If the EV had the same range but took twice as much energy from your solar panels it would still be a far better choice than the diesel, particularly one cheating on government regulations.
Correct. My BEV would be the better choice than diesel, gas, or H2 regardless of how efficient or inefficient it was because the electricity is all free.
My point was that even if I had free H2 from my own electrolyzer, and even if somebody gave me that electrolyzer for free, my BEV is still the better choice because it doesn't put as much demand on my solar panels as making H2 for a FCEV would do.
But I don't have an electrolyzer, so if I had a FCEV I'd have to buy H2 made from fossil fuel and pay more for it than I'd pay for gas or diesel if I had an ICE gas car.
~99% of solar is grid-tied. I can export and displace fools fuel OR use it to charge an EV. What about this confuses you? Hence the 'UNTIL WE'RE FLOODED WITH CLEAN ENERGY' bit I keep repeating. What about that don't you get?
My home is grid-connected only for load balancing, which I only need because of my air conditioner. My A/C is not 100% green. It's only about 99.99% green. The starting amperage is supplied by the grid. My car doesn't use any grid energy. My batteries store energy for when the sun isn't shining. And even with those batteries, my system was still cheaper to install than buying energy from the grid.
The one thing I see missing from this discussion is a VERY good use for green hydrogen and that is in peaker plants. I think we can all agree solar and wind do have intermittency issues. While batteries can work they are in short supply and expensive. So store green hydrogen from some excess solar and wind production to use when needed. We can use a good part of the natural gas assets making this conversion relatively easy. For cars I believe batteries have a huge advantage over a very expensive infrastructure needed to support it and the higher conversion costs. But hydrogen can be a great way to bridge cloudy and/or windless days.
Batteries are in limited supply and expensive. Electrolyzers and fuel cells are in even shorter supply and probably equally expensive and fuel cells have a shorter service life than even batteries. And while battery storage just requires batteries, H2 storage requires electrolyzers to convert the electricity into H2, very expensive very high-tech tanks to store it, compressors to get it into those tanks, energy to run the compressors, and fuel cells to convert it back to electricity. And to do that on a grid scale, the electrolyzers, compressors, and fuel cells would have to be
massive!
H2 as storage for an intermittent electrical supply is a fail on so many levels that the only reason it's even on the table is because H2 is a ploy to keep using fossil fuel.