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Can Flow Batteries Finally Beat Lithium?
(spectrum.ieee.org)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I've always hoped so. Finally deal with both range anxiety and charging time together.
That'd be cool.
Hydrogen solves that.
Hah, no. Storage and infrastructure are still non-existent. And low temperature operation is still an issue.
There are challenges, but Toyota is throwing their weight behind research on hydrogen ICE. Here's a good summary and analysis video. Of course it's not perfect, but they proved it can be made. Now it needs to be made more robust.
What Toyota is doing isn't a good indicator. They've been at hydrogen for decades. And they are the single biggest laggard for decarbonizing transportation. That's not even an opinion, that's just facts about their lobbying and marketing. No amount of research will make hydrogen infrastructure appear.
Infrastructure comes following the demand. It's not like there were gas stations before there were cars. On the other hand, I think it's good they are investing money in different technologies. I think they realize whoever gets to the new solution first will reap benefits, kind of how Honda insisted on using 4-stroke engines in their dirt bikes while everyone else was pushing 2-stroke. When the 2-stroke ban came, everyone else struggled to switch while Honda had it perfected.
Toyota might be lobbying and pushing their solution, but as long as they are investing and solution is cleaner we benefit in the end. Certainly better than what oil-lobbyists are doing pushing the idea it's not a big problem yet.
How do you drive demand? If there's no infrastructure you can't sell anything that relies on said infrastructure. How's California's Hydrogen Highway doing? Not good. Demand and infrastructure go hand in hand, and you can't magically make one develop without the other. Thinking otherwise is merely wishful thinking.
This is what I meant, they drag each other.