Electric vehicles and alternate fuel sources

There was an American group that was making hydrogen from water using platinum wire and super heating it, the process was super secret squirrel stuff, the major stumbling block was the price, my son in law was in talks with them as a fuel source for his micro turbine. Nothing came of it as they wanted control over everything, including his design and research.
I watched a YouTube video on the SEMA show in the US, last night, that had hydrogen powered Toyotas and Hyundai on display
Gumpy

I have two problems with this:-
1. It is about 900 kilometres (a whole tank full) to get from my place to Macquarie Park to fill up and by the time I got home, the tank would be empty again.

2. If Australia has "huge" quantities of natural gas (and I know we have been exporting it for years) how come the Victorian Government has banned it's use in new houses and is talking about all existing houses having to compulsorily remove gas appliances and replace them with electric? 
 

Morris
The filling station is only for the experimental gas fleet. The general public are not in on the deal yet.

As for the second question the answer is obvious "Victorian Government"

Do not give up on gas. In the 1960's much of Brisbane were still on rain water tanks when town water was finally run throughout the city. People figured with our rainfall the tanks worked perfectly well so why pay for town water. The City Council created a cock and bull story about dreaded diseases in the tanks and ordered their destruction. It got so bad that teams with axes and picks went around destroying these "dangerous" tanks to force conversion. Fast forward 40 years and Brisbane City Council are giving subsidies to install rain water tanks!

What a brilliant idea. Electric lawnmower, should save the planet.

www.facebook.com/share/r/19cePVJbHd/

Stihl make a better battery one, I have had one for years and even better is the battery chain saw, once you have had one of those you will never go back to pull start.

New neighbours have everything electric ...Tesla ,lawnmower,roof covered in panels ................at least they didnt knock the house down ,which seems to happen here all the time now.

Its very easy to make hydrogen from water in a number of ways ...........the tricky and expensive part is compressing the hydrogen into a vehicle tank ............the other tricky thing about hydrogen is that any pressurised gas leak will catch fire from friction,and burn with an invisible flame.

John

From what I have seen so far getting the fuel into the tank is no more difficult than the current LPG vehicle filling system but actually does it quicker. The tanks are just thick-walled SCUBA tanks. Of course pressures are very much higher than LPG but the car tanks, hose fittings and service station gear are all built for the purpose. Hydrogen of course is safer for leaks than LPG because it is lighter than air and immediately disperses whereas LPG pools at any low point or a surface layer on the ground.

It is half as dangerous as petrol with regard to self ignition. Hydrogen takes a temperature of 500degrees to burst into flame while petrol only needs 260 degrees.

recently we took my iload on the spirit to Tasmania for 2 weeks to have a look around. On the way back a guy who had seen me in the queue to get onto the boat came to have a chat as they had purchased an EV powered van to turn into a campervan but thrown a mattress and stuff in the back to free camp. We had Helen's mobilty scooter, Waeco Fridge etc in the back so we were carrying slightly more weight.

They had been there for 10 days but we compared range and cost. Their fill was about 1/3 of my diesel costs but they averaged around 200km to a charge while I got over 600km to 60 litres on a tank. They lived about 50km further from geelong than we did but had to stop and charge to get there. They then had to charge every day. We filled up at home, drove to Geelong, then Devonport to Strahan via Zeehan and then did a day trip to Queenstown and returned to Strahan on the one tank. It took them another 2 charges to complete a similar route (although they stayed in Queenstown, charged again there and just made Hobart with 5% charge left.

So while their charging was about 1/3 of my fuel bill per fill they were charging 3 times as often at 45 minutes a charge. In fact we did an extra 700km than they had we did it for less than $40 more on fuel than they had spent on power. I am not sure the finances and convenience stack up for EVs when travelling away from home at the moment.

Purpose of EV vans is last mile delivery or trade services where they are idle 90% of the time. As you have well illustrated it's horses for courses.