Hiringa, with partners fuel supplier Waitomo Group and Australasia’s largest heavy vehicle fleet owner TR Group, on Tuesday opened three green hydrogen stations, with a fourth under way, within the North Island’s economic “golden triangle” of freight movement.
It’s why I don’t see ammonia being used outside of shipping.
Scale won’t get to fix FCEV light vehicle transport because is simply chicken and egg.
Unless governments pump billions into hydrogen infrastructure there’s simply no financial return for any investors. And why should governments do that when BEVs are already solving the decarbonisation issue?
Battery technologies like Lithium Iron Phosphate and Sodium Ion are here and solve the material issues. And once the materials are mined they enter a circular economy.
Fast forward 30 years and most new car batteries will be made from old ones.
Look again. I’m not talking about light vehicles.
A BEV truck can weigh up to 5 tons more than a FCEV. Why would that not be a case use for hydrogen? Now scale up to a ship where volume is no issue. BEV shipping is a non-starter.
New battery tech is fantastic. But why would you assume new battery tech, currently prohibitively expensive, will come down with scale but hydrogen won’t?
The short version is: Because people are making and buying the batteries. Hydrogen has failed to scale.
They’ve been ripping hydrogen stations out in the UK, Norway, California. Hydrogen may as well be Betamax or HD-DVD at this point.
Edit: I’ll be quite happy if I’m wrong. I would love to see more widespread decarbonisation assuming the hydrogen wasn’t blue.
I expect this to change. The problem is they pushed it out for light vehicles before it was ready. If it’s going to work anywhere, it’ll be heavy vehicles, shipping and aero.
But hell any new zero emissions tech is ok by me. Just…something other than dead rotten dinosaurs.