Exxon Mobil CEO: All new passenger cars will be electric by 2040

[rcjordan]

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/25/exxon-mobil-ceo-all-new-passenger-cars-will-be-electric-by-2040.html

[Rupert]

So he is completely discounting Hydrogen for passenger vehicles.
I have not listened to the interview, but its an interestingly bold view imho.

[littleman]

I'm not sure that's what he's saying.  You could run hydrogen in an internal combustion engine, but the vast majority of hydrogen vehicles are hydrogen fuel cells providing electricity to electric motors.  There is a lot of debate when it comes to fuel cells vs. batteries, but I think hydrogen fuel cells have a lot of advantages.

[Rupert]

OK re read the page. Yes it could Inc fuel cells, and his point is they won't be gasoline.
I was probably responding to the feeling that many big players talk electric, and I think Hydrogen has loads to offer.
It tends to be missed.

[Brad]

I think hydrogen definitely has legs for trains and for them fuel cells make sense since locomotives are already electric at the drive mech.  Semi trucks, ships and aircraft all may have some sort of hydrogen future.

For cars, I think hydrogen fuel cells make more sense for N. America than EV's.  Europe is compact, has transit, has rail, has high speed rail and has cities built on a human scale.  In the US we once built that way (okay so no Roman roads) but for the last 100 years we have built every darn thing around the car and our distances are so much greater.  It will take us 50 years to even put a dent into the screwed up architecture of our infrastructure, undo the far flung commuter suburbs, sort out rail and take a stab at transit. 

So we are stuck with cars for awhile and EV's are not going to hack it for the masses in the US.

[ergophobe]

What littleman said.

Hydrogen vehicles ARE electric vehicles. It's just a question of how you store the electricity.

Having written that, it occurs to me that railroad locomotives are electric vehicles that store the "electricity" as diesel fuel which is converted into electricity by burning it in an internal combustion engine and then turning a turbine that generates electricity that is sent to the electric motors which turn the wheels.

To be honest, that failure to distinguish the source of the energy, the storage system and the drive train always bothers me. An electric vehicle that runs on electricity from a coal plant is not "clean". An internal combustion engine that runs on diesel from algae might be.

I guess in common parlance, an "electric" vehicle is something you fill up by plugging into the grid and anything you fill by pouring liquid or pumping compressed gas into it is not electric, regardless of drive train.