https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11470/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-1I've been involved in the first international hydrogen racing championship. Started in 2007, it was called Formula Zero with 'zero' pertaining to being zero-emission. I was in one of the teams, known as Formula Zero Team Delft ('Forze') and my main raison d'être was designing and assembling electronics for the race kart. Yeah, they weren't actually full-fledged formula one cars; it was just small class racing karts. Top speed around 110-120km/h, 0-60 in about 3.5-4sec, nothing especially interesting about them from a racing perspective. But they were hydrogen powered, which was extremely cool back then and kind of still is - at least from a technical point of view. The Formula Zero championship eventually merged with Formula Student, so if you're interested in more info, take a look at their website. I am no longer involved with any of this - I've gone on to do my Master's thesis about power conversion in electric cars and I now have a couple of businesses that mostly do electronic system design for optimizing power conversion. In computers. Not quite the same anymore.
Nevertheless, I do have a lot of hands-on knowledge from my time at Formula Zero and I know what goes into building a hydrogen fuel cell powered car. I've done a lot of literature research and kept up with the technology. And: during all this time that hydrogen fuel cells have been in the news, I have never come across any kind of public article that properly explains WHY things are the way they are with these enigmatic machines. I've been meaning to write about it since at least 4 years, and thought I would have been beaten to the punch many times already. But no... so, here we go.
First of all, HFC cars are perceived to be a good bridge between fossil fuels and full electric because:
You can still fill up like you do with a gasoline or diesel powered car
The mileage you can get out of hydrogen is perceived to be more adequate than what you get from batteries
Hydrogen fuel cells are thought not to wear out as quickly as batteries (or conversely, batteries are thought to wear out very quickly)
Hydrogen as a fuel is perceived to be a relatively small infrastructural change from gasoline and diesel
Hydrogen is perceived as a cleaner solution than gasoline, diesel or natural gas
In reality,
You cannot fill up like you do with gasoline or diesel. It is actually pretty ridiculous how hard it is to fill up a HFC powered car
You won't even go 100 miles on current tech hydrogen tanks that are still safe to carry around in a car
Fuel cells wear out crazy fast and are hard to regenerate
Hydrogen as a fuel is incredibly hard to make and distribute with acceptably low losses
Additionally,
Hydrogen fuel cells have bad theoretical and practical efficiency
Hydrogen storage is inefficient, energetically, volumetrically and with respect to weight
HFCs require a poo ton of supporting systems, making them much more complicated and prone to failure than combustion or electric engines
There is no infrastructure for distributing or even making hydrogen in large quantities. There won't be for at least 20 or 30 years, even if we start building it like crazy today.Hydrogen is actually pretty hard to make. It has a horrible well-to-wheel efficiency as a result.
Easy ways to get large quantities of hydrogen are not 'cleaner' than gasoline.
Efficient HFCs have very slow response times, meaning you again need additional systems to store energy for accelerating
Even though a HFC-powered car is essentially an electric car, you get none of the benefits like filling it up with your own power source, using it as a smart grid buffer, regenerating energy during braking, etc.
Battery electric cars will always be better in every way given the speed of technological developments past, present and future
The only thing i see is wrong with what he wrote is FCEV can go over 100 miles now but the rest is very interesting, 2 more articles after this one