Comment Re:Hydrogen's main selling point... (Score 1) 176
Lots of inaccuracies here.
Firstly it takes far longer to fill a hydrogen car than a gas car due to the careful rate control needed to fill the tank. If you have appropriate cooling and heating systems to maximise density while filling while also preventing the handle from freezing in place it still takes you >6min to fill a car.
Filling time for hydrogen cars is 3 minutes per industry standard. Also, the handle would not freeze in place, because hydrogen heats up when expanding (reverse Joule-Thomson effect): if anything it would warm up. And that happens only for specific pressure ranges (mostly from very high to almost empty tank).
On top of that hydrogen refueling stations do not store hydrogen at bulk pressures required for vehicles since having a large 700bar tank is hugely expensive and dangerous, instead bulk hydrogen is stored at a lower pressure and compressed before being put into small temporary storage and loaded into your car.
It's more complicated than that. There are often multiple tanks at different pressure, and they will be used sequentially to maximise efficiency. First the one with lowest pressure, then top-up with the higher-pressure tank. Promptness of refilling the high-pressure top-up tank is only related to compressor capacity, and this is easily upgraded when customer base increases; hydrogen compressors are off-the-shelf technology.
Also: tanks are not especially dangerous, the tricky parts are usually valves and flanges. Tanks are fairly standardised and are safe ex works; flanges are installed on site and that's where there is potential for errors to creep in. That's why a standing recommendation is to use hydrogen pipes that are "as small as you can get away with" for high-pressure lines.