Grumble wrote: ↑Sun Nov 29, 2020 12:19 pm
As long as you have enough range for a day’s travel and can therefore charge overnight batteries are clear winners over fuel cells - and the driver spends less time doing that than they would do refuelling with diesel. Multi-day journeys, such as by ships, are where fuel cells win out.
Provided there is a decent charging network, the only advantage that a renewables derived liquid/gas fuel vehicle has over a battery vehicle is the ability to refuel rapidly. If you absolutely have to be moving again in a matter of minutes after doing a number of hours driving, great. Beyond that I can't think of a single thing where they win, they are way more inefficient to generate, need a whole new distribution network and are more complex and dangerous to handle.
So for most miles driven by most vehicles, batteries win. I'd trade never having to fill up my car on a regular basis with the odd longer stop at a motorway services for the extended trips I do a few times a year.
The devil in the detail is the "decent charging network", this requires ubiquitous chargers, at home, on the street, at work, at hotels, at Sainsbury's, at church etc.... The degree of ubiquity can be low to start with, but as more BEVs roll out more will be needed. It's also one of Tesla's USPs, they recognised that if charging was a pain, they wouldn't sell any cars, so they spent a tonne of money on their super charger network. They also maintain them better than other networks.
Note that this also goes for fuel cell vehicles, they need a decent refuelling network for them as well, at the moment there is none. They are also more painful to roll out, a H2 or ammonia pump along with tanks, generation systems, distribution systems is going to cost one helluva lot more than a BEV charger attached to the existing grid.