Which technology will dominate in future? Why do you think so?
Both technologies are older than combustion system. First fuel cell was designed by Wiliem Grove in 1839 based on theoretical work of Christian Friedrich Schönbein in 1838 and first electric vehicle come up in 1835 constructed by Sibrandus Stratinghem and Christopher Becker.
I can say that It doesn’t matter who win this battle, the winner will be people and Earth’s environment because we will have traffic without pollution and CO2 neutral as it is supposed. However, I can continue by many arguments why both solutions might not be so clean as we think at the first sight. It depends how the electricity is produced, how much energy is needed for producing of batteries and influence on environment in overall. And similar for fuel cell vehicles, it depends how the hydrogen is produced because decomposition of natural gas, which is most frequent way now, does not make sense with respect to the environment.
Actually, there is also 3th fighter – modern and redesigned combustion system as diesel or gasoline or even CNG which is interesting too. Again, it depends how the fuel is produced and synthetized. There has been done also big effort which is recently accelerated due to pushing down the emission limits.
Back to battery car vs fuel cell car. Even though my research field is fuel cell technology I admit that there is no reason to use sophisticated system as FC if you want to cross distance 10-15 km each day (work-shop-home triangle). Small electric car can do good job in this case. On the other hand, you can go also by bus or by bicycle, which is definitely the best solution with regard to environment.
In the case of this small electric car it is necessary to produce electricity by “green way” without burning coal or natural gas otherwise the use of CNG will be more effective and environment friendly for sure.
Electric car use battery for storage where the ratio:
The ration = (electrons released)/(protons in the system)
is always lower than in case fuel cell where this ratio for hydrogen is 1 = 2 protons/ 2 electrons. From this point of view, fuel cell car will be always more powerful. It will enable to cross longer distance and in addition it will produce heat in winter without loss of range. However, it depends how the hydrogen is stored. If we store hydrogen in metal-hydrides or even in heavy steel cylinders the above-mentioned ratio is decreasing. Lots of efforts have done in case of hydrogen storage and more efforts has to be done. I think that this ratio (electrons released)/(protons in the system) will be higher for FC car in the end especially for longer range of distances.
To sum up, we will need both technologies in near future and for longer distances the FC will be winner.