The main issue I think is hydrogen lets them delay until the market conditions are ready (they still have to wait for non-existent infrastructure, which is a valid excuse for hydrogen), plug-ins can pretty much be made and sold today, which means no waiting around. Both types are much less profitable than conventional cars (and maybe even results in a net loss) so I can see why they want to delay as long as possible.

Example:
10 units of energy -> 3 units lost to heat in electrolysis -> 10-3=7 units left inside hydrogen -> 3 units lost to heat in fuel cell -> 7-3=4 units left for the electric motor.

So you lost 6 units in total to heat and have 4 units that actually got converted to useful electricity at the electric motor. Total energy is still 6+4=10, so energy is conserved, but only 4 is useful. That is why cracking water for hydrogen is inefficient.

(above I didn’t look up any efficiency numbers so the relative sizes of the numbers don’t mean anything; it is just an example to illustrate the point).

Now, does that mean that there aren’t problems with our electrical system and our cars and our liquid fuels? No, not at all. There’s certainly lots of problems there. But as an engineer, I have to pick maybe the top few solutions to put my effort into solving to get a product out the door and make an impact on the bottom line. Similarly, we have to pick the top few solutions to put our efforts into to make in impact on your choice of global warming, terrorist funding, economic destabilization, etc. and using hydrogen just isn’t among the top candidates.

The thing that really makes me upset about hydrogen is that for every incredibly smart engineer or researcher trying to make hydrogen work that is one less incredibly smart engineer or researcher trying to make one of the realistic candidates for immediate change work.

So, yeah. I suppose it’s possible hydrogen could be made to work, eventually… But we really don’t even want to bother. We can get off oil much faster if we focus on something else. Practically anything else at this point.

You are obviously not a technological trained man with your absolutist assertions and ready condemnation of other people,as if the world were a gigantic Conspiracy.

First of all, who ever said the Wind or Solar are Pollution Free?

They aren’t. If you did not know. Solar is a very poor, very inefficient, generation method with a 10-12% efficiency at best. The extra 88-90% waste energy goes into something that is called “Thermal Pollution”.

Plus the PV solar cell is an inherently Albedo Reducing device that changes the measure of reflectivity of the Earth from 70% on average to as near 0% as the engineers can manage to obtain. That extra 30% of absorbed Solar energy is the source of the PV cell energy thermal POLLUTION that is waste heat that goes into Anthropogenic Global Warming!

At a rate about 900 to a 1000 times worse than mere CO2 GHG. And it is cumulative. Every square meter of PV cells created and installed, adds to the several hundred thousand square kilometers already produced, and all add to the extra heat absorbed by the Earth attributable to to Man; the very definition of man-made global warming.

Or hadn’t you ever heard of that. You Will. Sooner if not later,when th warts start to show.

In the meantime the enviro knot-heads and know-nothings haven’t yet discovered that form of pollution yet. But it is there.

Secondly, who ever told you that hydrogen creation is cheap or efficient or unlimited. It is costly if by electrolysis, and worse than petroleum if derived from fossil fuels. Where is the benefit there?

If you want to discuss the drawbacks of harvesting the energy in Wind, I could do so, but suffice it to say, they are there,as well. It is simply that the Warts haven’t been readily visible to the green know-nothings yet, either. Suffice it to say the delivered cost of electricity from these two wunderkinds of energy are the highest in all the choices available,so there must be something wrong with them.

Do you think there might be a reason for that?

i would be glad to enter a philosophical discussion of why Scientists and Engineers say “Efficiency is its own Reward” but in general the more inefficient a process, the more potential side effects there are from that process from the waste. The larger the side effects, the larger the chance of inimical side effects . And both Solar and Wind possess these in Spades.