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Titanium carbide nanotech approach hints at hydrogen storage breakthrough

hoola Silver badge

You need to look at the entire chain, source to point of use.

Batteries have all the issues of recharging times that are unlikely to be reduced that much as there is a trade off of charge speed/battery cycles.

The really interesting point is the end to end cycle of hydrogen against petrol and diesel. Huge amounts of energy are used to crack crude oil to produce fuels, this is all carbon based emitting huge amounts of CO2.

Now if you are producing hydrogen using wind or solar then to a certain extent it does not matter that it is inefficient. You are still having a significant net benefit on the production of CO2. This also gets around the intermittent nature of the electricity source. Hydrogen fuel cells have always been a better option but the people developing electric vehicles have concentrated on battery because the supply of the power is not their problem.

It is just typical of the fragmented approach we have to everything. If the wonderboy Musk have gone down the hydrogen route nobody would be giving a seconds thought to the problems.

As it is at the moment in the rush to decarbonise transport everyone it basically making short term decisions that are going to be regretted in a few years. Honda's fuel cell has been viable for years but no one was interested in developing the infrastructure. If there had been more strategic foresight and ambition then we would not be going down the expensive milk float route we are now.

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