Hydrogen vs. Battery Electric Cars

The current situation is battery electrics make sense only for city driving, essentially. In large Spanish cities a number of rental companies have sprung up that maintain fleets of electrics that people get in and drive around the city. Keys are digital and sent by mobile, and cars are opened over bluetooth. The average range is about 50km. Computers monitor their location and charge. When they are low the computer removes them from circulation and the company sends out personnel to drive them to nearby charging stations, then puts them back on the road. It works well. They are popular. About half the price of taxis and cheaper than owning a car if you only drive occasionally. They are not without issues, though. First, they tend to charge people by the minute rather than by the kilometre, which leads to unsafe driving. Second, you can't guarantee availability, and depending on traffic patterns vehicles tend to be unavailable when you need them and abundant when you don't. So you might drive to a place and then be "stranded". ;) Despite this, they are very popular, as anyone with a driving licence will prefer them to hailing a cab. Electrics may also make sense for short-range inner-city logistics, loading and unloading, and delivery, generally run by workers on an eight hour shift, or maybe two workers on two shifts for 14-16 hours of operation, and the rest of the time the vehicles are idle - so they can be charged for the next day no problem.

It would be a different story, though, if everyone had a BEV. Even if we had as many electric stations as petrol stations, and people were willing to wait longer, they would just collapse. They are designed for fill-up times of a few minutes. There would be long queues and long waits to access a charging station. We'd need higher capacity if everyone switched. Rental companies can mitigate this essentially by rotating cars in and out of circulation.

Furthermore, the reality is most people in European cities want their private cars for holiday trips and visiting relatives, not city driving. That involves long distance driving. Electrics *can* also be used for that now with super-charging stations, but their range is short so you need to *carefully* plan your route from one station to the next and be prepared to wait between charges.

Hydrogen is the only technology that could really substitute petrol cars in terms of range, capacity and convenience. While they take slightly longer to fill up, it's only a small difference, and we can mitigate this by streamlining payment through digital payment platforms - payment in traditional petrol stations takes as long or longer than filling up. So we can more or less get away with just adding hydrogen pumps to existing petrol stations if we're smart about it.

The issue, though, is that this is the CURRENT situation. If, however, there were another battery breakthrough that extended the range of BEV to at least 600 km per charge or beyond and lengthened the lifespan of BEV, then BEV will definitely win. If the range of BEV went to 1000 km on a single charge, it would be no contest. If you can get better batteries with increased energy density to extend the range such that you only have to charge occasionally, and a single charge will get you at least as far as you can go in a single day of driving, then the efficiency of BEV is a no brainer. Li-ion batteries are just not there - but they are tantalizingly close to being there. Just one major breakthrough could be enough to push them into that range.