Why BEVs are the future

 People are wondering why many don't see hydrogen as the future of automotive transport while others are fervent believers that it holds to key. It almost seems in contrast, or even spite, of the similarities it has over BEVs to petroleum gas cars.

But, the problem in my mind lies in the similarities. And frankly, the issue extends beyond vehicles.

The main points are;

1. Battery technology and the failure of historical trends without heavy electrification.
2. The ecological impact.
3. Power source vs. power storage.

The first point is a dual point. Batteries have been in use for a very long time and have changed rather little. Even efforts in cellular phones have been but a blip in road. But, massive change is underway and battery tech is improving more rapidly than advances in any except perhaps fusion. Why is the innovation only happening now? Because it wasn't until EVs that we really started pushing the current battery tech to a place it couldn't reliably go.

Hydrogen cars wouldn't put any more strain on that than traditional ICE would. But, on its own it is a pretty weak point. We need a better reason than hydrogen not advancing battery tech for this argument to work. But, if we can establish that, then this again becomes a compelling argument. So, moving on...

One of the main arguments against BEVs is that making batteries isn't exactly the cleanest, safest or most ethical thing. However, it is worth noting that almost all advances in the past few years have resulted in decreases of those negatives while also improving battery tech. And, let's face it; we need batteries even without BEVs. Basically, the continued investment has benefits further reaching than just electric vehicles. These advances will, in time, make the battery market overall more ecologically friendly.

Now, a hydrogen cell vehicle is probably still going to be greener in and of itself. At least, if you look at the vehicle and nothing else. However, old batteries are recyclable and once the supply chain is in place to properly handle these vehicles at end of life their net ecological benefit increases even further. I won't go into hypotheticals on possible futures. 

And I will admit that today not enough EV batteries are repurposed. However, the same be said of vehicles in general and some EV batteries are reused today and in those cases the savings are much more meaningful environmentally than reusing the scrap from a car.

To me though, those are all supporting arguments and the heavy hitter is the next one. A BEV and any non-BEV to date have a practical difference; BEVs just use energy storage and application and other vehicles come with their own power source to create energy.

What ultimately makes both hydrogen and petroleum vehicles a failure from a ecological standpoint is that they tie you to an energy source. Improvements in energy generation are relatively meaningless to the owner of a traditional ICE or hydrogen cell vehicle. Your car cannot benefit from those advances without either replacing the power train or the entire car. A BEV can benefit simply by plugging into a more efficient grid. The improvements can be centralized, scaled and made more efficient.

In fact, this happens all the time already. Virtually every BEV has become greener than it was the day it rolled off the assemble line because more grids are experiencing continuous upgrades. They become more efficient, they incorporate a greater mix of renewables and so on.

If your grid owner decided that diesel was the best fuel source for the grid you would almost definitely be greener than any diesel vehicle on the road because that power plant is undoubtedly more efficient at converting diesel to energy than a car is.

And that underscores another point; BEVs by no means deal a death knell to either hydrogen or even petroleum. They simply make more sense as a source of energy for the grid than as something which requires a dedicated power plant as a part of the vehicle. This misconception, more than anything, I think leads to a lot of the animosity. If you live in North America you probably know someone whose livelihood is linked directly to oil and gas and don't understand how those industries can cope in a world where EVs reign.

Lastly though, this focus on EVs misses the picture that everything said applies equally to houses and workplaces and many other areas. Many of our power plants produce more energy than is needed and have nowhere to store it. We end up selling or even simply venting off electricity a lot of time. We could have a much more stable grid with lower peak requirements if excess energy were stored and energy companies would be much better able to replace and improve their infrastructure if the "last mile" of energy delivery were handled via batteries.