High flying tech magnate Elon Musk, who is the CEO of SpaceX and battery electric carmaker Tesla Motors, recently called hydrogen cars a bunch of BS. He has a reason for doing this.
According to Bloomberg, “Behind Musk’s protestations is the fact that his Tesla competes for resources with hydrogen cars, in the form of government subsidies for rebates, fueling infrastructure and lucrative green-car credits that have made the company profitable this year. He’s badmouthing the rival technology especially loudly now, as California considers paring his ability to generate credits in the future.”
Wired has a slightly different take, “There’s an old joke about hydrogen power: It’s the fuel of the future, and always will be. Elon Musk doesn’t just agree, he called out hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as ‘bullshit,’ claiming they’re more of a marketing ploy for automakers than a long-term solution.
“The comment from Musk came during a speech to employees and enthusiasts at a new Tesla service center in Germany. The electric automaker’s co-founder and CEO was onstage espousing the virtues of the Model S when he went off on a tangent about EV naysayers: ‘And then they’ll say certain technologies like fuel cell … oh god … fuel cell is so bullshit. Except in a rocket.’
“Musk goes on to state that even given the very best hydrogen technology, it doesn’t come close to the energy density of a modern lithium-ion battery pack like that found in the Model S.”
On October 23, 2013 I alluded to Musk’s statement about hydrogen cars and how he was trying to hype up his troops. If Musk thinks that hydrogen fuel cell cars are BS, then one has to wonder what his true feelings are about gasoline-powered cars? My guess is that I probably wouldn’t be able to print his expletive deleted language here.
Sources
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/10/elon-musk-hydrogen/
https://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/index.php/hydrogen-cars/gm-fcvs-have-saved-157894-gallons-of-gas/
I call spending $50,000 on batteries to save $10,000 in gas BS.
And I call the hyperloop (which even Elon won’t fund) BS.
How is a battery powered vehicle that takes many hours to recharge better than a hydrogen powered vehicle that can be refueled in minutes?
The source was an event held in Munich concerning the opening of Tesla Motors service centers, stores, and superchargers they have planned for Europe, in specific, Germany. You can view the video here uploaded by a German – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmQb94EF1UY
In the video description is posted the segment link where the *action* begins.
This is nothing new concerning Musk. He constantly calls H2 BS/joke/stupid/etc. He just said BS this time because you can get away with saying that in Germany – that stuff isn’t censored.
“How is a battery powered vehicle…” It’s better because this is about religion/emotions – not about facts/truths. BTW, the sale of the recharging time is about the supercharger which is taking 20-25 minutes.
[That is 20-25 minutes half charge, 50%; 40 minutes for 80%; 75 minutes for 100%]
The OEMs will never call Musk out on this.
They have invested plenty of money into fuel cells, but they have orders of magnitude greater investment into internal combustion engines.
And the greatest fear of the OEMs is that ZEV legislation will force them to push technology into production before it is ready. Toyota, Hyundai, Mercedes, GM, Nissan, Ford, Honda et. al. are most comfortable with a gradual rollout of hydrogen fuel cell technology. Making an adversarial response to Musk’s comment would give various governments the idea that fuel cell tech is ready for a massive rollout when, in fact, platinum loading is still too large for multimillion units per year production.