My personal view outside of the needless complexity and lack of fueling stations, is that it's conveniently a way to ensure automakers keep us reliant on their expertise to repair and build these vehicles. Rather than the mechanical simplicity thus commodities that electrics are becoming.
As well, having China onboard with electrics ensures its future. It's mainly the Japanese and some US companies that want to push HFC. If electrics win out (and they more than likely will), everyone (including Apple) will be selling cars because it'll be mostly a software game.
I'm very much looking forward to the Tesla Model 3 reveal and putting down my preorder. Strangely enough it feels like this is going to be one of those breakthrough products for me. Alongside my Commodore did in 1986, 3dfx Voodoo card did in 1996, and the upcoming SteamVR (HTC Vive).
Great time to be alive.
[0]http://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11470/why-fuel-cell-car...
However, it's good to have alternatives. Maybe some big breakthrough will suddenly turn hydrogen into the better alternative. (This is not that breakthrough, to be sure.) So even if electric is better, I'm glad to see research like this.
I disagree that electric will mean cars are mostly a software game. Exterior look, interior accommodations, and driving dynamics still count for a lot.
Way outside my field here, but this one doesn't address cost of production, only cost of components. Platinum is about $12/kW with current technology fuel cells. In a quick googling I found a 1kW fuel cell for $6000. It is safe to assume the platinum cost is fiddling about the edges. Combine with the hunch that creating large structures out of carbon nanotubes with nickel nanoparticles arranged in a certain way isn't going to be free, and my interest ebbs quickly.
The good news of this article is that if we do somehow end up in a future where fuel cells are widely used, we will need not be constrained by the world supply of platinum… but that isn't front page news.
Or has something changed since I last looked at this?
Batteries store energy. Fuel cells are solid state engines, not storage systems.
The key aspect is that electricity decouples production from consumption.
The same can be done for hydrogen, i.e. one group of people can work on optimizing the hydrogen-electricity conversion while another group of people focuses on optimizing the renewable-hydrogen conversion.
Fuel cells are a dead end, except possibly in space travel.
If we were creating an energy infrastructure from scratch today, nuclear plants could be used in off-peak periods to split hydrogen to fuel both fuel cells and peaker plants for peak daytime use.
Fuel cells on the other hand are the only high-tech component in the system while the hydrogen can be stored in bulk.
Certainly, hydrogen storage does have its own difficulties, but they don't require nanomaterials or precious metals to solve.
The only batteries that provide similar properties are redox flow batteries, which happen to be quite similar to fuel cells.
What fuel source are you suggesting for fuel cells?