My back of the napkin calculations for a CNG Camry Hybrid had it roughly using the same amount of natural gas as a Mirai.
Yet many industries are going or working on Hydrogen The New Hydrogen-Powered Aircraft from Airbus Is Beautiful. Will It Work?
You already posted about Airbus's concept planes in this thread. Anything else? Meanwhile, the two likely fuels for shipping will most likely be ammonia or methanol. DNV GL: Ammonia and Methanol are the Likeliest Future Fuels Both are far easier to move around than hydrogen, and there is some infrastructure already in place.
Presumably H2 in China could be a little like CNG cars...in the USA it is +$10k cost for our regs, but overseas you stick a couple gas cylinders in the trunk, and off you go. Its a little hard to imagine how China gets enough gaso or elec for its growth, so H2 from eg; coal probably makes sense for them.and Japan. Japan is not worried about surviving energy glut like today, Japan is worried about possible future of fossil fuels shortage, because they have none. China has some but rapidly growing. Fuel cell optional? I recall that video of the wacky guy running his carburetor Ford car on solar H2 stored in lithium deuteride. Or was it a Chevy?
Just prior to China's notice to stop bleeding money to the fuel cell research industries, the claims of increased fuel cell vehicle production in China we're pretty lofty; Global and China Fuel Cell Market to 2025: Fuel Cell Vehicle Market will Take Off after 2020 Nothing new about extremely overreaching projections though. From the same article, the present day vehicle production in China number around 1300 vehicles, nearly all being buses & trucks. Which Way those numbers will go, after free money - coming in for research is anybody's guess. However estimations are - there's over 1.2 million plugin ev's running around China now. In addition to Chinese electric Builders like NIO, the new Factory coming online there via Tesla is capable of producing ½ million vehicles a year. .
China already has a coal to diesel plant. Making hydrogen is probably easier. The Airbus concepts have the same engines in place. Just modified for the hydrogen. The issues in past dual-fuel cars was that running on hydrogen meant reduced power, reduced efficiency, or both. An engine designed for hydrogen should make better use of it, but that leaves distribution and storage still unaddressed.
China have coal to methanol; and methanol can be converted to gaso and chemicals or blended into fuels or converted to DME for diesel, and you can get H2 also...and that's cleaner use of coal compared to combustion.
