Expensive H2 fuel originates from 53 kWh per kg of H2 produced making H2 a premium priced fuel compared with DME or dimethyl ether a propane like compressed gas fuel drop in replacement for petrochemical diesel that South Korea retrofitted to its on-road commercial diesel trucks since DME only costs about $1 per gallon when mass produced the way gasoline & diesel are made!
Hydrogen on the other hand comes in at $18 per gallon equivalent. This means refusing a hydrogen powered vehicle costs hundreds of dollars per fill-up!
Lets do the math using common grid power prices
We will use $0.12 or 12 cents per kWh as our power price
If each kilogram of H2 requires 53 kWh of electricity to make, then that means 53 X $0.12 = $6.36 of electrical energy to make each kg of H2
In our 19 Nissan LEAF SV getting 3.9 mi / kWh, 53 kWh enough electrical energy to drive over 175 miles and that's assuming 85% charging efficiency, so underestimating, in the real world probably over 200 miles of actual range given 53 kWh of charing energy input. I live in very topographically varied or hilly environment with lots of mountains & hills in western Washington & still able to average 3.9mi/kWh in a mostly iron not very aerodynamic heavy Nissan LEAF based on the cheap Nissan VERSA made of stamped metal sheets welded by robots in mass production technology. The cheap to make air cooled aluminum heat-sink passive thermal solution battery pack based on laminate lithium spinel sheet to sheet LiPo pack designs also fades in very high temperatures, when L3 charged, when charged while in very cold sub 14 F temperatures. Lets make no mistakes here, the LEAF SV a great city car for short trips around town, not good for long highway trips, terrible for road trips, no meant to do anything other than short commuting.
Actually the LEAF SV does better than any other vehicle in heavy stop & go traffic congestion at slow speeds & gets the most elegant in terms of stopping & starting of any economy car. It's the most efficient right away after cold starting from cold off, when most gasoline cars are the least efficient when the engine is far from full operating temperature. ICE vehicles get their worst fuel economy in city use cases at low speeds where the Nissan LEAF the most efficient. Nissan has sold more than 500,000 Nissan LEAF's which have driven over 6 billion miles on roads around the world, even though the Tesla Model 3 the best selling BEV or battery electric vehicle today, the Tesla also cost a lot more 2X to insure with car insurance, eats tires that cost $500 each sometimes 12 tires per year since the large wheels & thin wall tires are less durable & tend to pick up nails & screws more easily. There are many YouTubers who purchased a Tesla Model 3 who made videos about why they sold it, citing low quality water based paints that rub off easily, spending $6000 per year on tire replacements, and autopilot that causes accidents, an accident that severely disfigured by friend Joey G. when his fully loaded Model 3 being operated with the autopilot drove into a fence head on such that the fence post went through the front window & took out Joey's eye & part of his brain & skull; I am surprised he was able to live given the extent of the damage.
Yes I am suggesting that for most people a good value BEV battery electric vehicle like the Chevy Bolt or Bolt EUV with over 200 miles of range per charge for under $40,000 the best automotive value in terms of dollar to technology ratio. You get more tech per dollar in the Chevy Bolt than even the Tesla Model 3. The model 3 a premium vehicle & this reflected in its best in class technology, best in class performance, best in class range per price point, best resale value, best acceleration, best brand appeal, best handling, the Model 3 amazing, but don't use the autopilot yet, its too early & not well polished ; you have been warned!
Brown Hydrogen made by the steam reformation of Natural Gas & not renewable & still causes CO2 emissions so will do nothing to decarbonize energy or transportation.
Green Hydrogen made using excess renewable energy peaks (best case), this is when the Solar PV output exceeds the grids ability to absorb extra energy since most electrical grids have almost no energy storage capacity, only tiny amounts from capacitor arrays at some electrical sub-stations mostly. Some hydro-electric dams using pumped storage over gigawatt scale energy storage but this a niche application & not going to stabilize the grid for brown out reduction or to enable the installation of many terawatts of Solar PV installations.
Green hydrogen made using renewable electricity the most expensive kind given the cost of Solar PV & H2 stations are really expensive because turning hydrogen into a cryogenic fluid & storing its as a cryogenic fluid & then distributing that or pumping it into a Honda Clarity or Toyota Mirai means a bunch of very expensive low volume production one off CNS made tooling & equipment such that an H3 fueling station costs $1-3 million & has low capacity factor in terms of how many hydrogen fuel vehicles it can refill per day, and in the USA are only available in a few restriction areas of the state of California, the state I call a Tax Desert because of the European like high state taxes without any of the benefits of most European countries with similar taxes.
The former CEO of Nissan "Carlos Ghost" said something like the "Creativity of Governments to invent new forms of taxation is infinite" referring to the fact that Governments do not create Value Added so VAT or value added tax just another way to rip off the general public along with currency inflation from variable value fiat currencies that have no tangible backing in Gold or any other real asset of actual real value & are only guaranteed by the military industrial power of the nation issue that currency, in the case of the USD the US Federal Government & Pentagon respectively.
