Hydrogen

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A community about hydrogen and its use as a way to fight climate change.

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MAN Trucks CEO says i’s impossible for hydrogen to compete with BEVs (electrek.co)

submitted 10 months ago by manualoverride to c/[email protected]

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Alexander Vlaskamp, CEO of German heavy truck maker MAN Truck & Bus, told reporters that it was, “impossible for hydrogen to effectively compete with battery electric trucks.”

There are two ways to look at the concept of sustainability as it pertains to commercial trucking. The first is sustainability of the business (can we keep operating the way we have been), and the second is environmental sustainability. Vlaskamp makes an effort to point that hydrogen, at least for now, isn’t sustainable in either sense of the word.

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[–] manualoverride 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It’s always a worthwhile exercise to continue research into hydrogen tech, but in the case of transport, even if we assume the holy grail of 100% green hydrogen, we are currently converting wind/solar/wave/etc power to electricity, then using that electricity to create hydrogen, for it to be converted back to electricity to power a car or truck.

It’s better to just use batteries and not have trucks carrying all that oxygen loving explosion gas under more pressure than a soda stream canister in the Titanic bar.

[–] Squizzy 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Depends on materials used, is the hydrogen process worse than the heavy metal mining industry?

[–] manualoverride 1 points 10 months ago

It is at the moment as virtually all hydrogen production is created using and extracted from fossil fuels.

The amount of rare metals used in a BEV cell has been trending downwards for the past decade, so a car bought today could contain enough lithium, cobalt etc, to power multiple cars by the time those cells get recycled.