Hydrogen! The fuel of the future!

@Northwest Thankyopu - Interesting way to see it.

The problem with cracking methane to produce hydrogen is that the by-product is carbon-dioxide: may as well just use the methane!

The idea of exchanging batteries was mooted almost as soon as EVs started to appear but the difficulty is that there are so many different vehicle models, each with its own battery and electrical circuits; and the charging-stations would need keep vast stocks of batteries. They'd also need very high capacity electricity supplies.

Onr thought I had comes from Britain being littered with one-time garages, especially in rural areas, that ceased to sell fuel years ago. Some still exist on servicing and second-hand sales, a few have become car-washing businesses; other have closed altogether and many of those lie in ruins. So, thinks I, why don't the still-existing ones install electric car-charging points in place of the former fuel pumps? It seems the obstacle is that it is very, very costly to do so. Apparently: yet there is a pub not far from home that has installed two chargers in its own customers' car-park.

Very many UK motorists - including me - are unable to recharge EVs at home because they have nowhere to do so. Estimates vary but the proportion is somewhere between a third and half.

@ArishMell

Let's make sure we're talking about methane reforming vs methane cracking.

The producers today use Methane Reforming, which produces CO2, which runs into an additional process to produce more hydrogen and further reduces CO2, which ends up getting released in the air, or captured.

Methane cracking ends up producing hydrogen with a side of pure carbon. This is not the mainstream method.

There was a serious effort to create interchangeable batteries. The Chinese invested heavily, but it eventually failed due to free market economy and the inability of a single party to emerge as the standard bearer, and the reason are too complicated to list here.

The idea is to convert existing petroleum stations into fuel cell stations, using tanker trucks which should work for most existing stations, obviously with modified storage tanks, and new pumps and yes it is somewhat expensive.

The UK is not unique in access to home chargers. Cities like New York, Chicago,... with multi-story residences, and will have that problem.

@Northwest Thankyou for calrifyin gthe ways to crack methane. The only method I had encountered is taht of reforming, and one asnwer to the CO2 is puming it down exhausted oil or natural-gas wells.

I think the problem of no home parking spaces in towns is pretty well universal, and certainly in much of Europe where so many homes were built long before any sort of powered transport.

In Britain even many modern homes are like that - the parking may exist but in communal car-parks not always close to the houses.

There was a proposal a couple of decades ago even to build new estates in a way that encourages residents not to have cars, by simply not providing many parking-spaces, but I think that was quietly dropped as being neither popular nor practical. It seemed to have been based on a theory that you can build largely self-contained estates holding not only the house but also businesses and services such as health-centres and schools... only, life ain't like that!