Could hydrogen-powered cars be a better option than electric cars?

I met with a VC of the Valley right after listening to JB Straubel’s talk (Tesla CTO) about his vision on the challenges of IOT at Stanford, our discussion really raised my attention regarding the business potential of hydrogen.

That investor is truly passionate about disruptive innovations and just started researching a lot on the potential uses of hydrogen, and more specifically for the automobile industry, and about what has already been achieved with it.

At the moment, hydrogen is not a trend at all in terms of investments or in the public’s opinion, I wanted to collect more information to understand the challenges regarding this science and compare it to the achievements done using electricity as main source of energy.

Not so long ago, a large number of the world’s automakers were considering hydrogen fuel cell technology as the fuel choice of the future, often to the detriment of battery electric vehicles.

But since the beginning of the year, we’ve seen a noticeable shift away from hydrogen fuel cell technology. Strong supporters of hydrogen like Honda and Hyundai are shifting their developments to include electric cars alongside hydrogen-powered vehicles. Manufacturers like Daimler have ended all researches linked to hydrogen fuel.

Which makes us ask ourselves the question: are hydrogen fuel cell cars doomed and have electric cars won?

Because electric cars don’t burn fossil fuels to make themselves run, it doesn’t produce any pollution while it’s in operation. This, at least in theory, makes electric cars a very green form of transportation.

The hydrogen cells option seems to have good points: you can fill up like you do with a gasoline or diesel powered car, you can drive a more important amount of kilometers than with battery cars, batteries are thought to wear out very quickly, finally hydrogen as a fuel is perceived to be a relatively small infrastructural change from gasoline and diesel.

Currently, what makes electric cars stronger is:

• they are much quicker with a big battery
• they are easier to fill as electric outlets can be found almost everywhere, while there are very few hydrogen stations globally
• the number of manufacturers selling electric cars is much more important than for hydrogen
• they are cheaper to maintain
• they have a good image and the general public’s attention thanks to Tesla
• they are cheaper (a hydrogen car costs a minimum of around $60K)

On top of this, hydrogen cells fueled cars are in reality: hard to fill up, won’t let you go 100 miles on current tech hydrogen tanks that are still safe to carry around in a car, hard to regenerate as fuel cells wear out crazy fast, hydrogen as a fuel is incredibly hard to make and distribute with acceptably low losses.

Starting from 2008 it became very clear that hydrogen would be inferior to battery technology as a storage of energy for vehicles. It is estimated that by 2025 the last manufacturers should likely be retiring all their hydrogen cell powered cars from their offers.