I think if they can produce a $27,000 fuel cell car then affordable fuel cells for for stationary apps like renewable backup should be assured and that will play a huge role in transitioning existing grids. Cars in northern regions need heat and that might justify a fuel cell ahead of straight battery but I'd bet the majority will be batteries, at least in the short term.

I find it odd that battery vs fuel cell is always such a point of contention on this site when the real loser is the fossil fuel industry regardless of who wins. Maybe less so with fuel cells but batteries will dominate in the short term for sure.

By 2020 and onward, FCEVs will compete favourably with extended range BEVs, at least in Japan, where close to 1,000,000 much lower cost FCEVs and close to 400 clean H2 stations may be in operation.

Our local politicians could take a trip to Japan to see how it is done and plan the installation of 400+ clean (Hydro electric) H2 stations in our region. Secondly, exchange lithium from our new Li mines for 100,000+ FCEVs. At $30,000 for all weather extended range FCEVs, who would buy short and mid-range BEVs, specially for use in our cold snowy area?.

To lower initial installation cost, fewer main (large central H2 stations) could produce enough H2 to supply (by truck) 2 to 5 adjacent H2 distribution stations? Our sole Hydro producer could use some of its $3B/year profit to install up to 100+ large central H2 stations by 2020 or so.

Very low cost clean H2 could be produced using very low cost e-energy produced in house during off peak demand hours (19 hours/day Monday to Friday and 24/24 on Saturdays and Sundays and Holidays)

The only thing missing it the political will to do it.

RP is correct.

BEVs and FCEVs can co-exist. Families with 2 or 3 cars could have 2 rather short range affordable BEVs and one long range FCEV. People living in cold snowy places will probably be better off with FCEVs.

I doubt if the world will run out of Lithium. It is just a matter of price. Three to six large mines could open soon in Canada if the price hold steady around $7K+/tonne. At up to 20,000 tones/year each, they could really help. The same could happen in USA, Russia, China and many other places.

Meanwhile, Argentina, Chile and Peru/Equator will supply enough lower cost lithium to meet demands for the next 5+ years.

The is a lot of money being spent to keep people dependent on fossil fuels for transportation; the hydrogen fuel cell is just such a scheme. The hydrogen will be manufactured using fossil fuels, the hydrogen transported to stations and dispensed at central locations, all the while pricing will be under control of the fossil fuel industry. Nothing changes except they sell hydrogen instead of gasoline. Hydrogen cars are expensive, complicated, dangerous(remember the hydrogen is carried in tanks under 10,000 psi) and require more maintenance than BEVs.

The state of the hydrogen fuel car in the future is merely conjecture. Might never come to pass.
However if they can overcome the more serious issues with hydrogen as a fuel then that would be good. Meanwhile back in Kansas it is still an expensive by-product of fossil fuel.

Currently I see renewable liquid fuels as the only viable alternative to battery power for applications that electric only might not suit. Very cold weather driving, perhaps being one of them.

All that is needed is very cheap hydrogen. We don't know how to manufacture very cheap hydrogen. We'd have to drop the price by more than 4x for FCEVs to be competitive with EVs in terms of operating costs. 4x is a huge amount. The laws of physics are standing in the way.

(Toyota has said that it costs 17 cents/mile to drive their FCEV. An EV can drive a mile for 4 cents on average retail priced electricity.)

We're on track to hit EV purchase price parity with ICEVs by 2021 or thereabouts. After that it should become cheaper to manufacture an EV than an same-model ICEV.

FCEVs would have to become considerably less expensive to own and operate than EVs in order for them to replace EVs.

Battery capacity should continue to increase giving EVs a higher range per charge/fueling than FCEVs within ten years.

For those who drive all day often 500 mile range EVs should be available. Tesla's Destination Chargers will already recharge over 500 miles in 10 hours. A full 500 miles 'while you sleep'.

For really cold country we can use the Volvo solution. They already have an auxiliary heater that uses ethanoyl.

Fuel cell vehicles are the conception of progress in the heads of conventionalists deprived of any economic reason or technological vision. FCVs do not make sense economically or technically when compared to the alternatives. They are already an enormous failure with 40 years and 10s of billions of R&D money and not a shred of a viable product to show. Aren’t gonna happen.

What is gonna happen is self-driving vehicles of all sorts. All of Teslas’ cars are already driving themselves at 90% of the miles that people are driving in them. That percentage is going to reach 100% with hardware and software upgrades by 2020. At that time Tesla will log about 10 million miles per day of autonomous driving which is enough to convince many authorities around the world to allow Tesla to make a new driverless taxi service that will launch also around 2020 and expand explosively on a global scale after that. Uber will get some serious competition.

