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Getting ChatGPT and its image-generating sibling DALL-E to place sq. wheels on automobiles is as powerful as getting hydrogen to make any fiscal sense for floor transportation. Until you ask it to place sq. wheels on a hydrogen car, it appears.

Michael Sura’ is a Slovakian transportation knowledgeable, with years as an power and renewables specialist with the nation’s largest power provider and now years advising on transportation particular points with the Ministry of Transport and chairing the postal service’s supervisory board. And he’s an everyday on LinkedIn discussions associated to transportation, publishing his analyses and infographics about different power pathways for floor transportation.

Certainly one of his favourite phrases is that hydrogen is a “sq. wheel” for transportation, just like Paul Martin’s feedback that it’s each ineffective and inefficient. Martin, after all is a chemical engineer, a hydrogen knowledgeable professionally and co-founder of the Hydrogen Science Coalition.

However Sura’ has needed to make do with adorning his materials with previous cartoons about square-wheeled mule carts. Till now. A thread on LinkedIn about failing to get ChatGPT to place sq. wheels on mule carts to replace the previous picture by one more particular person strongly engaged within the power transition, Michael Hamilton of worldwide agency Bekaert, VP of commodity sourcing, led to me attempting a few hacks.

And positive sufficient, with minimal iteration, placing sq. wheels on a Toyota Mirai was fairly straightforward to do. But extra fiddling resulted in zero capacity to persuade both of the 2 AI picture producing instruments I take advantage of to place sq. wheels on any kind of cart, even after feeding it one of many previous cartoons of precisely that and having it describe it as having sq. wheels. The very best I may do was to get a picket tub up on sq. picket blocks.

For one thing like 14 months I’ve been exploring the iterating limits of a few AI picture producing instruments and it was attention-grabbing to run up towards this restrict. Coaching knowledge is coaching knowledge and in nearly all coaching knowledge wheels are spherical. Fascinating that Toyota Mirai’s have been someway distinctive.

And so I bequeath to the world of transportation decarbonization communication a picture of a square-wheeled Mirai.

However is that truthful? Is hydrogen actually like a sq. wheel? It positive is, and even many die hards are realizing it.

Toyota is eradicating the Mirai from the market after a decade, whereas nonetheless remaining dedicated to gasoline cells for bigger automobiles. That’s within the context of hydrogen gasoline cell mild car gross sales falling off their tiny curb previously yr. There are nonetheless a few gasoline cell vehicles accessible, however they simply aren’t promoting.

And hydrogen refueling stations are stepping into reverse, as I just lately famous, with increasingly closing completely globally along with those that are out of service for prolonged durations of time on account of an absence of hydrogen or upkeep points, largely with compressors. There are plans to construct 5 extra within the UK, however provided that eight have shut down previously yr and a half, it’s not solely unlikely the 5 will proceed, but when they do get constructed that can nonetheless be unfavorable inertia.

The federal government of Quebec had a trial of fifty Mirais working for the previous few years, refueling them on the single hydrogen station within the nation that isn’t in British Columbia, one on the outskirts of Quebec Metropolis on the premises of an Esso station. It’s going to be a fairly dusty station now, as these 50 vehicles have been quietly returned to Toyota and never changed with new ones, leaving maybe a dozen or two working hydrogen vehicles in the whole province.

To not be outdone, Shell really refused $48 million of California’s cash to construct a bunch extra hydrogen refueling stations final yr and now has shut down all of its mild car stations within the state. I’m fairly positive that nobody is updating dashboards of refueling stations there out of despondency.

The Hydrogen Gas Cell Partnership, shaped by a bunch of hydrogen faint-hopers within the state, went nationwide in 2022 and no one seen. Their dashboard reveals 55 stations in complete within the state, precisely what it was within the first half of 2021, three years in the past. All that work, no motion. And that’s theoretically working stations, as their dashboard reveals that many are closed on the time of writing, have restricted hydrogen availability or have one or each pressures offline. In actual fact, 29 of the 55 stations are incapable of pumping hydrogen in any respect the pressures and portions that they’re designed to at this second in time.

That’s commonplace. US DOE’s studies from the interval, which I pulled aside to have a look at the truth just lately, after they nonetheless reported on this system earlier than stopping in what one presumes was disgrace in the midst of 2021, present that throughout the fleet of stations they have been offline 2,000 extra hours than they have been actively pumping hydrogen over six months. Their upkeep prices per yr have been 30% of the capital value of constructing them, a full order of magnitude above complete value of possession research assumptions. That equated to $9.23 per kilogram of hydrogen delivered. No surprise hydrogen prices $36 per kilogram retail in California.

Hydrogen gasoline cell bus fleets within the state have been equally challenged, seeing 50% extra upkeep prices per yr than diesel buses and double that of battery electrical buses. As soon as once more, US DOE reporting which I pulled aside to see what they stated.

However again to stations. True Zero operates the vast majority of the remaining stations in California. The Hydrogen Gas Cell Partnership’s dashboard claims they’re working 38. True Zero solely claims that they’re working 34. True Zero claims that they’re opening extra and with a giant pot of extra cash from the IRA being wasted on hydrogen for transportation in California’s $1.2 billion hydrogen hub, they in all probability will as a result of regardless of no utilization to talk of, they are going to undoubtedly be made complete off taxpayer cash.

Into this morass of pricey failures, after all, California introduced just lately that it was shopping for six extra hydrogen trains from Stadler for passenger rail segments so as to add to the 4 that it already had on order. Naturally, $407 million of governmental funding was behind that. The trains aren’t anticipated to enter service till 2027 and it’s actually uncertain that they’ll keep in service lengthy given the excessive value of hydrogen and upkeep.

In spite of everything, a European Stadler gross sales govt stated the quiet half out loud just lately.

“If the tenders are open to all applied sciences and the one situation is a probably CO₂-free drive, now we have noticed that the battery virtually at all times prevails over hydrogen,”

Why? Hydrogen trains — and buses, vehicles, vehicles, and each different mode of transportation — are costlier to take care of and costlier to gasoline than each different. Their complete value of possession is a number of occasions extra, thrice within the case of trains. The one time hydrogen trains are literally offered is when the tenders explicitly referred to as for hydrogen trains, and that’s virtually fully as a result of governmental cash is earmarked for hydrogen fleets.

Clearly ChatGPT thinks hydrogen is a sq. wheel for trains too, because it supplied the picture above with little prompting.

It’s exceptional that hydrogen for power proponents can take a look at 25 years of failures, challenges, retrenching, and falling gross sales and nonetheless maintain a pale blue torch for the molecule. It’s not a know-how going via teething pains, it’s a know-how that merely doesn’t work properly or economically as an power service.