5 ms·

Hydrogen is not simply a drop-in for petrol, like LPG/Natural gas. It is considerably more challenging to store and pump, and its infrastructure is orders of ma

by nkoren 11y ago

Hydrogen is not simply a drop-in for petrol, like LPG/Natural gas. It is considerably more challenging to store and pump, and its infrastructure is orders of magnitude harder to install than electric charging points.

brianshaler 11y ago
Couldn't orders of magnitude more people use a single piece of infrastructure? I think their point was you could live and work anywhere then go to the one station in the vicinity for a couple minutes once or twice a week to top up.
threeseed 11y ago
But as a customer I don't know or care how the hydrogen gets there. I just know that I will drive to the same gas station, use the same hardware to put it into my car, wait the same amount of time and pay for it exactly the same way I do today. Only it will be clean. And I won't involving changing my life to fit my car.
- nkoren 11y ago
  I honestly don't mean to sound antagonistic, but literally every single point you make is wrong. > use the same hardware to put it into my car It is not the same hardware: hydrogen pumps are far more complicated, difficult, and expensive than gasoline pumps. (http://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11493/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-2 http://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11493/why-fuel-cell-car...). > wait the same amount of time Hydrogen cars will always have very poor range compared to hydrocarbon-fueled cars. So for the range that you get, you will spend much more time pumping. See the blog-post series above for more on that. > and pay for it exactly the same way I do today Because the infrastructure is many times more expensive than petroleum infrastructure -- and this is not just a matter of relative economies of scale, but a fundamental attribute of hydrogen -- you will need to pay much more to recoup those capital costs. Again, read the blog post series above (I'll stop repeating this, but it holds true for every point). > Only it will be clean. Only at your tailpipe, which is a false form of cleanliness. Systemically, Hydrogen is dirty. Hydrogen production is spectacularly inefficient. The only remotely efficient way of producing it is to extract it from hydrocarbons -- in which case it would actually be cleaner to generate work by burning the hydrocarbons directly. Truly "clean" methods of hydrogen production (electrolysis of H2O) require copious amounts of electricity, which must come from somewhere, and again would be better used directly, via a battery-electric vehicle. Basically, any energy source which produces hydrogen could be used to directly power a vehicle, and would be 5x-10x cleaner by doing so. > And I won't involving changing my life to fit my car. You have already changed your life to fit your car -- by driving to gas stations! Home-charging is a feature, not a bug. Besides, if you really want to drive to a remote location to get a complete top-up of your range -- that's what battery-swap is for. Battery-swap stations are far cheaper to build than hydrogen filling stations, and can give you more range, more quickly, than hydrogen pumping. And they are truly clean, not imaginarily clean.
  - threeseed 11y ago
    You are missing the point. Look at it from the consumer's perspective. It will be identical to how they fill up their car today. Nothing new to learn. No change in behaviour. No finding new stations out of the way. No proprietary battery swaps that exist only at specific stations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7xCbmkWKkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7xCbmkWKkw
    - nkoren 11y ago
      Did you even read what I wrote, or follow the sources? Hydrogen pumping is absolutely not identical to how people fill up their cars today. And you can't simply retrofit a standard gas station to pump hydrogen: you need to build an entirely new facility. Just like a battery-swap station, except much more expensive (and therefore rarer and further out of the way). If you could simply replace gasoline with hydrogen, then your arguments might have some merit (although it still wouldn't be "clean" by any real measure). But you can't, and therefore your arguments don't.
      - ams6110 11y ago
        It's identical in that you pull up to a pump, insert a credit card, connect a hose to your car, and in about 5 minutes you are on your way. All your other complaints are irrelevant to the consumer.
- treffer 11y ago
  Why would you want to go to a gas station? Batteries improve ~15% per year ($$$ / kWh stored). It appears to be some sort of moore's law for batteries. It also means we'll see way better batteries in 10 years (4x better regarding $$$/kWh). Now with way more range and non-stop travel (2-4x) the bottleneck will be how long you're willing to sit in your car without a major break (sleeping). Such a future would be very similar to charging your phone at night. Most people can get away with just charging at night. Even if they travel. I expect the car battery capacity to grow beyond the point where intraday charging is relevant at all. And once we've reached that future going to a gas station will seem like a strange thing of the past. Yep, it might be 10-20 years from now. But we'll hopefully all watch this happen.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Also, gas stations make almost 0 profit with selling gas even today (at least here in Germany), so they’ll probably end up as midnight stores with obscene prices.
    - WorldMaker 11y ago
      The same trend holds in America as well. The low margins on gas has lead to gas pumps becoming a loss leader to encourage people to go to nearby convenience stores and now increasingly entire supermarkets and superstores. The pumps that are surviving aren't really "gas stations" in the classic Americana sense and I don't think people realize that.
watmough 11y ago
It will not take much additional friction in practical usage to remove the hydrogen car from the equation. Just as steam cars were similarly discarded from the mainst[r]eam. We didn't run out of whale oil, coal, or wood. We haven't run out of oil, but as cheap solar infiltrates as solar generation drops in price, it will make much more sense to run personal transportation on clean and simple electricity.
- mikeash 11y ago
  We didn't run out of whale oil? Weren't the relevant whales nearly hunted to extinction?

