Nearly all cars will switch to hydrogen (or e-fuels). Using giant batteries to power cars is insanity. If you want to power cars directly with electricity, use mass transit systems with overhead powerlines.
Hydrogen production and transportation doesn't make sense unless it's done locally (ex: produce it at a port, transport it to fuel the ships stationed at the port). Hydrogen is pretty much impossible to transport long distance without wasting so much energy that it doesn't make sense to do it in the first place, then think about how hard it is for us to prevent leaks of petrol of all things, now think about the leaks if we're transporting hydrogen instead.
You have inverted reality here. It is much easier to transport hydrogen long distances versus electricity. Pipelines are cheaper than HVDC cables. You can actually ship hydrogen across oceans if necessary. It is electricity that has to be made locally, but hydrogen can made anywhere it is cost effective.
Hydrogen gas will leak though steel since the molecule is so small while making it brittle and incapable of handling pressure through hydrogen entitlement. It's not trivial to ship. Power lines are cheap and transport extremely high power density.
Only for certain types of steel. And there are many materials that are impermeable to hydrogen. This is mostly a marketing argument rather than one based on fact. Pipelines are far cheaper and send far more energy than high voltage wires.
So why not send hydrogen from a production location to (essentially) an electrical sub-station where it can generate power that can be used to charge electric vehicles. Why does a gas that burns invisibly need to be involved in transportation?
That's just an indirect way of power a car via hydrogen. Sure, it can work. But it just implies that having cars directly powered by hydrogen are the better idea.
We already have electric infrastructure everywhere but not hydrogen infrastructure. It would be far cheaper and easier to use hydrogen as a method of bulk clean energy transportation than to directly power vehicles with them.
Plus since there is less surface area from the vastly reduced amount of piping required, you can mitigate evaporative losses through the pipelines.
Your proposal still doesn't address my safety concern of having a gas that burns near invisibly in passenger and commercial vehicles.
Using hydrogen as a bulk energy carrier will enable the hydrogen infrastructure. Unlike wires, you do not have to physically link it to every home. You can have last-mile solutions like using trucks. You also only need to convert existing fuel stations. So the scale is much lower, and likely much cheaper too.
Hydrogen cars are proving to be safer than gasoline cars. The fuel is lighter than air, so it does not linger like gasoline does. There are no known serious car fires in FCEVs. Even li-ion batteries have the same problem of gasoline, namely that the energy source of the fire stays in place. As a result, many people have died or been injured.
Nearly all cars will switch to hydrogen (or e-fuels). Using giant batteries to power cars is insanity. If you want to power cars directly with electricity, use mass transit systems with overhead powerlines.
Wrong
Hydrogen production and transportation doesn't make sense unless it's done locally (ex: produce it at a port, transport it to fuel the ships stationed at the port). Hydrogen is pretty much impossible to transport long distance without wasting so much energy that it doesn't make sense to do it in the first place, then think about how hard it is for us to prevent leaks of petrol of all things, now think about the leaks if we're transporting hydrogen instead.
You have inverted reality here. It is much easier to transport hydrogen long distances versus electricity. Pipelines are cheaper than HVDC cables. You can actually ship hydrogen across oceans if necessary. It is electricity that has to be made locally, but hydrogen can made anywhere it is cost effective.
Hydrogen gas will leak though steel since the molecule is so small while making it brittle and incapable of handling pressure through hydrogen entitlement. It's not trivial to ship. Power lines are cheap and transport extremely high power density.
Only for certain types of steel. And there are many materials that are impermeable to hydrogen. This is mostly a marketing argument rather than one based on fact. Pipelines are far cheaper and send far more energy than high voltage wires.
So why not send hydrogen from a production location to (essentially) an electrical sub-station where it can generate power that can be used to charge electric vehicles. Why does a gas that burns invisibly need to be involved in transportation?
That's just an indirect way of power a car via hydrogen. Sure, it can work. But it just implies that having cars directly powered by hydrogen are the better idea.
We already have electric infrastructure everywhere but not hydrogen infrastructure. It would be far cheaper and easier to use hydrogen as a method of bulk clean energy transportation than to directly power vehicles with them.
Plus since there is less surface area from the vastly reduced amount of piping required, you can mitigate evaporative losses through the pipelines.
Your proposal still doesn't address my safety concern of having a gas that burns near invisibly in passenger and commercial vehicles.
Using hydrogen as a bulk energy carrier will enable the hydrogen infrastructure. Unlike wires, you do not have to physically link it to every home. You can have last-mile solutions like using trucks. You also only need to convert existing fuel stations. So the scale is much lower, and likely much cheaper too.
Hydrogen cars are proving to be safer than gasoline cars. The fuel is lighter than air, so it does not linger like gasoline does. There are no known serious car fires in FCEVs. Even li-ion batteries have the same problem of gasoline, namely that the energy source of the fire stays in place. As a result, many people have died or been injured.