Fool Cells and Toyota or Kia promotion of them as competition to Tesla

I am noticing an increase in business articles picking up on Toyota, Kia and allies PR releases suggesting they will compete with Tesla using hydrogen fuel cell based vehicles. Since these are serious companies they are taken seriously. There also seem to be online fans who vigorously support the potential of fuel cells as an alternative.

Any good sources of well documented analysis to counter this?

I strongly agree with EM's "fool cell" and "marketing BS" take on this and the reasons seem obvious but I'm not aware of any good references that set out the case.

There has been a dream of a hydrogen economy for a century based on the possibility of electrolyzing water to produce hydrogen. It's still not a cost effective realistic technology. Effectively all hydrogen used for fuel for the foreseeable future will be produced from natural gas or other fossil fuel sources. Expensive and difficult to handle and store compared to the methane it's made from. It's a lot less wasteful to just burn the methane in ICE vehicles than go through the environmental PR theatre of making hydrogen out of it so you can play at having a zero emission vehicle.

The world already has electric grids in place that are all the infrastructure battery electrics need. There is nothing at all in place to deliver hydrogen anywhere.

FCV's are BS. They are completely disingenuous nonsense. They have no hope whatever of competing in any real sense. Yet very credible companies (and apparently Japanese government agencies) are making these claims and people are believing them.

Any good sources to reference to counter this?

Auto Industry Playing Dirty With Hydrogen - Blogs - Tesla Motors Club - Enthusiasts & Owners Forum

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Thanks. Great piece by Julian Cox.

i think this will get bigger as it seems to be a major PR response to Tesla that business sources have picked up on. As a cheap natural gas driven pseudo-environmental response it can do real mischief. It already soaks up government money that could be going to something real. It misdirects the public's understanding of the issues, making it seem that there are alternatives and a contest when there is nothing of the sort.

This sort of thing needs to be much longer form and more detailed.

I wish the technical arguments were enough, but the sense that fuel cells can seem like a valid solution on the surface (They just emit water vapor!) makes them a threat if major economic forces back them. Both major car companies and the natural gas industry (maybe even the coal industry since coal gasification hydrogen is cheaper and more developed than electrolyzing water) may get behind this.