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A little typo in your post. It is Rs.150 for 300km. Not Rs.1.50

Why should anybody be jumping to conclusions so early in a products development phase. Electric cars early on were also considered pretty much useless, but by putting R&D to good use, it is evolving now. Same with Hydrogen, if government and car makers put R&D into this technology, it is more sustainable solution as compared to BEV technology. It is in our (us customers) least interest what technology would power the future automobiles, ICE, BEV or Hydrogen. Lets leave that upto people who know how to develop the technology, what's best for environment, is sustainable, etc. Trust these people know much more than we do. So, keep your emotions in control and don't bad mouth a technology without even knowing what all are the contributing factors. Am glad government takes decision on its own sometimes without consulting common people, atleast we reach somewhere. In my opinion democracy (consultative approach) is bad for growing economies. Just decide and do it and make it happen. Most developed countries today are or were authoritarian at some point while they were rising and transitioned to democracy once they reached a certain level of economic position. Western nations force this democracy on poorer countries as part of an agenda to keep them poor always. They have much to gain. Apologies I digressed a little from original discussion.

Sure, I have no issues if it works.

Can we bring the trucks needed to refuel 1 car from 4 to 1 in next 20 years(compress hydrogen 4x times)? Can we bring refuelling stops from 35 to 10( refuelling every 160kms) in 20 years? Still the car is unusable, that's what my whole point is.

We are not in early development phase, we humans completely understand the science behind internal combustion engines for 100 years, we know how to produce hydrogen for decades, how to compress hydrogen to 10000psi( typical tyre pressure 30psi). Toyota is combining all these knowledge of 2 inefficient technologies into a hydrogen ICE car, and this is the outcome.

The only effort the scientists can make this more efficient is compress hydrogen to 40000psi(don't know if that is possible in a small car), because unlike battery chemistry hydrogen has its own properties which no scientist can change.

Another point, anything that is produced industrially, beware of price increase. See this chart of last 1 year CNG price in Delhi. As they say fool me once shame on you, fool me again shame on me.

From https://www.mypetrolprice.com/2/3/Delhi-CNG-Price-Chart

One more reason why utilization of hydrogen will be a challenge

Hydrogen embrittlement of metals, during storing and transportation.

Hydrogen embrittlement - loss of ductility of metals due to absorbed hydrogen

From Wiki:
"Once absorbed, hydrogen lowers the stress required for cracks in the metal to initiate and propagate, resulting in embrittlement.

In general, higher-strength materials are more susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement."

This is well known very old problem and has gained significant traction due to its complexity and necessity for safe hydrogen storage.

Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement

Good point, the reason Toyota says to change all the fuel cell components including those huge tanks after 1lakh kms, otherwise it's a explosion risk.

That spike in 2022 is a result of the UKR war nothing else. Nobody anticipated that a decade back when pushing CNG so it’s not a scam of any kind.

Oh, I didn't mean to say it was a scam. I am just saying fuels primarily used by vehicles will be subject to such price shocks and/or targeted increases.

Whereas EVs use electricity which have a much larger use and production base. By most estimates 100% EV vehicles will require only single digit increase in installed power generation capacity and ~20% increase in electric energy consumption. So the vast majority will be non EVs usage, this gives better protection from spikes and makes it difficult for targeted price raise.

Worst case a 5kw home solar panel will easily produce 300 units per month which is sufficient for 2000km. This can be bought for 3 lakhs, with a 5 year loan at monthly EMI of <6000. So at only Rs 3/km it is already cheaper than all other fossil fuels for first 5 years and is free after that for another 10 to 20 years. A cheaper 3kw system can also be used for lower usage.

This kind of price protection is possible with only electric energy, nothing else is anywhere near this large an ecosystem.

Cummins and Tata Motors ink MoU to develop hydrogen-powered CVs,

India will be one of the first markets to receive Cummins’ hydrogen engines, an important technology to help drive decarbonization.

Link

With government and corporate support India gets ready for hydrogen-based mobility ecosystem.

- Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker, is likely to include India in its hydrogen-powered car rollout.

-The Japanese auto major has provided the fuel cell stack for the Ashok Leyland hydrogen-powered truck. If things go well, the first set of vehicles with hydrogen as fuel are expected to hit the road by 2025.

Not that Hydrogen vehicles will start appearing on Indian roads from next year, but quite likely from 2025, starting with commercial vehicles.

Link

To add few more points continuing from above:
1) Since the turbines will be operating at high RPM, any vehicle acceleration from zero operation will either require heavy slipping (and wear) of clutch plates; or eliminate clutch and vary the turbine speed - which means wait forever for the turbine to spool and accelerate the vehicle as you have already mentioned.
2) Otherwise, one may use the turbine to provide air propulsion instead of wheel locomotion: But this will require big sized turbo fan and high gearing to reduce the fan speed in order to offer considerable efficiency. Again not really practical for the size of vehicles that operate today.

The work around for this is to use carbon fibre reinforced tanks and look who has invested in carbon fibre - https://www.livemint.com/companies/n...767018077.html :)

I truly believe Hydrogen is the future and with India well placed to tap low cost green energy and organisations like Reliance investing into it, we stand to gain immensely by becoming energy rich. There are even talks of selling green energy to Europe to help them make green H2.

There have been a number of turbine powered cars, where the turbine drove a generator and the car itself was powered by electrical motors. Sort of very early hybrids! :)

But not successful either!

https://www.thedrive.com/cars-101/39...turbine-engine

Jeroen

I'm one of those who believe that newer technologies and fuel types will come to us sooner than we think. EV, hybrid, hydrogen or any xyz will replace our current options. Just got to know about a world record distance covered by a hydrogen train on YouTube

https://youtu.be/LfVDs-xw_rA?si=xCKuj7gVfeMLjwcd

Future looks good

Cheers :)

While I don't know how the supply chain works in detail, I do know that we are not planning to consume hydrogen from the atmosphere directly but rather produce it through chemical reactions and electrolysis.

Besides, I don't think Ambani would invest in the production of green hydrogen if it was not viable in the long run.

And while I don't know if hydrogen cars themselves will take off or not, we can at least hope that the electricity in our grid becomes greener so that electric cars actually make an impact.