This confirms what many posters have been saying for many months/years. Electrified vehicles (buses, trucks, locomotives, light trucks and cars) make more efficient use of energy and should be used as widely and as quickly as posible.

Fossil and bio-fuels should be restricted for commercial-military airplanes and selectively for power plants with appropriate clean-up Equipment.

It depends how you make the electricity, many of the new plants are combined cycle, but out of a thousand large power plants only a small percentage are combined cycle. There is a natural gas steam plant near us that produces 2 gW, but is less than 35% efficient.
Only the very latest designs that are combined cycle can claim close to 60%. NG to H2 is more than 80% efficient, PEMFCs are 50%, so you end up with transport that rivals EV.

BTW so that power can be ramped up and down swiftly, for instance to allow for renewables to vary from passing clouds, gusts of wind and so on, then gas turbines are often used as spinning reserve, ie they are running at low levels without producing any power.
Under those circumstances you can have as efficient turbines as you like, the overall efficiency will still suffer.

The article seems to gloss the issues over somewhat.

@evi:
They are aiming towards 95% compression efficiency for 2015:
http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/review12/pd048_lipp_2012_o.pdf

Every other target for hydrogen and fuel cells has been met or exceeded, so there seems no reason why this one should not be too.

In practical terms that should mean that hydrogen from natural gas through a fuel cell car is somewhere north of 40% efficient, which is pretty good compared to the real electricity grid.

There is not much in it for efficiency between battery electric cars and fuel cell ones, despite some of the tendentious figures floated around claiming vast disparities.

I find it ironic that researchers from Oak Ridge did not include the combination of nuclear-generated electricity charging EVs in their comparison of greenhouse gas emission scenarios.

Elephant in the room, that...

The end user cost tells the true story of efficiency of H2 vs EV.

$5-$6 gge for H2
vs
$1 gge or less for EV

When H2 can meet or beat EV cost of operation and CO2 emissions, I'll be all for it.

(Except by then my solar installation will be paid for, so personally, I probably will stick with charging at home)

'The end user cost tells the true story of efficiency of H2 vs EV.'

You'll have to explain why it tells us about efficiency.

It certainly tells us about the cost of the fuel, although it does not tell us about total running costs.

But efficiency, why?
I think the figures given above tell the story of the efficiency pretty well, and your notion is entirely extraneous.

It takes about two therms of natural gas at about $1 total to make one kilogram of hydrogen. Add compression costs of 10% and 50 cents per GGE for highway taxes then you get $3-4 hydrogen. When you add all the costs for EVs you get $3 per GGE, so costs are comparable. However the FCV can refuel in minutes and range is extensive.

SJC, where can I buy this $3-4 gge hydrogen? Retail prices in Southern California, one of the only regions in the US where you can buy H2, quote prices up to $12 per kg.

Does the time to refuel include the travel time to and from the H2 fueling station, which is not conveniently located right around the corner?

H2 is expensive because it is energy intensive to get in a form suitable for a transportation fuel. Toyota quotes $50 for 250 mile range. EVs cost 1/4 of that for fuel.

Hyundai quotes the cost of the Tucson FCV at ~144,000, although it's available on lease only. Not cheap either.

@eci:

H2 is not currently expensive because is it is energy intensive to get into a form suitable for transport, but currently due to underdeveloped infrastructure.

Here is the DOE in June 2013:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs/program/hptt_roadmap_june2013.pdf

The goal (pg 9) is produced, delivered and dispensed costs of $2-4 gge, as SJC said

For natural gas reforming all the targets are met, with only detail work to do-

'However, to fully commercialize small-scale hydrogen production by natural gas reforming, additional development will be needed in areas that DOE has not addressed, including system integration, optimization, and technology
validation'

(pg 12, table 1.2, distributed natural gas reforming)
Getting the costs of renewably produced hydrogen etc down to competitive levels will take more work, and there are taxes to add, but since a small SUV gets 68mpgge (Toyota)there is plenty of margin to allow for that and still have a petrol competitive price, or better.

1914 - GASOLINE UP AGAIN; PRICE IS 22 CENTS

The Standard Oil Company of New York put up the price of gasoline another cent yesterday, making the wholesale price 22 cents a gallon.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E00E4DC1531E733A05755C0A9679C946796D6CF

That makes it over $6 per gallon wholesale in adjusted dollars. Wholesale price today is under $3 per gallon. SO, hydrogen may sell for $8 per kilogram today, but could come down to $4 by the end of the decade.

eci:
You don't seem to have actually read the link I researched to answer your question, and seem only interested in offering refutation without serious consideration.

We were not talking about carbon sequestration, which does not happen for the grid electricity used to power BEVs either at the moment.

You asserted that the reason for high current costs of hydrogen is that it is energy intensive.

I showed conclusively that that is not the case, and that for the initial roll out it is the inevitable process of fully optimising the equipment, which is always the case for any roll out of new technology.

Without even acknowledging that point, you seek to switch the subject.

Many of us have learnt that 'and another thing' arguments are rarely productive.

Whatever carbon is 'just dumped in the atmosphere' initially is at any rate much less than petrol cars do, just as electric cars rely at the moment on carbon being 'just dumped in the atmosphere' from the grid, and in pretty comparable quantities per mile driven to fuel cell cars too.

To return to the point at issue from your diversion though, it is quite clear that hydrogen can be produced, dispensed and delivered at $2-4gge as stated plus tax.