Lithium is a conflict mineral. It was lithium interests who overthrew the legitimate government of Bolivia in a coup, because they wanted to just scrape the raw material and Bolivia wanted battery factories on-site. A tribe in Nevada is fighting against a lithium mine on its sacred ground. There is an issue of child labor in Africa in mines.
Lithium has all the desirable properties of a capitalist commodity. It can be extracted by megacorps and monoplized. It makes a good vehicle to exploit poor countries.
It will take many millions of tons of lithium to provide batteries for the world transportation fleet. There will be vast environmental damage from mining, refining, manufacturing, and disposing lithium.
Hydrogen is amazingly abundant. Think of oceans; salt water is ideal for electrolysis. It takes only electricity to crack water into H and O, and the "pollution" of refining is pure oxygen. The pollution of burning it is water vapor; it could be captured for potable water. Combustion engines can be adapted to burning hydrogen (think ships and aircraft). Producing hydrogen from surplus wind and solar is a good way to store that excess energy. A lot of existing gas transport and combustion infrastructure can be adapted to hydrogen.
Hydrogen is overall safer than lithium, which is toxic and all but impossible to extinguish if it ignites. Since H is lighter than air, if it escapes, it rises and disperses, rather than pooling and concentrating. And it is inherently non-toxic if it does escape. Hydrogen got a bad name from the Hindenburg, but, really, people survived that disaster because the airship burned and settled, it did not explode and plunge to the ground. How many people survive airline disasters?
Fuel cells have been used to power spacecraft for many decades. They are very well understood.
We need to invest a lot of money into starting up the hydrogen fuel economy. The efficiency of electrolyzing H from H2O is currently low, but compare that low efficiency to the energy expense of mining, refining, and transporting lithium. I see regular, periodic reports of improvements in electrolysis efficiency. Adapting gas pipelines will need work, like lining. Combustion engine tech needs research and testing. The cost will go down with economy of scale. The fossil economy is already busy coming up with technical objections to hydrogen. I say beware of PR flacks pretending to engineering cred. The objections and obstacles to hydrogen are issues of engineering, not science, and engineering responds well to money.
The market will not move towards hydrogen on its own, because lithium is much more attractive for exploitation. It will require a public investment to jump-start the hydrogen economy. This translates into pressure on politicians to support research and mass distribution of hydrogen tech.
Every dollar we spend now is saving many dollars in the future, from the externalized costs of climate disasters, lithium pollution, and political instability from conflict minerals.
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