Bad as it paints the picture, it leaves out another dirty little secret. Hydrogen oxygen fuel cells depend on a platinum catalyst. Platinum is rarer then gold and more expensive. There is no domestic source of platinum, we'd have to buy it on the world market.
More food for thought!
Regards,
GtG
Not entirely a valid point. Traditional fuel cells do use platinum as a catalyst. But then so does the catalytic converter on your car's tail pipe. A hydrogen fueled vehicle wouldn't need a catalytic converter to convert unburned hydrocarbons in the exhaust. So essentially it would just move the platinum from one end of the engine to the other.
I do have to give the hydrogen fuel cell pushers a little credit here. Most of the fuel cell research these days has gone into developing efficient membranes that do not contain platinum or other rare materials.
The fuel cells themselves are not really an issue in the hypothetical "hydrogen economy". Especially when there are so many problems with using hydrogen at the hydrogen production end.
Once upon a time, this was true, but research has decreased the required amount of platinum sufficiently that it is no longer a serious problem. As to a "domestic source"---we'll just recycle all the platinum currently used in exhaust system catalytic converters.
I note that the need to use platinum for THAT application hasn't slowed down people buying cars.