[jqpabc123]

What exactly is suppose to keep hydrogen cars from being developed?

Better question --- What keeps hydrogen from being a commercially viable energy source?

Short answer: Economics. The same reason you don't (and probably won't) run your home from hydrogen --- because electricity is a much more universal form of energy that can be produced, safely distributed and utilized more easily/cheaply/efficiently.

[_hypx]

Funny, because the economics of hydrogen is heading to nearly zero cost. This is the same trajectory of wind and solar. All of these things have one thing in common: They all are made from practically infinite and free resources. Wind, sunlight and water are very cheap after all. This will imply that hydrogen will also be very cheap.

Also, hydrogen is more ubiquitous than electricity. In fact, it is cheaper to distribute hydrogen than electricity, simply on account of how pipes work compared to wires.

In short, if your argument is economical in nature, then your conclusion is profoundly wrong. It is a matter of when, not if, the lower cost basis of hydrogen based vehicles will cause them to displace BEVs. Also, BEVs have major environmental and practical downsides. I suspect that once the hydrogen movement gets going, BEVs will not pose much of a fight. It will be discarded as just another transitional idea. After all, FCEVs are also EVs.

[jqpabc123]

This will imply that hydrogen will also be very cheap.

This will imply that electricity will be even cheaper.

Most of the practical schemes for breaking molecular bonds in order to release hydrogen uses electricity and lots of it.

Eventually some intelligent hydrogen fanboy will hit upon a bright idea --- let's forget all this hydrogen stuff and just use all the electricity we are generating directly --- cause it's easier, cheaper and more efficient.

[_hypx]

Not "cheap," zero and sometimes even negatively priced.

The problem is that there is no way of utilizing that electricity. It is excess electricity generated by unpredictable renewable energy. You might as well use that free and useless electricity to make something actually useful.

[function_seven]

> You might as well use that free and useless electricity to make something actually useful.

Like charge a battery? A battery located anywhere on the grid?

Why add more complexity by electrolyzing water, storing the resultant hydrogen, building a vast distribution network to physically move that hydrogen, and keep vehicles dependent on a single form of chemical energy storage?

With an EV, my car can charge off the excess energy in the grid, or from the battery I have in my house, for from fossil fuel plants, or from nuclear, or whatever. I can trivially do this at home (rather than having to visit a refueling station). I can do this at work. Or at the grocery store.

Everyone I know who has an EV will never go back to fuel-powered cars.

I can see a use case for hydrogen in fleet vehicles, or in long-haul trucking scenarios. But for consumer automobiles, it has way too many downsides compared to the EVs that you just plug into a regular wall outlet.

[_hypx]

You do not have an infinite quantity of batteries, nor are they particularly good at storing energy for long periods of time.

In reality, electrolyzers and fuel cells are electrochemical systems. There is no more complexity in making hydrogen than it is to charge batteries.

This argument is pretty ridiculous. You are demanding we be dependent on finite battery supplies rather than practically infinite water. You can easily use grid energy and make hydrogen at home or anywhere to make hydrogen too. And FYI, a fuel cell car is an EV.

Your position is totally misinformed. The fundamental argument in favor of hydrogen cars is that they are EVs that are cheaper, lighter, simpler, less dependent on rare resources, and can refuel much faster than BEVs. Critics have effectively inverting reality on some of these points, or somehow deluded themselves in thinking they're still fighting ICE cars. In reality, you are attacking alternative forms of EVs.