After I found out that the fuel cell will be in cars maybe never competitive against the ICE, I thought on other ways.
The scenario:
2040, photovoltaic is very cheap, energy for stationary use is cheap, the only problem is easy to trasnport energy for mobile applications.
Biomass is much to few to deal with all the demands.
Batteries are to heavy for more than 300km range
Hydrogen is no easy to transport energy for mobile applications
So why not to creat more fuel out of the biomass by adding hydrogen from electrolysis?
To use the biomasse as carbon provider to make out of hydrogen more easy to transport methan or methanol.
2040, photovoltaic is very cheap, energy for stationary use is cheap, the only problem is easy to trasnport energy for mobile applications.
Today there are batteries (li-ion) which can recharge in 5 mins. An EV recharging in 5 mins means something like 300 kilowatts going into charging the pack. By todays electricity delivery infrastructure that's an eyepopping figure.
But.. I suppose distributed generation using cheap photovoltaics ... that it would be possible for the charging station to have it's own panel array and have less reason for such a huge connection to the power grid.
This would mean todays battery technology, improved with another 30 years of R&D, would make it quite feasible to have quick recharge EV's with quick recharge stations scattered around cities. This wouldn't require a biofuel to make for easily transported energy for mobile purposes.
- David Herron, The Long Tail Pipe, davidherron.com, 7gen.com, What is Reiki