[Brian Swartz]

Pros and Cons as I understand it:

Pros

- Much less battery weight is needed compared to electric vehicles, hence more range which fits with the Toyota claim.

Cons

- Hydrogen vehicles have to convert the hydrogen to electricity before they do everything than an EV does. 30-40% efficiency loss there with the last numbers I saw, so more energy is needed to do the same amount of work.

- Actually producing the hydrogen introduces an additional energy loss compared to just plugging in an EV to the grid. Optimal scenario would be a modest electrolysis operation powered by solar at the fill-up station itself, but that would still come with all the reliability issues that solar can have, esp. in areas where solar isn't as useful, and concerns about solar sustainability, and yeah. Electrolysis is pretty energy-intensive, which means that whatever shortfall there is in solar power would have to be made up in sucking more power from the grid which ... defeats the point compared to just putting the energy directly into the car. Or else you ship in the hydrogen from somewhere else, producing more pollution, more energy used, more inefficiency, and so on.

Overall

I'm sure other people know more, but basically hydrogen fuel is expensive and we need to find ways to make it more cheaply and without as much energy being lost in the extra steps it has to do before actually becoming electricity for it to compete with a standard EV. Without that, I don't see it becoming the new thing.

I do completely agree with absolutely throwing the sunk cost fallacy overboard if it ever gets there though. Let's take the best option and not just the one we've spent money on.