(03-23-2025, 03:11 PM)mikesez Wrote:

(03-23-2025, 02:32 PM)Jag149 Wrote: To recharge an electric vehicle the power plant has to produce much more power than the efficiency of the vehicle over just a gasoline one. T&D is between 25%-50%, add to that 3% for the battery heat, another 3% for the charger and about 6-9% for local distribution loss. At best it is a break even to a gas engine. Cost for the production of Hydrogen will rapidly fall as demand increases. The Hydrogen tech is the only way to enable commercial trucking, Rail, ships. By the way they do not pay $150 to fill a tank in Finland, so I guess you are getting that estimate from where? Come on now your just digging your heels in fro no reason.

Actually the fuel cell tech is similar to a hybrid car. It puts the power generation in the car eliminating the transmission costs.

You're speaking in terms of Joules or British thermal units, I was speaking in terms of dollars.

There's also the issue of carbon emissions. If your local utility mostly uses coal or pet coke, and in North and Central Florida that's what they mostly use, a Tesla is probably no better for the environment than a similar gas-hybrid vehicle. The thermal efficiency of the gas hybrid vehicle is only a little less than the thermal efficiency of the coal power plant, and coal intrinsically emits significantly more carbon dioxide per unit of heat than gasoline or diesel does.  On the other hand, if your power plant is burning natural gas, and that's becoming more common, there is probably a slight reduction in CO2 when you switch from a hybrid to a battery-electric.

Keep in mind that most hydrogen for sale for use in cars was derived from electrolysis and most of that electricity was derived from fossil fuels.  It's best to understand compressed hydrogen with a fuel cell as a low density battery.

You're correct that hydrogen becomes more interesting for long haul trucking because thats a field where saving weight is more important than saving volume.  New flying vehicles could be designed around hydrogen fuel also, for the same reason.  But with passenger cars, volume is more precious than weight and it's unlikely that hydrogen will ever become preferred over batteries for that reason.

I quoted you current prices of hydrogen in California, where it is not subsidized.  I don't know what the price in Finland is, but I would assume some sort of subsidy is in place.