Hydrogen had a breakout year. Why are some VCs still skeptical?
Hydrogen had a breakout year. Why are some VCs still skeptical?
Hydrogen startups are on pace to raise more VC funding in 2023 than in the prior two years combined, according to PitchBook's 2024 Industrial Technology Outlook.
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Because generation is only one of the many issues with hydrogen.
There still the issues with storage since hydrogen is highly reactive and tends to break down materials making them brittle as heck. That's still not solved.
Combine the fact that storage is a problem that hydrogen is very volatile, able to ignite with only a 4% ratio and very easy to set off.
Hydrogen requires it to be compressed to be stored and it's cold as heck making transport a pain requiring new pipelines to be created and again combine that with the hydrogen being reactive and volatile.
Refueling, it's cold, very cold and that's another problem when you have a reactive, volatile compress gas and most materials don't exactly like constant extreme temperature changes.
Hydrogen still has a lot of problems and generation is still just the top of the iceberg.
The "issues" you list is something companies like Toyota has already dealt with and even if it's small, there is still a growing hydrogen infrastructure in some places in the world like california with people driving these cars.
Yes they are challenging, but we have already overcome and have vehicles and infrastructure in production.
I see many hydrogen critics list how hydrogen is "very volatile, able to ignite, cold as heck, extreme temperature" and etc, well yes, there are challenges, but despite that there are companies out there that have dealt with them and already have products running on the same hydrogen you are talking about.
Not trying to blindly support hydrogen or anything, but in my opinion we are past the point where we debate and claim hydrogen is not possible and has many issues - many of them are no longer an "issue" when its already out there for consumers in some parts of the world, and if these issues were a huge barrier, we won't have vehicles like Toyota mirai selling at all, so these issues are not issues but maybe "tricky", "expensive" and "slow development" would be the right words.
I'll grant you that storage has gotten better since the decade now when I last worked on a hydrogen ICE project and yeah Toyota has made some good advances with their carbon fiber tanks now, heck of a lot better than the carbon fiber tanks that I had the pleasure of working with.
Last I read, the temperature changes were still issues with refilling station where they tended to ice up and with fatigue on the point of connection to the inlet due to temperature changes. If that's been fixed or a solution has been found that's great.
I think the biggest hurdles is still the transport, generation, and infrastructure and yeah, I can agree that tricky, expensive, slow development are all valid here.
And while I still don't think the tech is there yet, I'm glad that progress is still being made and hopefully it'll actually be viable in the future.
Now list the problems of the alternatives...
In reality, hydrogen is far simpler and more straightforward than any alternative we have right now. Most of the supposed problems have long been solved or never were serious issues. By now, it is entirely a matter of properly funding and scaling up the infrastructure. Nothing else really holds back hydrogen. The naysayers are simply motivated by ulterior motives, such as personal financial gain, to deny this basic fact.
Oh, my bad. I completely misunderstood the fact you wanted copium and not actual discourse over the viability hydrogen.
And you want something that is basically climate change denial. You can either admit that there is a solution to our problems, or dwell in either doomerism or denialism.
Yup, not a single bit of a grown up discussion to be had here. You are a terrible cheerleader for hydrogen and make no salient points on hydrogen being a good future technology, which I happen to have hope for.
Just nothing but whataboutisms and insults, nothing intellectual coming from you at all.
There’s no patience for people who totally deny reality. The first step is for guys like you to admit that there is even a possibility that you got it wrong. Otherwise, there’s no point for this conversation.
Done.