by nkoren 11y ago

brianshaler 11y ago

Couldn't orders of magnitude more people use a single piece of infrastructure? I think their point was you could live and work anywhere then go to the one station in the vicinity for a couple minutes once or twice a week to top up.

threeseed 11y ago

But as a customer I don't know or care how the hydrogen gets there. I just know that I will drive to the same gas station, use the same hardware to put it into my car, wait the same amount of time and pay for it exactly the same way I do today. Only it will be clean. And I won't involving changing my life to fit my car.

nkoren 11y ago
I honestly don't mean to sound antagonistic, but literally every single point you make is wrong. > use the same hardware to put it into my car It is not the same hardware: hydrogen pumps are far more complicated, difficult, and expensive than gasoline pumps. (http://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11493/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-2 http://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11493/why-fuel-cell-car...). > wait the same amount of time Hydrogen cars will always have very poor range compared to hydrocarbon-fueled cars. So for the range that you get, you will spend much more time pumping. See the blog-post series above for more on that. > and pay for it exactly the same way I do today Because the infrastructure is many times more expensive than petroleum infrastructure -- and this is not just a matter of relative economies of scale, but a fundamental attribute of hydrogen -- you will need to pay much more to recoup those capital costs. Again, read the blog post series above (I'll stop repeating this, but it holds true for every point). > Only it will be clean. Only at your tailpipe, which is a false form of cleanliness. Systemically, Hydrogen is dirty. Hydrogen production is spectacularly inefficient. The only remotely efficient way of producing it is to extract it from hydrocarbons -- in which case it would actually be cleaner to generate work by burning the hydrocarbons directly. Truly "clean" methods of hydrogen production (electrolysis of H2O) require copious amounts of electricity, which must come from somewhere, and again would be better used directly, via a battery-electric vehicle. Basically, any energy source which produces hydrogen could be used to directly power a vehicle, and would be 5x-10x cleaner by doing so. > And I won't involving changing my life to fit my car. You have already changed your life to fit your car -- by driving to gas stations! Home-charging is a feature, not a bug. Besides, if you really want to drive to a remote location to get a complete top-up of your range -- that's what battery-swap is for. Battery-swap stations are far cheaper to build than hydrogen filling stations, and can give you more range, more quickly, than hydrogen pumping. And they are truly clean, not imaginarily clean.
- threeseed 11y ago
  You are missing the point. Look at it from the consumer's perspective. It will be identical to how they fill up their car today. Nothing new to learn. No change in behaviour. No finding new stations out of the way. No proprietary battery swaps that exist only at specific stations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7xCbmkWKkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7xCbmkWKkw
  - nkoren 11y ago
    Did you even read what I wrote, or follow the sources? Hydrogen pumping is absolutely not identical to how people fill up their cars today. And you can't simply retrofit a standard gas station to pump hydrogen: you need to build an entirely new facility. Just like a battery-swap station, except much more expensive (and therefore rarer and further out of the way). If you could simply replace gasoline with hydrogen, then your arguments might have some merit (although it still wouldn't be "clean" by any real measure). But you can't, and therefore your arguments don't.
    - ams6110 11y ago
      It's identical in that you pull up to a pump, insert a credit card, connect a hose to your car, and in about 5 minutes you are on your way. All your other complaints are irrelevant to the consumer.
treffer 11y ago
Why would you want to go to a gas station? Batteries improve ~15% per year ($$$ / kWh stored). It appears to be some sort of moore's law for batteries. It also means we'll see way better batteries in 10 years (4x better regarding $$$/kWh). Now with way more range and non-stop travel (2-4x) the bottleneck will be how long you're willing to sit in your car without a major break (sleeping). Such a future would be very similar to charging your phone at night. Most people can get away with just charging at night. Even if they travel. I expect the car battery capacity to grow beyond the point where intraday charging is relevant at all. And once we've reached that future going to a gas station will seem like a strange thing of the past. Yep, it might be 10-20 years from now. But we'll hopefully all watch this happen.
- kuschku 11y ago
  Also, gas stations make almost 0 profit with selling gas even today (at least here in Germany), so they’ll probably end up as midnight stores with obscene prices.
  - WorldMaker 11y ago
    The same trend holds in America as well. The low margins on gas has lead to gas pumps becoming a loss leader to encourage people to go to nearby convenience stores and now increasingly entire supermarkets and superstores. The pumps that are surviving aren't really "gas stations" in the classic Americana sense and I don't think people realize that.

watmough 11y ago

It will not take much additional friction in practical usage to remove the hydrogen car from the equation. Just as steam cars were similarly discarded from the mainst[r]eam. We didn't run out of whale oil, coal, or wood. We haven't run out of oil, but as cheap solar infiltrates as solar generation drops in price, it will make much more sense to run personal transportation on clean and simple electricity.

mikeash 11y ago
We didn't run out of whale oil? Weren't the relevant whales nearly hunted to extinction?