Toyota, Isuzu, BMW ramping up *fuel cell vehicle* production. (I guess the EV industry couldn't buy every parliament & congress in every country)

While the Biden administration continues to funnel tax dollars to EV industry lobbyists ($7.5 billion for EV charging stations, $7 billion in EV battery production subsidies and over $10 billion in related initiatives) it seems that EV industry did not win every bidding war for every parliament and congress in the world.

Germany plans to spend less than 1 billion USD in taxpayers dollars for charging stations, (and that is a 7-year plan.)

Japan, also no friend of corporate welfare is plans to spend just $100 million.

Korea is also letting science and consumers decide. They have dedicated a grand total of 3 million USD in subsidies to all aspects of electric vehicle production and charging.
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The result? The playing field is level. Relatively free of government intrusion choosing one technology over another, science and the consumer can decide which type of new technology they want, and it seems they are leaning toward hydrogen fuel cell technology.

As Ford and GM are ending the EV production targets
BMW, Toyota, Isuzu, and Hyundai are ramping up to launch fuel cell cars anywhere the free market reigns and local subsidies to their EV competitors have not made them impractical.

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Anyway, despite a pile of subsidies and free charging stations Ford and GM have both recently announced they are ending their plans to produce a targeted number of EVs in the foreseeable future.

Toyota had barely dabbled in EVs preferring instead to develop hybrid vehicles and and fuel cell vehicles.

Despite a pile of subsidies being given directly to its competitors it looks like fuel cells and hybrids might win the eco-wars.
It chairman, Akio Toyoda, is looking pretty smart right now.

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to bad congress forcibly spent so much money backing the wrong horse.
Maybe they should have just let science and consumers decide.

Hey. Is it too late to get the money back?

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I like Fuel cells the best
 lost a good amount of money investing in them 20 years ago.

The problem with them is the production storage and distribution of hydrogen for fuel.

That is a problem that they have not figured out yet as far as I can see.

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Nice! (sorry about the money though.

Fuel cells are powered by hydrogen (from nat gas.)
It combines the hydrogen with oxygen in an expensive fuel cell, which currently can be made only with lots and lots of platinum. Combining the hydrogen with oxygen means exhausts only water.

It is pretty much the same as burning hydrogen (or nat gas) in an ICE, only burning it in an ICE does not require platinum. The exhaust is also water. Same deal. One’s cheap. Ones expensive. One requires platinum, one does not.

I’m a fan of the second one, but either way, if Congress stays away, science and consumers will make the best decision.

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Here.
I didn’t read all of this this but the headline tells me platinum alternatives are being developed.

To meet these challenges, the researchers designed a nickel-based electrocatalyst with a 2-nanometer shell made of nitrogen-doped carbon.

Meanwhile why not just burn the hydrogen?
It costs less, produces the same exhaust and doesn’t require platinum now or later.

Back in the day when I was looking into all of this
 the dream was to make hydrogen from renewable sources and use it as a storage medium for power
 the problem is that as an energy storage medium isn’t very dense and it takes energy to keep it in a useful state.

Unless there is a significant breakthrough in efficiently and safely storing large quantities of hydrogen
 the fuel cell isn’t going to go anywhere.

I wish that wasn’t the case
 but it is.

Over a decade a go (with help from folks right here on this forum) my son & I took an ordinary motorcycle battery, attached some wires to it and dunked the ends in ordinary seawater.— It produced a few bubbles but nothing exciting.

From there we stepped it up and up and up until we had attached and entire roof-top solar panel to a selectively chosen anode and cathode, dunked those in ordinary seawater and produced several 120z bottles of hydrogen, which we then burned (one at a time) creating a nice series of mini-explosions with lots and lots of expanding gasses.

What can I say? It was fun and I was a weird dad like that.

Anyway, you are correct, the hydrogen it produced takes up a HUGE amount of space compared to liquid gasoline or whatever. In a practical application, such as replacing gasoline, it would mean bigger pipelines, bigger storage tanks etc. etc


Still, Congress should not being telling science and consumers “This technology is right and that one is wrong,” and I am going to spend your money until you adopt the technology lobbyists have told me to choose."

As far as building out infrastructure for the next generation of vehicles
 there already exists an electrical grid.

There isn’t a manufacturing, storage and distribution infrastructure for massive amounts of hydrogen.

That is just the reality of it.

Money is better spent bolstering infrastructure that already exists instead of creating a brand new one from scratch.

The electric grid is already so substandard there are (periodically) rolling blackouts in California and Texas. And a deficient electric grid recently caused a tragic fire in Hawaii.

Imagine all those giant oil pipelines you can drive a car though
criss-crossing thousands of miles all across América. (Hey, at least are hollow.)
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Now imagine replacing them with not-hollow gigantic copper or aluminum cables.

Nope there has to be a better way.