Comment by magicalhippo 8 days ago
Hydrogen seems like going backwards into the future. For personal transport it surely is a dead end, there are no significant upsides to offset the large downsides compared to BEVs.
Perhaps it can work well for certain commercial niches, time will tell.
That might help a lot in Japan.
Here in Norway we just have had a handful of hydrogen stations, and of those two went out of business.
Meanwhile almost all new cars here are BEV, even out in many rural areas BEVs are 50% of new sales.
A local store can relatively easily and cheaply install a supercharger. Installing a hydrogen pump is presumably much more expensive as it requires more space and more complex equipment. And it needs refilling by truck, while electricty just flows.
And while EV chargers or cars can catch fire during charging, hydrogen can explode violently[1][2] when mixed with air (the one in Norway registered as an earthquake 30 km, 20 miles, away).
As I said perhaps it will find some niche uses, but widescale adoptation seems very unlikely to me.
[1]: https://norwaytoday.info/news/explosion-sandvika-hydrogen-ta...
[2]: https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/safety-concerns-gr...
One upside is Japan having a large undersea hydrogen deposits. And those deposits are not going anywhere.
But personally I agree it's perfect for, say, urban trains, with predictable maintenance. But if Japan keeps investing we may see more than that.