Oils4AsphaultOnly
Well-known member
GRA said:Oils4AsphaultOnly said:GRA said:There's enough statistical data now to prove that HV battery packs are significantly safer than any of the combustion fuels. You're simply deflecting when citing battery fires as a false equivalence to H2 issues.
Sure, they're proving statistically safer, but we accept the risk of gasoline and have done so for over a century. Yet EVs aren't absolutely safe, any more than the others are. We accept some level of risk with all of them to get the benefits. We simply don't have enough data yet to say what the accident risk of widely-deployed FC or ICE EVs using liquid or gaseous H2 will be compared to fossil fuels, only small scale tests plus lab work (much of which has previously been posted way up-topic) which indicate that it will likely be less than gasoline, and we accept a couple of hundred thousand fires and many injuries and deaths from gas-powered vehicles every year in the U.S.
Oils4AsphaultOnly said:Going back to my question. Burning H2 is actually polluting (produces NOx, which causes lung disease from long-term exposure). The only difference in emissions between burning H2 vs gasoline is CO2 and SOx. Once you factor in all the costs (storage/production/delivery/safety/density), it would actually be better to continue burning gasoline instead of burning H2. Who cares if it costs the manufacturers less to develop combustion H2 tech if that tech shouldn't even be used! If you want fuel cells to succeed, then stop diverting money to useless side-projects.
I'm not diverting money to H2 ICEs, companies with far more skin in the game than either of us are, often in combination with FCs, presumably based on far more knowledge of their industry and what their customers want than either of us are privy to. Since resource constraints are likely to hinder FC scale-up as much as they are batteries, I'm in favor of using multiple approaches, as my sig indicates. Since we'll need to scale up green H2 production either way, if this helps us get there sooner while also reducing GHGs, I can accept that even if it's not my first choice. Governments can and will decide whether or not it meets their goals for emissions reductions. But it's not either of our calls.
So far everything you've posted have shown that manufacturers are being subsidized by government dollars for their R&D. Those dollars came from tax payers like myself, others on this forum, and maybe even you (not sure if you've paid any taxes lately). So I say we have as much skin in this game as the manufacturers do, since some of that money came directly from our pockets.