The EV thread

[kruddler]

There's not going to be an instantaneous swap over from ICE to EV and the infrastructure could very well keep pace with demand.  It's likely that motels and other accommodation will offer overnight charging (which is better for battery life) if the demand is there.

Meanwhile, there are only about a dozen hydrogen refuelling stations across the nation.  That includes the one owned by Toyota in Melbourne, and that can only produce enough hydrogen about a dozen cars each day.  Swinburne and CSIRO have just built a $2.5M plant but our Governments are only spending $160M on hydrogen refuelling as opposed to $500M for EV charging infrastructure.  I guess that reflects current demand rather than future needs.

Toyota's Andrew Willis says a lack of refuelling infrastructure is holding up wider adoption of HICE vehicles (I just made that acronym up); "It's growing, but it's still limited. We can't introduce a car to market that you can't refuel. Refuelling is one of the key barriers to the growth in the [sales/leasing] volumes."

Toyota's refuelling station separates hydrogen from oxygen in water by electrolysis using its own solar generated electricity and electricity from the grid.  The hydrogen is stored as a gas at sub-zero temperatures and cars are refuelled with a nozzle similar to that used for LPG vehicles.  I'm not across the technology or the costs but I assume that it would be feasible to have similar but larger scale refuelling stations if not at every servo, then at all of those with the capacity to generate renewable electricity. Cheaper electricity is required to reduce the cost of hydrogen to an affordable amount.

Of the fleet of 52 zero-emission buses Victoria is trialling, two are powered by hydrogen fuel cells.  However, the hydrogen is "grey" as it is produced by burning natural gas rather than electricity from renewable sources.  Of course, brown coal and natural gas is still used to provide some of the electricity that's charging the EV buses.

I dont disagree with anything you are saying.

My point is, that do we 'stick with BEVs' simply because they started first?
Sure the money is being spent there and the technology is largely proven all over the world.
But in a pure environmental / long term option, IMO the hydrogen is the horse to bet on....or at least the horse we should be putting our efforts into training up.

The only problem is the powers that be.