22 ms·

The case for hydrogen-powered cars

67 points by scottie_m 8y ago

DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
Hydrogen is a dream technology, but it comes with some caveats. Right now production tends to be linked to fossile fuels, either as a result of extraction, refinement, or from electrolysis powered by coal. Presently the only for this to scale and be green will be nuclear power, and the politics are poisonous around that in every way. It’s expensive to even try to build a plant, and without the political will to deal with the waste, it’s dsngerous too. Then there’s storage of Hydrogen, which is manageable, but not trivial. Transportation is difficult, but again possible to manage given enough drive to make it work. Fuel cells also currently require expensive catalysts such as platinum. I don’t see any of these problems close to being approached, never mind solved. This is a well written and comprehensive article, but I don’t feel it has answers to the central issues of scaling up the Hydrogen economy. On the other hand, Hydrogen can be green, while mass produced lithium batteries are anything, but.
- audunw 8y ago
  > This is a well written and comprehensive article, but I don’t feel it has answers to the central issues of scaling up the Hydrogen economy. On the other hand, Hydrogen can be green, while mass produced lithium batteries are anything, but. This is not really fair.. Batteries can be produced cleanly just as much as hydrogen. It's just a matter of chemistry, mining practices and cost. Furthermore, batteries is not a fuel. It is not burned. It can be recycled or reused. But I get what you mean. All in all this is a technological arms race, and it seems to me that batteries have a pretty big head start. Though it's not over until we get a battery that is made from cheap common elements that has 2-3 times the capacity of todays batteries. In the meantime I suppose hydrogen fuel for the personal transport sector has a chance.
eip 8y ago
Stan Meyer tech has been ready for mass production for well over a decade. But it can't be released until the death of the petro-dollar slavery system. Energy == Money == Power and currently the MIC has most of it. Decentralized production of energy is their biggest threat.
- pjc50 8y ago
  That's a perpetual motion fraud.
mikeash 8y ago
The one advantage of hydrogen cars, refueling speed, is not actually an advantage for typical driving habits. A hydrogen car takes about five minutes to refuel. On a typical day, a battery car takes about five seconds to refuel: you plug it in and you leave it overnight. Sure, the actual charging takes longer, but who cares? You’re not involved. On long trips, this reverses, but how often do you do those? Most people do a couple a year. You might lose a couple of hours waiting for charging there. Otherwise you’re saving minutes every week. This is something I see people having a hard time truly understanding. They see that a car takes hours to recharge on a home 240V outlet, think “that’s a long time!” and stop there. They don’t realize that it’s a time saver most of the time. Even if there was a hydrogen station on every corner, and the price was as cheap as electricity, I’d still never buy a hydrogen car. Who wants to visit a fueling station every week?
- jdblair 8y ago
  I second this. From experience, walking out of my house and driving off immedately with a fully-charged car is less trouble than going to a gas station. Still, we're a two-car family and our second car is ICE (a Subaru). Gasoline is way more convenient than electric for out-of-town weekend trips. I take these trips frequently enough (more than once per month) that I don't want to rely on renting a car every time.
- Pulcinella 8y ago
  This only works if you live in a house or an apartment that has electric car outlets installed. Most apartments have no place to plug in your electric vehicle.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    I'd assume that public parking will eventually be equipped with chargers.
  - adrianmonk 8y ago
    Apartments will probably eventually offer electric charging. It's a small investment, and they can turn it into an additional revenue stream (which they love) and/or can advertise it as an amenity that sweetens the deal of leasing there. However, will they plenty of charging stations, so that you never have to worry about moving your car so someone else can charge? That seems doubtful. I suppose they could allow a monthly lease of a reserved charging station, though.
audunw 8y ago
I think hydrogen cars is a technology that kills itself. Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas), and that a BEV is cheaper to assemble (less parts, less piping), the market for hydrogen cars is completely dependent on the price of batteries. As batteries get cheaper, and rapid chargers get faster, the niche that hydrogen can occupy gets smaller. The thing is, hydrogen cars are electric cars. It's possible some of them will even include a larger battery and become plug-in. So every hydrogen car sold will also benefit the development of better BEVs. To me, this is a clear feedback loop that benefits pure BEVs. And where will BEVs be when hydrogen cars actually hit the market with significant numbers and models? What if 150kWh batteries are standard? What if 400kW charging is standard? What if the price is not much higher? These are all within reach. It's just a matter of time, and the hydrogen economy does not seem to be moving fast enough that its got time to spare. But I fully support all subsidies and financial support for development of hydrogen fuel cells. Maybe it won't be success in cars, but it could be in other fields.
- jk2323 8y ago
  > Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas) There are other options. You can producte H2 directly from sunlight. https://setis.ec.europa.eu/setis-reports/setis-magazine/fuel-cells-and-hydrogen/mimicking-nature-producing-hydrogen-sunlight https://setis.ec.europa.eu/setis-reports/setis-magazine/fuel... And we might run out of Lithium. Or Cobalt. Or Vanadium. I doubt that we run out of Hydrogen.
