[Telemakhos]

I think most of the enthusiasm lies in the toxicity or safety of the energy store. Lithium batteries are toxic waste that doesn't get recycled well yet and requires minerals currently produced by child laborers in appalling conditions. Hydrogen fuel cells produce pure water as their byproduct and could theoretically be loaded with hydrogen fuel produced through green-powered electrolysis. They both explode on a bad day, but one rapidly oxidizes in a more environmentally friendly way.

[mlindner]

> Lithium batteries are toxic waste that doesn't get recycled well yet

Actually it does get recycled well, especially with larger batteries. There's just been very little that actually needed recycling that was sufficient to run a business. There's many smaller size businesses making healthy profit off lithium battery recycling already.

Here's two examples:

https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/

https://li-cycle.com/

[Panzer04]

Disagree - the biggest nominal advantage of hydrogen is mass storage. In theory, tanks scale up in capacity more easily than battery cells (perhaps to the point of seasonal storage). In almost every other respect hydrogen would be worse than lithium batteries (requires complex infrastructure for power conversion, terrible roundtrip efficiency, etc)

In the end, the shortfalls of hydrogen are turning out to be simply too insurmountable.