MortalWombat

Who said we had to use hydrocarbons for the source of hydrogen? It seems to me the best place to get hydrogen is from water. Put solar panels and/or windmills near or on the ocean, and you can use the energy from them to split water into hydrogen and oxygen with zero emissions.

NialScorva

I think it's a big advantage because you black-box the source of your hydrogen. You can take a coal power plant and swap a nuclear plant onto the grid its place without having to change all the infrastructure that runs your car. When you find a better way of producing hydrogen from electricity, you can swap that out. Right now there's a monolythic unreplaceable chain from well to car that only handle's oil. If we switch to hydrogen, we can do it correctly and make a supply train that can be upgraded more easily. That's the big promise, IMO.

Gooch's dad

Um, why bother with the hydrogen as a storage device? Its basically a battery, and not a particularly good one at that. A fuel cell is about 30% efficient, but an electric motor is over 2/3 efficient, IIRC.

Electrolysis to break water isn't a particularly efficient process, and you'll have to expend a boatload of energy to compress the hydrogen sufficiently that it can be transported somewhere in an efficient manner.

Rather than hoping for some eventual water-cracking process to appear, why not use the solar and wind-powered electrical plants to charge batteries? I have a lot more hope that an efficient battery can be invented, than I do that all the other bits of the water----->fuel cell process can work well.