In personal transportation, hydrogen is clearly dead. Even against current gen batteries, it can't win. Against next generation batteries that will be on the road far sooner then viable hydrogen car it doesn't even have chance to compete.
The same goes for virtually all commercial land transportation. Maybe if you have some super long distance transport routes into remote areas, but that is likely less then 1% of the market.
Its my believe as well that battery electric flight because of its operational efficiency will start to push chemical flight up market and eventually only intercontinental flights will be chemical. There is a clear path to this with current battery developments that are in the pipeline.
I don't know enough about ships to judge what their requirements are. Maybe there hydrogen or other green manufactured fuels like methanol or dimethyl ether could have a future.
However all of this said, hydrogen survives mostly because of massive global governments how somehow fixed on it as a solution. I don't know why this is the case, when there are tons of other promising technologies that could fix a lot of things get barely no attention at all. Hydrogen as a 'battery' for grid level extra energy for energy has many competitors who are mostly ignored. Maybe because oil company have been pushing it as 'the future' for a long time, but that is getting into conspiracy territory.
What really baffles me is that we have government all over the world talking about hydrogen pushing trail programs paying money to oil industry and car makers to set up pilots and so on, at the same time we have companies like Tesla showing a viable way to get to reasonably cheap TWh factories and many other battery startups who barley get any government support at all.
There are big research funds for things like Battery 500, or DoD/NASA work on Sulfer batteries. There are commercial players monitoring that and working with them, but they don't get money to set up huge production of these technologies.
So lets continue to do fuel cell and hydrogen at the research level. But all those huge junks of money that they want to use to force down prices are much better invested into battery next generation battery technology, specifically setting up huge factories to build such. Because they replace carbon now, and will continue to do so for the next 30 years. Land transport and short distance flight, and many ships are clearly ready to be replaced with battery electric transportation, no need for some price hydrogen miracle that will be now-where near ready at mass scale by 2030 to do the same.
Batteries are heavy. That is still a big problem for personal transportation in cars, planes, trains, buses and whatever. But personal transportation is not the source of all CO2 generated. There are homes, in most parts of the northern hemisphere they have to be heated. Replacing all those heating systems before there normal end of life, is a huge additional amount of CO2 to blow into the air. Running the same heaters, ovens, cars with a CO2 neutral produced methane seems to be way more cost- and CO2-efficient, at least in the medium term.
Batteries are getting lighter and lighter as density increases. Also, you can use batteries as part of the structure, making them take over necessary functions.
Next generation batteries like sulfur-silicon can power a personal car and are the size glove box and can be carried by a person. That is a decade away at least but its very promising technology.
I have no problem with producing green CH4 to continue to run legacy systems.
So to call it dead is not quite accurate. They're taking the same route as Tesla and building their own distribution infrastructure in small dense markets to start.
Will it pan out in the long term? Hard to say, but its no longer just a theoretical future vehicle but a consumer ready product that can now be iterated on.
They had hydrogen personal vehicles for a while. But they don't sell well and can't actually compete in terms of performance with current gen vehicles already.
So far two single commuter train units tested in daily passenger use (direct replacement of a Diesel powered train) for 18 months in Germany, 3 months in the Netherlands, now in Austria. Some sources say with cost advantage over Diesel trains right now.
Will it be there long term? I do not know. But cumulative orders of to my knowledge 60+ trains can be something.
The same goes for virtually all commercial land transportation. Maybe if you have some super long distance transport routes into remote areas, but that is likely less then 1% of the market.
Its my believe as well that battery electric flight because of its operational efficiency will start to push chemical flight up market and eventually only intercontinental flights will be chemical. There is a clear path to this with current battery developments that are in the pipeline.
I don't know enough about ships to judge what their requirements are. Maybe there hydrogen or other green manufactured fuels like methanol or dimethyl ether could have a future.
However all of this said, hydrogen survives mostly because of massive global governments how somehow fixed on it as a solution. I don't know why this is the case, when there are tons of other promising technologies that could fix a lot of things get barely no attention at all. Hydrogen as a 'battery' for grid level extra energy for energy has many competitors who are mostly ignored. Maybe because oil company have been pushing it as 'the future' for a long time, but that is getting into conspiracy territory.
What really baffles me is that we have government all over the world talking about hydrogen pushing trail programs paying money to oil industry and car makers to set up pilots and so on, at the same time we have companies like Tesla showing a viable way to get to reasonably cheap TWh factories and many other battery startups who barley get any government support at all.
There are big research funds for things like Battery 500, or DoD/NASA work on Sulfer batteries. There are commercial players monitoring that and working with them, but they don't get money to set up huge production of these technologies.
So lets continue to do fuel cell and hydrogen at the research level. But all those huge junks of money that they want to use to force down prices are much better invested into battery next generation battery technology, specifically setting up huge factories to build such. Because they replace carbon now, and will continue to do so for the next 30 years. Land transport and short distance flight, and many ships are clearly ready to be replaced with battery electric transportation, no need for some price hydrogen miracle that will be now-where near ready at mass scale by 2030 to do the same.