I don't see it.
All the pressure is top down.
If you want zero tailpipe emissions, you can go electric, and you can recharge in lots of places.

I suppose the question is - which will come first, h2 infrastructure or a "better battery".

IN the meantime, you can just use more efficient ICEs or hybrids of whatever flavor you fancy.

Ok everybody, now you can recycle all your arguments from a couple of days ago; http://www.greencarcongress.com/2014/08/20140813-carter.html

DME makes more sense, you can make it from biomass and run it in diesel hybrids that get 70 mpg.

@sd,
Per the following link, H2 can be produced for $3-4 / kg from wind via electrolysis.
http://www.nrel.gov/hydrogen/pdfs/50408.pdf

The petroleum refiners have been able to store vast quantity of H2 in underground empty salt caverns and transport it via pipelines, so there is no problem there. Depleted oil and gas wells would offer another location to store H2. It takes a lot of H2 to refine petroleum. Why not just use the H2 instead?

@Bob Tasa,
Fuel cells for automotive now costs around $78/kW, and will be at $50/kW with mass production. IC engines are not efficient enough for H2 due to the limited quantity on board. FC has 3x the typical efficiency of ICE at cruise. Plus, the IC Engine has NOx emission problem so is not ZEV-capable.

Here is a UC Irvine study that says A BEV is 250% more efficient than a FCV. End of argument... Elon is right FCVs are B.B.
http://www.apep.uci.edu/3/Research/pdf/SustainableTransportation/WTW_vehicle_greenhouse_gases_Public.pdf

$100-200 million over 50,000 vehicles is $2000-$4000 per vehicle infrastructure cost.  That is just to get down to similar per-mile fuel cost.  How the H2 would be generated is not stated in this writeup (I don't have time to dig through the original).

Home chargers for EVs are now in the $400-$600 range.  Figure 1 Tesla Supercharger @ $150k per 500 vehicles adds another $300, for a total of $700-$900 total infrastructure cost per vehicle.  This is likely to fall.

I know Roger is into the seasonal storage aspect, but so far even Germany isn't doing that.  Germany is putting H2 into its natural gas grid, with a project or two to methanate it to make motor fuel.  This is the fuel equivalent of vaporware.  Meanwhile, EVs do work in the real world.

With 60% electrolysis and 50% fuel cell, you have a 30% battery. Compare that with 70% NiMH and 90% lithium Ion. That makes H2 a REAL inefficient battery.

Hydrogen makes sense for middle-class (family income $100k+) commuters, home-owners (most important demographic to start industry) because it provides for:
- large and heavy vehicles in $40k+ range with 400+ miles and wide range of utility, sedan or p-up configs
- home refueling, provided by gas, wind, or sun
Less important:
- saving the earth
- available on cars less than $20k
- fueling infrastructure in-city in commute area
- fueling price less than current gas
Who knows?
- easy for individuals or station franchises to set-up along I-states?
- easy for homeowners to set -up co-generation system for home refueling

Roger, your post cherry-picks the cost of production of hydrogen, and leaves out the costs of distributing, compressing (not insignificant) and retail sales and profit at each stage. They are also in 2005 dollars. So here's the numbers the study you cite actually estimate:

Costs in the low wind cost case range from $2.83/kg to $7.83/kg. In the current wind cost case, they range from $3.72/kg to $12.16/kg. All costs are presented in 2005 dollars (2005$)

In the recent Davis study, "The Hydrogen Transition" referenced in the original post above, these researchers start out with a target of $10 per kg, gradually working down as volume increases.

H2 Fuel cost per mile
$0.13/mile at $8/kg H2
$0.08/mile at $5/kg H2 (more than 12 years out!)

The report points out that Battery Electrics are currently
$0.04/mile at $0.12/kWh

Some regions currently have off peak EV rates as low as $0.06 kWh
Lower solar panel and install costs could push rates under $0.12/kWh

So BEVS are currently 1/4 to 1/2 the cost of operating a FCV some 12+ years from now.

The study says very plainly:

Hydrogen has, at least initially, higher private (i.e. consumer) costs associated with fuel cell vehicles and fuel and therefore some level of government incentives is likely to be needed to overcome the high initial prices and bring vehicles and fuels down the learning curve and experience economies of scale in vehicle and fuel production.

Let's not kid ourselves. No one is going to be saving money operating a FCV.

@Roger: "...stations will be subsidized..."

Nothing is free--you need to account for all the dollars coming out of all the pockets if you want to make a fair comparison.

Dirty Oil, NG, Coal and Nuclear industries have been and are still being heavily (directly and indirectly) subsidized at the rate of many $$B/year.

Why couldn't clean energy industries such as H2, Solar, Wind, batteries, EVs etc be subsidized too?

Why can't we apply equivalent fair play?

Good point, SJC and Harvey.
The initial subsidy is simply to permit some volume of production of retail H2 in order to allow production efficiency, in order to compete with established business of utility electricity and gasoline that already have over 100 years of head start. The funding required will be relatively small. BEV industry has also received some billions of funding and subsidy on each PEV sold.

Sorghum takes half the water, half the fertilizer with TWICE the yield per acre. They can get 10 tones of dry cellulose in addition to 7000+ pounds of grain per acre with DDG as a final product.

The drought will not last forever, they are already installing drip irrigation in their orchards, which farmers should have done long ago. In fact they should never have planted orchards in much of the state to begin with. The California Water Authority told them not to plant orchards in the first place, but they would not listen.

Agriculture uses 85% of the water in California, they can easily get by with less and produce more if they use water more wisely. Abundance at low prices encourages waste, farmers in California are a prime example. The southwest central valley has saline soil from excessive irrigation evaporation over the years. Sorghum can grow in saline soils and recondition the land. It is annual, so they can rotate crops as well.

California used to grow 470,000 acres of sorghum in 1967, now grows less than 10,000 acres, but the number is increasing every year, thanks to contracts with ethanol producers. California produces less than 25% of the ethanol it uses, but the number can double in the next 10 years using sorghum. They grow the crop to feed livestock anyway, might was well get fuel out of it as well. LESS land less water, less fertilizer and less pesticides than corn for the same yield per acre.