Fast filling times are seductive, but they don’t compensate for H2’s many drawbacks.

To paraphrase Mean Girls, “stop trying to make hydrogen happen.”

For some years now, detractors of battery electric vehicles have held up hydrogen as a clean fuel panacea. That sometimes refers to hydrogen combustion engines, but more often, it’s hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles, or FCEVs. Both promise motoring with only water emitted from the vehicles’ exhausts. It’s just that hydrogen actually kinda sucks as a fuel, and automaker Stellantis announced today that it is ending the development of its light-, medium- and heavy-duty FCEVs, which were meant to go into production later this year.

Hydrogen’s main selling point is that it’s faster to fill a tank with the stuff than it is to recharge a lithium-ion battery. So it’s a seductive alternative that suggests a driver can keep all the convenience of their gasoline engine with none of the climate change-causing side effects.

But in reality, that’s pretty far from true.

  • megopie@beehaw.orgEnglish
    82·
    3 days ago

    to date there is zero evidence of meaningful deposits of geological hydrogen. There is definitely hydrogen in the crust, but, so far zero evidence that it accumulates in meaningful amounts in the areas we can currently drill to.

    • tyler@programming.dev
      43·
      3 days ago

      lol my wife literally was the project manager for a hydrogen site in Arizona. No clue where you got your information, but it’s just absolutely incorrect.

      • megopie@beehaw.orgEnglish
        111·
        3 days ago

        The United States Geological Service. Has put out several reports on the topic of geological hydrogen deposits and that was their conclusion in everyone.

        A pocket producing an amount is not the same as a significant deposit.

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
          1·
          2 days ago

          Can you link one? A quick look gave this:

          A recent study by the USGS estimates that there could be millions of Mt of natural hydrogen in accumulations in the Earth’s crust (Ellis and Gelman, 2024). However, there is a great deal of uncertainty associated with this prediction and the model does not evaluate the potential size or distribution of hydrogen accumulations. Most of this hydrogen is likely to be in accumulations that are too deep, too far offshore, or too small to ever be economically recovered. That said, even a small fraction of the estimated amount of subsurface hydrogen could potentially meet all global projected demand for hundreds of years. Consequently, the key to understanding geologic hydrogen resource potential is to examine the geologic factors that affect the potential to form accumulations.