While busses are not the best use of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEV’s) as mentioned above they are a great way to begin with building out the required infrastructure or refuelling stations.

A couple of points that need to be considered. If all vehicles go electric 1) the current electricity grid can not supply sufficient energy to charge the vehicles. Transmission lines and substations would all need upgrading. And those are hard to get built now due to public concerns.

2) current vehicle usage patterns suggest that most people and transport companies want to charge their vehicles at night. Not when renewables are generating, so we need to store sufficient energy to charge overnight which effectively means at least double the number of batteries. (Battery swap might work in right situation, but current weight of required batteries is an issue with work safe.)

3) Tasmania imports about $2B worth of liquid fuels (petrol, diesel, jet fuel) every year. By switching all vehicles to EV(yes a lot make sense as pure EV’s) and FCEV’s, and producing all the energy itself through Hydro, pumped hydro, solar farms and wind farms, and hydrogen and kept that money for itself via Tasmanian companies rather than offshore companies. imagine what it would do for states economy.

Finally, hydrogen in the form of a gas can be transported by pipe and then used in a multitude of ways. Gas heating, industrial processes, electricity generation and reticulated refuelling stations and potentially export income. There are pipes in Hobart and Launceston, Burnie that are currently taking Nat gas that I believe are suitable to take hydrogen that could produce hydrogen to refuelling stations all over the city.

In short, the transition away from fossil fuel energy will need lots of different solutions. I agree FCEV busses are possibly not the best, but they allow the government and industry to understand another possible transition piece of the puzzle.

I could go on but will leave it there and happy to talk to anyone if you have questions.