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You are mixing two numbers incorrectly. Consumption > production. They are not equal because there is an additional source of hydrogen that actually accounts for the majority of it: waste products from other chemical processes. Electrolysis and reforming only need to provided enough to fill the gap.

You are absolutely right. And that's the problem. The market where people aren't super price sensitive is very limited. Especially when people are spending that money to make a statement. And buying a car to make a statement really translates to, it's a fad. Today, nobody buys a Prius to make a...

It is an expensive car, though. That is what's considered "empty". When your car has 10% left - whether battery or gasoline - you head to the gas station or the charger. If you drive the car down to 0%, you are in trouble (for both power trains). modern = expensive again. The Chevy Bolt has...

Not only that, I discovered on Google Maps that the Richat Structure is actually quite close to the location of this supposed meteor - not close enough to be related even if it was a crater (which, as you already pointed out, it is not).

That is plain false. People prefer buying gas even in the US, where this benefit does not exist. You != average person. That's one of the big problems with battery evangelists. "It works for me" does not lead to "therefore it must work for everybody".

$37k is still very expensive, considering that you can buy ICEs for less than half that amount (the Mitsubishi Eclipse, for instance). And with that car, you'll get 395 miles in five minutes.

Yes. IIRC, you drive a luxury vehicle that would have a sizable battery and very fast charging. 75 miles is not "a few dozen" miles. And, yes, if you cherry-pick the vehicle and assume ideal conditions, then you'll get more reasonable numbers. But for people who can't afford those cars, they...

No, it doesn't. And sometimes you get a rental car that hasn't even been cleaned.

OK. Kia. That explains it. When we were shopping for a new car, we were looking at a Kia. Asked the dealer "how much ground clearance does it have?" He didn't whip out a tape measure before answering "Um, around 12 inches, I think" (it was actually the standard 5 inches or so). Needless to say...

That's not so. You are thinking of Germany, where there really is such a cost incentive. But the pattern holds even in the US, which does not have this tax benefit.

That actually shows one of the ugly parts of battery car evangelism: people who do have the choice prefer the gas station to charging. That makes it very hard to convince them to choose a car that won't even give them this choice.

Not ICE drivetrain. Only an ICE engine, which is quite light and fairly simple. Especially in a hybrid, where you don't need turbo boosting etc.. The rest of the drivetrain is the basically same as in a battery car, except sometimes some details of how the transmission is designed. Another...

Anecdotes != data. The real question is: how many of the original 2014 Model S are still driving around? As far as I can tell, the pre-2016 Model S (with the black nose cone) seem to have disappeared from the road. For all I know, yours might be one of a dozen left. Nonsense. It has always been...

Yes - if you have a high-end car. What's needed is affordable cars that can do this.

That's false; it's a common misinterpretation of the data. The average commute is that long, which is a very different thing. Also note that you are not talking about the average "person" but rather the average employed driver. Retired people and WFH don't commute at all and aren't included in...

The Bolts were sold in Europe, too, but under a different name. I think they were Opels over there. It's really the same in the US, outside the demographic of Ars readers.

In this scenario, you have to double that. Because you don't have time to plan ahead, you can't assume that you will be able to charge at the destination. Maybe in a Tesla or Lucid. In a Bolt, you would be looking at an hour or more. And that's assuming that there is a fast charger along the...

Exactly. Remember what happened to Grey Davis in California? He was recalled over a sub-$100 car tax increase (which actually predated him).

And that's the problem right there. The price of a Model 3 is close to the average of all new cars. If that is really one of the cheapest ones, battery cars almost universally carry an above-average price tag (and, yes, I know that the bare-bones M3 does cost a bit less, but not substantially...

The relationship is backwards. A Taycan isn't expensive because of the batteries, but rather it is only possible to be a battery car because the Taycan is already expensive. You can't make the math work in a $20k car without choosing a ridiculously small battery.