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by pfdietz
35 days ago
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In its defense, hydrogen cars would use fuel cells, not the IC engine of CNG cars. So there's at least a theoretical case that could be made for them. In practice it didn't work well at all. The case for BEVs becomes even more clear when you look at complexity. BEVs are just simpler, even simpler than today's IC engine cars. IC engines have become baroque and expensive. The tooling needed to make these engines has become a boat anchor on the old car companies. And similarly for transmissions: the transmission of a BEV is a very simple thing, just a single stage of gear reduction without a clutch. Fuel cell cars were a bet on the proposition that BEVs would be inhibited by range and charging time concerns, but rapid charging and widespread availability of such high power chargers has nixed that. |
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Looking at a CNG car and thinking the reason they didn't get adopted is ICE and not gaseous fuel is pretty silly. Fuel cells are cool, but they don't solve the problem of tank expiration, and hydrogen storage is harder than CNG storage.
ICE may be complex, but most of the complexity comes from emissions controls / efficiency mandates. CNG "solves" emissions. You could burn hydrogen, and you'd really solve carbon emissions, if your hydrogen wasn't just coming from natural gas anyway. You'd probably need DEF, because high combustion temperatures with air intake from the atmosphere is going to generate NOx. Might not be as efficient as fuel cell vehicle, but it really doesn't matter when the problem is the fuel.
BEVs are clearly going to win as ICE is pretty close to fully optimized and batteries are still getting better. Although, if you could make a fuel cell vehicle based on a STP liquid that is energy dense and reasonably non-corrosive, it would have a chance.