Hydrogen vs. Battery Electric Cars

Many, many years ago I was a big fan of the concept of fuel cell vehicles.  GM had been developing them for quite some time, and we had one of their development facilities in our area that one of my neighbors worked at as an industrial engineer.  It was in 2008 when they finally had a fuel cell vehicle (a Blazer, or something like that, it's been a while) that they passed around to the employees for the purposes of spreading the good word to the public.  She brought it over to our house one day and we took it for a spin around the neighborhood (we couldn't spend much time with it, she only had it for the evening).  It drove like a regular vehicle, of course, except for the turbine sound of the fuel cell cooling system, which of course made it seem quite futuristic.  I was really quite excited about it, just *knowing* that this would be the future.  For posterity, I had my kids pose for a picture in front of it, one of them (of course) standing there with a "gee, dad, this is about the stupidest thing in the world" look on their face.

Fast forward a few years and GM threw in the towel.  They hit some pretty significant barriers, one of which was the cost of the fuel cell (largely due to the expense of the platinum it required).  I haven't read about the most recent developments of fuel cell technology, and I have to assume that this has been overcome to some degree.  But I knew Toyota was still working on it, and I was (in my head at least) cheering them on.

Fast forward to last year and, well, I bought a BEV.  There were no FCEVs for me to consider, not in my area at least.  Toyota seems like the only player in fuel cells for consumer vehicles (I might be wrong on this, it's just what I've kept up with via the articles that come across my feed, which is admittedly not comprehensive; I'm not a journalist and I haven't done all the research).  The technology seems impractical; the infrastructure is a problem, hydrogen storage and handling is a problem, etc.  Compared to the relative simplicity of BEVs, it just seems like a bad idea to try to push this technology to consumers.

So, I'm bummed that it turned out this way for the FCEV, at least for me.  And I have a suspicion that FCEVs are just not going to be a thing; a total flip from my optimistic perspective back in 2008.  Just considering the fuel infrastructure alone (it's all different; you can't use the petroleum pipelines, fuel delivery trucks, tanks or pumps at stations, etc., and the replacement cost is high) compared to the pre-existing electrical grid that can be used today (and, admittedly, upgraded tomorrow to take on the additional burden of more BEVs), well, it just seems like a race that can't be won.

But forget about my disappointment with FCEVs, that's not the story here.  It's really about how obvious it is that Diana is just being a shill for Toyota.  But of course she is, they sponsored this thing.  This is just one of Toyota's marketing videos.  Full stop.  I expected more, but once again my hopes were dashed.  I guess I really need to move past this whole FCEV thing...