Hydrogen automotive technologies are a research scientist’s dream. Basically, it represents life long employment with no need to produce useful results.
Management at many automotive companies likely love it for that reason too, since putting money into it makes it look like they are doing something to change when in reality they are not doing anything at all.
Here is a neat fact about hydrogen vehicles. Fueling them causes the nozzles to cool to below freezing temperatures. Try fueling vehicle after vehicle and the nozzle will freeze to each one. Coincidentally, hydrogen vehicle refueling is a sadist’s dream.
It is an observation and it fits the data very well. Automotive use of hydrogen has severe feasibility problems and no amount of research is likely to fix them. Not only does it require conversion of useful energy into it at a loss, but it’s transport, storage and use is extremely expensive. You are basically fighting physics to try to get a sane result. Meanwhile, we have a very promising results in battery electrics that far exceed the best case results from hydrogen, yet people want to continue pouring money into the money hole that is a hydrogen economy. Hydrogen’s best attribute in automotive applications is that it will go nowhere.
As for accomplishing nothing, if it put food on the table, it certainly did accomplish something, just not what was being promised to the people who funded it.
It has good power/weight ratio in theory, esp. if you're burning it (c.f. space shuttle), but hard to store or transport it both densely and safely in a practical way -- i.e., unless you're comfortable dragging around cryogenic lH2 in your sports car
The more you need to care about the weight of energy storage the more hydrogen is useful. For land vehicles hydrogen is basically completely pointless and for stationary storage it's truly pointless. Hydrogen makes some sense for aircraft but not for anything on land.
Management at many automotive companies likely love it for that reason too, since putting money into it makes it look like they are doing something to change when in reality they are not doing anything at all.
Here is a neat fact about hydrogen vehicles. Fueling them causes the nozzles to cool to below freezing temperatures. Try fueling vehicle after vehicle and the nozzle will freeze to each one. Coincidentally, hydrogen vehicle refueling is a sadist’s dream.