Gasoline made from crude oil actually cost the US economy around $15 per gallon when you wrap in the costs of climate change & health care expenses from having people breathing tailpipe emissions. Automobiles burning gasoline release mostly water vapor & CO2 from the combustion of fuel injected gasoline with compressed air, the exhaust which exists into a catalytic converter which burns off the residual HC or hydrocarbon vapor into water & CO2 while oxides of nitrogen are converted back to N2 or nitrogen gas & oxygen, and other black carbon BC oxidized into CO2 & water vapor, such that only less than 1% of the exhaust of a 2023 MY passenger car contains any significant amount of toxic exhaust emissions chemicals. The problems, when your driving in heavy congested traffic stems from several factors like how most of the vehicles around you are not brand new and most vehicles with more than 30,000 miles ODO have much worse emissions than they did when they were brand new. Older engines with high mileage release more toxic exhaust gas components because of entropy inside the engine that increases gaps in tolerances allowing more oil to squeak past the piston rings into the combustion, while the ERG pumps some exhaust gas back into the intake & the crank case vapor recovery takes funky oil vapors from the lubrication system & dumps that foul dirty burning crap into the intake manifold too. Gasoline direct injection engines suffer from coking of the intake valve seats which clogs up because they lack the gasoline fog cleaning effects of port injected engines, though some intelligent automakers doing GDI or gasoline directly injection engines put a fuel injector in the intake port to clean the intake values & to enable better performance a full throttle where direct injection alone has problems. GDI engine release more coke & soot & BC in the exhaust. Catalytic converter theft a big problem too. It seems that diesel-gate not the only problem with liquid hydrocarbon fuel vehicles! Did you know that CO2 emitted by vehicles make water in the atmosphere more acidic with carbonic acid as the CO2 dissolves into atmospheric water. Oxides of Nitrogen like Nitrogen Dioxide in vehicle exhaust form dilute nitric acid when they mix with rain, making acid rain. Oxides of sulfur present in exhaust gas mix with rain to form dilute sulfuric acid. Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon vapors are carcinogenic and one reason that gas station employee's and gas truck delivery drivers have higher cancer rates than people working in other occupations.
No one suggest that breathing vehicle tailpipe emissions smog is good for the lungs, it's as bad or worse than smoking tobacco. But some people who smoke tobacco live until old ages? Other people die of cancer as children. It's a random genetic role of the dice with sexual reproduction between men & women, sometimes the babies are born with rare genetic defects or mental retardation or special needs. If you grow up as a health adult without any health problems consider yourself lucky, there are micro plastic in peoples blood, in all beverages even filtered water. Its not just brake pad dust & brake rotor errosion products that make the wheels darken in vehicles that are not cleaned often, its also micro plastics that form as the tires interact with road surfaces like asphalt & concrete. Tires are made from sulfur & rubber cooked at high temperatures in a processed called vulcanization. This forms thousands of compounds in the rubber, along with many synthetic chemicals added to change the viscosity, elastic strength, polymer boding, tread life, puncture resistance, bonding to the cords & steel belts & kevlar & glass fibers & ultra-high-molecular weight polymer fabrics used to strengthen the tires. The tire tread wears away becoming micro plastics in environments that go everywhere uncontrolled, especially into water runoff or blown away as dust in the wind in dry environments or hot weather. Even the roadway itself can give off micro plastics. Asphalt made of polymers, big thick branched waxy viscous parts of the crude oil from which it was refined. Just like heavy bunker oil a dirty burning ship fuel, off road diesel with lots of sulfur also very dirty burning. While gasoline E10 with ethanol added at 10% by volume starts to foul by water absorption and wax string formation by oxidation end product formation from alkane condensation reactions after only a few months, diesel fuel can be stored for 10 years without damage.
Swollen plastic safety gas can caused by low boiling point butane, pentane & hexane & heptane that are dissolved in gasoline to make it cheaper to produce, but as the weather warms up and your gas can temperature increases, these smaller molecules in the gasoline boil out as a pressurized gas easily. This leaves some of the more reactive iso's behind & decrease the miscibility of waxy alkanes present so as to form thin lacquers as the fuel dries in the carburetor bowl of a disused engine powered pressure washer, generator or other power equipment without fuel injection. You have to take the carb apart & clean out the jet & bowl with carb cleaner to restore the Venturi function of such.
It is a good idea to add fuel stabilizer to your gasoline can, to the fuel tank of rarely used or seasonal use vehicle like our 2013 Honda PCX-150 that we generally only ride in fair weather in the late spring, summer & early autumn, while it sits for more than half the year idle without use. I actually go fire it up for 15 minutes & ride it around even if it's cold & rainy just to keep fuel moving through it. Thankfully it has a really durable LFP battery that seems to work well even though its 7 years old & never float charged or maintained :) I add several fuel additives & fuel stabilize to the fuel tank of our 20 Yamaha MT-03 & top charge the AGM battery every 5 weeks or so while its stored during cold rainy weather for large parts of the year.
