this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
79 points (98.8% liked)

Technology

39637 readers
311 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

To paraphrase Mean Girls, "stop trying to make hydrogen happen."

For some years now, detractors of battery electric vehicles have held up hydrogen as a clean fuel panacea. That sometimes refers to hydrogen combustion engines, but more often, it's hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles, or FCEVs. Both promise motoring with only water emitted from the vehicles' exhausts. It's just that hydrogen actually kinda sucks as a fuel, and automaker Stellantis announced today that it is ending the development of its light-, medium- and heavy-duty FCEVs, which were meant to go into production later this year.

Hydrogen's main selling point is that it's faster to fill a tank with the stuff than it is to recharge a lithium-ion battery. So it's a seductive alternative that suggests a driver can keep all the convenience of their gasoline engine with none of the climate change-causing side effects.

But in reality, that's pretty far from true.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] tyler@programming.dev 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

lol my wife literally was the project manager for a hydrogen site in Arizona. No clue where you got your information, but it’s just absolutely incorrect.

[–] megopie@beehaw.org 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

The United States Geological Service. Has put out several reports on the topic of geological hydrogen deposits and that was their conclusion in everyone.

A pocket producing an amount is not the same as a significant deposit.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 4 days ago

Can you link one? A quick look gave this:

A recent study by the USGS estimates that there could be millions of Mt of natural hydrogen in accumulations in the Earth’s crust (Ellis and Gelman, 2024). However, there is a great deal of uncertainty associated with this prediction and the model does not evaluate the potential size or distribution of hydrogen accumulations. Most of this hydrogen is likely to be in accumulations that are too deep, too far offshore, or too small to ever be economically recovered. That said, even a small fraction of the estimated amount of subsurface hydrogen could potentially meet all global projected demand for hundreds of years. Consequently, the key to understanding geologic hydrogen resource potential is to examine the geologic factors that affect the potential to form accumulations.