efficiency tag on a EV if afterwards you have to waste twice the energy to cart along a massive battery. > If the efficiency is half that of electric, you can power half the cars you could with electric with existing energy supplies. The point that you're missing is that said cars are also far heavier (the battery on a Tesla Model S weighs half a ton alone which contrasts with Toyota Mirai's 40kg fuel cell), which requires far more energy to move around. What matters is how much energy you actually waste while driving, because that's where all the energy is going. > Hydrogen hasn't been adopted because it is expensive, dangerous, difficult to store and not as efficient as electric. I disagree with any of those points, specially as some of them like the safety scaremongering are far-fetched, as they aren't really grounded on the real world. The critical difference between EVs and hydrogen was that EVs benefitted from a fantastic marketing and PR push, investment in infrastructure and R&D effort from private companies pushing EVs that was able to budge the status quo and made them acceptable to the public in spite of their major drawbacks such as massive cost, autonomy restrictions, and long charging times. This foot-in-the-door was further compounded by the way some states decided to invest heavily in EV subsidies and public infrastructure, which was completely absurd, unrealistic and politically impossible in the recent past. EV's recent mass adoption acceptance is not a technical feat but a social and political one which happened to leverage a specific technology. |
I'm not sure about Tesla, but according to specs I found, but Kia e-Niro with 400 km range is 1737 kilograms, 400 km range Hyundai Kona Electric is 1685, 500 km range WV ID3 is 1730 ... while Toyota Mirai is 1825 kg and my ICE Jaguar is 1950 kg.
Long story short, I'm not convinced it's so simple.