Why is Hydrogen not feasible yet for heating or driving?

Question

What is actually the simplest answer why hydrogen is not feasible yet for a replacement of our usual ways to heat buildings or drive cars. I heard that Hydrogen makes sense for larger vehicles that have to drive for a lot of miles but smaller ones are not really in development outside of toyota’s experiments. Is there already a way to when it could get feasible?

In: 475

Answer 1

Hydrogen needs to be produced using highly energy-intensive methods. In order for this to be a ‘green’ technology, that electricity will have to come from a renewable source and there isn’t enough capacity to fulfil the demand for regular electrical usage, let alone spare to harvest hydrogen. Also, at the moment it is simpler to put that energy directly into a battery using the existing electrical grid and direct home solar etc. Hydrogen will need big infrastructure changes.

Batteries are becoming more and more energy dense, meaning more car range for the same sized/weight battery. This means electric cars will shortly have ranges of 500+ miles. A hydrogen fuel cell has a range of about 400 miles. The hydrogen has already been compressed into a liquid. The laws of physics dictate that you cannot compress the liquid and make it any more dense. The only way to increase range will be to add bigger and therefore stronger and heavier tanks to cars. This in turn makes the car heavier and less efficient.

While the lithium batteries regularly used in electric cars can suffer from fires, it is nothing compared to the explosive nature of hydrogen. If you want more hydrogen onboard, you will need to figure out ways to reinforce and make safe the fuel held. Unfortunately containing a explosion usually makes it more dangerous – see a firework with gunpowder in a tight cardboard tube vs. a line of gunpowder ignited in your favourite pirate movie. This doesn’t bode well for a crashed/crashing.

In a nutshell, hydrogen has quite a few more hoops to jump through before it becomes viable, whereas the battery electric car tech already exists and improvements will be made from there.