1 acre of corn ~ 500 gallons of ethanol (~6kWh/Liter for ethanol) so 50046e3 = 12 MWh/4046 m^2 ~ 3000 Wh/m^2 for corn. If there is one growing season per year, then that energy is spread over 24*365 hours. So about 0.3 W/m2 on average.
Of course, the ethanol can be stored, and has a pretty awesome energy density. So it isn't completely stupid (e.g. aircraft are a thing), although it is pretty stupid.
Ronsenshi•1w ago
Naturally this is relevant only for current battery tech and capacity.
_aavaa_•1w ago
Hydrogen trials outright fail or prove to be substantially more expensive overall than EVs every time they’re tried.
The hydrogen vehicles are more complicated, more expensive, have expensive fuel which is difficult to transport and store, have no economies of scale or a realistic path to on (unlike batteries and electric motors), introduce serious safety concerns, and lack the convenience of being able to refuel on site.
And EV trucks, like in every other category, are outselling hydrogen trucks by orders of magnitude. See recent China sales [0].
[0]: https://cleantechnica.com/2025/11/26/chinas-bev-trucks-and-t...
Someone•1w ago
Because of that, EV trucks might be a local optimum.
Having said that, hydrogen is difficult to handle. To get reasonable power density, you have make it liquid, compress it, or do both. Purely liquid is impractical, given that it happens at 33K at normal room temperature, so you need pressure, lots of it.
_aavaa_•1w ago
And until it’s made from something other than methane it won’t be a climate solution. In fact hydrogen production is a major climate problem that should be solved first before we consider wasting any green hydrogen on something that can be done cheaper with electricity.
Ronsenshi•1w ago
From what I could find, it appears that there's about 100x times more funding that goes into EVs R&D than into HFCVs. One might think that there could be solutions to most if not all listen issues with hydrogen trucks if there was enough interest in that field from private sector and governments around the world.
I personally would prefer that there was better battery tech which would take less space, weight and have more density. But we are not there yet, so hydrogen to me seems like a decent solution for trucking industry if only it had something more than token R&D funding.
_aavaa_•5d ago
- Energy required to get it from water is fixed.
- energy required to compress it (and got for it liquify it) is fixed.
- Explosion dangers and basically invisible flames are fixed.
- Difficulty in transporting are fixed.
> It appears that there’s about 100x time more funding.
That may be because battery technology has proven itself and has paths to scale (phone, laptops, battery storage, a million different consumer electronics) for any new advancement. While hydrogen has proven itself a failure time and time again and has no paths to scale.
At this point hydrogen powered anything are solutions in search of a problem.
belviewreview•1w ago