Our 01 Audi A4 gets very little use now, so fuel stabilizer to its fuel tank with E0 gasoline from now on. I just added the Audi to my Geico account & will transfer the vehicle title tomorrow since it belonged to my late mother Connie who left it for me in here trust account as I am the executor. She only drove it once per week lately because of her extensive health problems that culminated in her death in the ICU of the hospital after 5 days of being kept barely alive so we had the miracle of being able to go talk to her repeatedly and say goodbye. I really miss her & this Audi a nostalgia reminder of all the good memories & good times & of better times in the past when my parents purchased that Audi new from the then family owned Barrier Audi of Bellevue, now part of a large automative dealer chain sadly.
Battery electric vehicles are not going to replace gasoline & diesel vehicles. Many commercial vehicles have a commercial use case of 20+ years on road, like many class 8 container hauling trucks that log 3 million miles during their operating life, powered by diesel fuel. The School Bus I drive powered by diesel fuel inside a common rail turbocharged cummins engines with a really strong Allison transmission. It's a 2012 Bluebird Bus that's really durable with just over 90,000 miles ODO though it will be sold off by the BSD because they do that when the buses are 13 years old sadly. At least I will be able to drive it for the rest of the school year this year :)
Our fleet of vehicles a lot to take care of, many tires, batteries, oil changes, insurance policies, maintenance, fuel management, chargers & charging. It's very American. I am not wealthy either, so don't get the wrong impression. Meg works as a nanny & I work as a school bus driver. With few exceptions most of these vehicles were purchased used at much cheaper than new prices. The Audi was freely inherited recently. The Toyota Prius III was 10 years old when we purchased it. The Nissan LEAF was 4 years old when it was purchased. Meg's Marin bicycle was given to us freely by one of her former employers though we put over $100 of updates & needed repairs to make it proper & safe. I am going to rebuild the automatic transmission of the 2013 PCX 150 as a project, since its had issues with that V-belt automatic transmission. Since Meg will be operating it solo, I want to make sure it's safe & Meg already bough all the parts for a complete transmission rebuild :) I would recommend not going down this route of having so many vehicles, since its impossible to use more than 1 at a time, per driver.
2001 Audi A4 2.8 Quattro 4 door car 300 miles per tank // 15-44 mpg city vs hypermiling
2010 Toyota Prius III 4 door car 400-500 miles per tank 40-54 mpg
2019 Nissan LEAF SV battery electric 4 door car 160 mile city / 100 mi highway 2.5-7.1 mi/kWh
Power Sports
2013 Honda PCX150 scooter 120 miles per tank over 100 mpg
2020 Yamaha MT-03 motorcycle 350 miles per tank 53-85 MPG depending on operating style
Low Speed BEVs
2016 Segway Mini Pro OG (Magnesium alloy version) 5-10 mph for 2 hours
2022 Hiboy S2 Pro electric kick scooter up to 5-16 mph for 1.5 hours
Bicycles
1996 Marin Tri Customized for Meg perhaps 50 miles per day max at 12 mph
2021 Specialized Crossroads for Aaron perhaps 50 miles per day max at 12 mph
No Hydrogen Powered Vehicles in my Fleet & Probably Never Will Buy and H2 Fueled Vehicle. I like gasoline & battery electric :) Notice no diesel vehicles either. My bicycle my favorite overall vehicle. I love the Yamaha MT03 & Honda PC150 & Nissan LEAF & really like Meg's Prius & adore the Segway MP & S2 scooters :) I love vehicles & that's part of why I became a school bus driver & got a commercial drivers license. I am very interested in mobility at all levels, from low speed indoor electric vehicles to electric aircraft, to jet engine passenger airplanes by Boeing & Aerobes to ships & trains & trucks & busses & cars & SUV's & anything that's energetic that moves with an engine or electric motor, even find appliance with electric pumps like the fridge or electric motors like the clothes washing machine & clothing dryer, I love the microwave oven & fridge. Electricity makes the internet interesting & streaming YouTube over Comcast high speed makes computers fun to use. I am really focused on lowering our electrical bill from PSE, which peaked at nearly $280 for one month and 1958 kWh - our apartment is all electric & hot water probably the major cause of that really high bill. After my mother died we reduce the thermostat from 76 F to off which hovers at 68.6 F now without turning on at night and warms to just over 70 during the day without heating, other than waste heat from our crypto mining rig // and other appliances // We are covered by other apartments which are heated so that insulates the roof surface really well. We now keep the window blinds closed nearly all day, except one when its sunny to let light in for the house plants parked near that window. Just by slashing heating & hot water use we dropped the PSE bill by over $50 in the last 10 days of March, now $209.30 for 1538kWh. See Connie died 3/21 which is when we turned off the thermostat, started closing the blinds all the time, slashed hot water use & started doing other wild energy saving practices like taking fewer showers less often & racing with a stop watch to take the shortest submarine shower possible. I suspect our next PSE bill will be less than $150 or even lower due to slashing heating & hot water use as much as practical. I am hoping to use less than 1000kWh per month and would be tickled it we can squeak by with under 600kWh. I am sure my bread baking in the oven at 500 F for 20-30 min uses a fair amount of electric as does L1 charging the LEAF using its EVSE overnight sometimes, but I mostly avoid EV charging at home & just stop by for 10-20 min of L3 charging at the dealer :)
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