Driverless BEVs of all sorts will kill the combustion engine and the non-existing full cell cars because they cost too much to drive per mile and have no advantages relative to driverless BEVs whatsoever. Private ownership of driverless BEVs will also be much like fleet operators with the wealthiest in a family buying the cars and making them available for the rest of the family using smart phones and perhaps a little reimbursement for electricity used. Privately owned driverless BEVs will therefore not log 15000 miles per year typically but rater 50,000 or 100,000 miles per year and be made for durability (1 million miles that is only possible with BEVs) just like the fleet owned driverless BEVs.

The old auto industry does still not get it and they keep investing most of their resources in developing stuff that will have zero value in less than a decade. They need to focus all of their resources on driverless technology and BEVs and be satisfied with what they currently got in terms of gassers. We don’t need more efficient gassers when they can’t compete anyway with the driverless BEVs that will be here in 2020. By 2030 the market for new gassers will be completely gone and few will remember what fuel cell vehicles was all about. There will still be a large market for repairing a large fleet of old gassers. The gasser auto repair shops and manufacturing of gasser spare parts will continue until about 2045.

LOL. Did Toyota get 400,000 pre-orders for the hydrogen bomb when no one was looking?

The NSA should review every buyer of a Toyota Maria, because only ISIS wants this car.

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Hydrogen Summary of Failure

Hydrogen stations make excellent explosive terrorist targets.
Hydrogen stations are very expensive, cost per station: $1.5 Million, who is going to be forced to pay for this?
Hydrogen stations not pumping at the 10,000 psi required, you’re only getting Half Charges!

Difficult to make hydrogen and store it.  
Hydrogen isn’t a source of energy, you can’t mine it, you can convert something else to hydrogen, like methane, but then you lose energy in the process.  
Hydrogen from water( in a global drought? ), is extremely inefficient.  
Hydrogen from methane gives you No Help with global warming, it actually makes things worse.  As methane wells typically leak like sieves
Hydrogen must be supercooled and compressed to 10,000 psi to store sufficient energy, which requires lots of energy.
Burning it as a fuel is less than 50% efficient.
The energy to do all this could be used to directly run an EV from a battery, and get you Twice as far.
Hydrogen likes to leak.
Hydrogen has a general problem of metal embrittlement, so you need special tanks.
- Hydrogen tanks only certified for 15 years???

Hydrogen leaks as an invisible gas.
Hydrogen is extremely flammable with an invisible flame.
Right now hydrogen is a loser vs. current batteries, not to speak of the battery chemistry in the coming solid state batteries.
Chevy Volt gets better MPG, at a Lower Price, and allows you to use cheap solar energy for your fuel, and hydrogen does not. We will not run out of gas during the EV conversion process.
Platinum in the fuel cell = expensive.

Hydrogen time refueling vs. solar.
Solar: You plug in at your home, Time 60 seconds.
Hydrogen: You drive 20 minutes, or to California, to the station 10 minute refuel, 20 minutes back home: 50 minutes lost.

Hydrogen Cars were built on the premise that we’d need a "Bridge Fuel" to EV’s, however battery tech has advanced so rapidly that there is no need for a bridge, especially one as wasteful and expensive as this.

http://gas2.org/2015/03/10/vancouver-ends-hydrogen-bus-program-amid-high-costs/

EV's running on Solar helps pay off your Solar investment 20%-40% faster = More PROFITS to YOU.

A single H2 fueling station can service 36 cars per day. (The highest volume ones service between 24-36 FCEVs.) Compare to ordinary gas stations, which service an average of ~1100 cars per day (some say 2500/day).

Electrolizers efficiency will soon reach 80% to 85% versus 90% to 95% for BEVs quick charging facilities.

Both could use REs but H2 can be stored in much larger quantities. Electrolizers could operate with lower cost surplus r-electricity during off peak demand hours (about 19 hours per day Monday to Friday and 24/24 on Saturdays and Sundays and Holidays).

High voltage, high capacity, off peak hours Hydro electricity could be negotiated under $0.01/kWh in our region, at least till 2027/2029 because we have a huge surplus. The off peak demand hours surpluses will be there for decades. It is the law of the beast!

Our sole Hydro supplier could use some of its $3B/year surplus to install and operate 400+ H2 station network.

H2 could retail for $4/Kg to $6/Kg.

More criticism and no solutions from EP.

You are nothing but an ego maniacal narcissist who should not be allowed on here.

Flattery will get you nowhere, SJC.  That takes at least a case of a good single-malt.

ECI, I see the news items about catalysts free of precious metals (learning from nature, it appears) and suspect that the cost of a stack is not going to be a problem.  That still leaves the other 3 miracles required for hydrogen:

Producing it,
• transporting it, and
• storing it.