The article focuses especially on the problem of hydrogen transportation which does indeed kill hydrogen cars together with poor efficiency. However, coupling the hydrogen storage and consumption units locally to large windmill sites and/or a large solar farms would take away the need to transport the hydrogen. On the other hand, if renewable energy does indeed become as cheap as some are expecting, the efficiency loss wouldn't be as important for energy storage.
Previously someone also raised the safety issue of storing large amount of hydrogen but I would imagine that this problem is technologically solvable and the sites could be in remote locations as a precaution.
I'm not advocating the use of hydrogen cars at all and but I so far I haven't seen anything conclusive that would categorically kill hydrogen in the energy storage business. At least during the time when we have nowhere enough battery capacity to store massive amounts of green energy.
The easiest way to understand why it won't work may be by making two columns, one for renewable/battery and another for Hydrogen.
In the renewable, write each item that will cost some amount, PV panels, Batteries, installation, maintenance, etc. and mark each one as to whether it is a one-time cost or an ongoing cost.
Now, do the same in the Hydrogen column. Drilling for petroleum, construction and/or operation costs of refineries, transportation of both the raw and finished products, energy and other costs for processing petroleum to Hydrogen, storage and maintenance of storage for Hydrogen, ongoing monitoring of storage and transportation for safety reasons, etc. This list will be quite a bit longer than the one for renewable/battery power.
It becomes reasonably obvious at a casual glance how expensive a Hydrogen-based energy system will be by comparison. Orders of magnitude more costly than the renewable strategy. Many of these additional costs for producing, distributing and storing Hydrogen are ongoing, just go down the list and mark each that is not a one-time cost. (regardless of the fact that some infrastructure already exist, there are operational costs to tally up).
This list doesn't include environmental costs, as Hydrogen production from fossil fuel will add to the Carbon problem as well.
On the back of a napkin it should become blatantly clear how much the costs of Hydrogen will price it out of being competitive with renewables on a Kw by Kw basis. Beyond that, add up the ongoing costs for Hydrogen like safety, complexity of maintenance, and other recurring costs that Hydrogen will have and renewables/battery options won't.
The only practical reason to throw time and money at Hydrogen is to prop up a declining industry responsible for getting us into the mess we are trying to extract ourselves from by moving away from fossil fuels.
If we are going to make use of the assets of the petroleum industry, perhaps applying drilling rigs for geothermal energy production might be a better use of those resources.
Here's a good overview of the potential energy sources in a recent episode of Answers with Joe.
As a whole, this all bodes quite well for TSLA's position in the long term.
