Former President Donald Trump said he opposed green energy Tuesday because hydrogen cars "explode."
During a speech in Savannah, Georgia, Trump lashed out at the green energy industry.
"We have the product for gasoline-powered cars under our feet and Hybrids, and we want to have electric cars,...
Even at 100% efficiency when producing, the efficiency of the car will still be much lower than battery (even batteries from decades ago were 90%+ efficient).
Electric distribution basically abstract the energy source away from the car (you can use any battery chemistry). You can also feed power back into the grid
With hydrogen, realistically, you just need to pray you improve it long term. Because at the moment it’s an efficiency suckfest.
But it’s awesome for petrol companies and dodgy salespeople who want to provide cheap fuel that continues to F**k us whilst undercutting green alternatives
We need to pivot the goal for hydrogen …… there are fossil fuel uses now that batteries can’t serve and hydrogen might be a good substitute.
Instead of saying that even with feee electricity it’s too expensive to make green hydrogen for cars, let’s use that free electricity to make synthetic aviation fuel Or at least create hydrogen as a precursor
It’s not about free electricity though. It’s about efficiency
It’s not about cost
The facts are, with hydrogen, you waste at least 40% of the energy excluding transport due to inefficiencies and manufacture and fuel wastage . So you need to build a lot more solar panels. You also need clean water to do it
With electric, you waste less than 10%
We don’t have hydrogen planes yet, and it might not really be that feasible (there are a lot of considerations for planes. I’ve actually got a pilot licence).
With hydrogen, you need almost twice the solar panels to produce the same results
You also need to consider, battery technologies are still early days. If lithium at the moment supports 1000km of travel, later generation lithium air can support 12000km with the same space.
That’s why hydrogen has such limited applications too. Because even if you increase the density of lithium 2x, most applications where hydrogen benefits disappears
But in reality we’d probably shift from lithium anyway I’m guessing
Hydrogen still hugely better than gas though, and Trump is an idiot lol