  - audunw 8y ago
    Yeah, thats an interesting option. Still remains to be seen if that’ll actually be cheaper. Sounds like something that is harder to decentralize than electrolysis, which can be a downside. With electrolysis you can make the hydrogen on-site. Lithium-cobalt is not the only chemistry. I’m optimistic about alternate chemistries in the long term. Especially now that the battery market is growing so rapidly. There are massive investments in research. I doubt we’ll run out though. They’re not that rare. Besides, it’s a renewable resource, not a combustible one.
StevenPaul 8y ago
If you could remove the protons from the hydrogen then the remaining electrons could be piped through wires, vastly simplifying distribution
- CiaranMcNulty 8y ago
  I guess we'd need to suspend the wires above the carriageway?
mtgx 8y ago
There is no case to be made for hydrogen-powered cars. EVs are going mainstream full-power ahead. In 5 years there will be like 50 EV models on the market (already being designed right now).
sharpercoder 8y ago
When discussing hydrogen cars, I particularly like the blog of Mux about this topic. Part 1: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11470/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-1 https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11470/why-fuel-cell-ca... Part 2: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11493/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-2 https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11493/why-fuel-cell-ca... Part 3: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11556/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-3 https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11556/why-fuel-cell-ca... Part 4: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11572/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-4 https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11572/why-fuel-cell-ca...
- stephengillie 8y ago
  The first part is a 60-minute read. Could you summarize the thesis of the first part or 2 into a few bullet points?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - taneq 8y ago
    It literally starts with a summary: > This is an extremely long, in-depth blog series, so I'll start by giving you a summary.
  - FrojoS 8y ago
    tldr: Hydrogen cars are worse than battery electric cars and always will be.
- FrojoS 8y ago
  Very interesting! > Besides the battery, the biggest component(s) by weight is/are the motor(s). Current generation electric cars use still fairly heavy central motors with an actual axle to the wheels. Upcoming generations will use in-wheel or near-wheel motors that have almost no drive train associated with them: no transmission, no gearing at all, no weight lost to things that aren't necessary. This is one of the reasons electric cars can actually become lighter than traditional gasoline-powered cars; the chassis can be reduced because there are almost no driving forces on it anymore. Note though: this is an advantage of both battery and fuel cell electric cars! Motor on the wheel seems so obvious but still no one seems to build such a car. I’ve asked automotive engineers about this and the answer I get is often: Wheel based motor would make the wheel heavier and thereby increase rotational inertia which decreases acceleration and increases the required (kinetic) energy for a given speed of the car. I also heard that the increased wheel weight reduces the performance of the suspension. I suppose another problem is the need for two (4 for 4WD) gear boxes, since electric motors are low torque, high rpm. The author says „no gearing at all“ but how is this feasible with an electric motor? Anyone in the knows can comment on this?
unknown_apostle 8y ago
Not sure if hydrogen cars are the future. But at the least, for a few years, they will run side by side with BEVs. Definitely in the form of buses and garbage trucks. That's why I'm currently quite fond of platinum as a speculative investment. Fuel cells require quite a bit of platinum. Yet platinum has rarely been cheaper relative to other commodities like gold. I think because the market is discounting a decline in diesel engines and maybe because of recycling. (Even though platinum has been more expensive than gold even before catalysts were common.) In addition, platinum deserves to receive a geopolitical risk premium. 80% of the world's platinum is mined (at a loss!) in South Africa, which is prone to intense labor disputes and looking less attractive every day. And the next big producer is Russia. Yet above ground stock piles have declined in the past decade. In the 1+ year that I've been in platinum, it hasn't been a success. The market just remains comatose. But we'll see :-)
- ianai 8y ago
  Platinum is also something like 3 orders of magnitude rarer in the crust than gold. What it’s value needs is a use case. Gold appears in many more places than the one or two places platinum does.
te_chris 8y ago
Does anyone know anything about the potential for fuel cell tech to replace diesel in diesel-electric locomotives?
Theodores 8y ago
The only way hydrogen works as a fuel storage medium if you have more electricity than customers for it. In he Orkney Isles wind is used in this way. Hydrogen does not fit into the more popularly imagined future where renewables creates electricity that is then stored in parked cars, to be used when everyone gets home and the solar has run out.
_ph_ 8y ago
Things not so often mentioned in the Hydrogen vs batteries discussions: - just fueling hydrogen vehicles requires an substantial amount of electricity for the compressors. An electric vehicle could drive at least 10% of the distance on this electricity alone. That is not counting the compression work at any the production site and when filling the trucks. - distributing hydrogen requires trucks. In most places, the elecricity network is available. - refueling with a hydrogen vehicle is faster then recharging. But you have to refuel them at fuel stations. Electric vehicles can recharge at home or any parking lot with outlets - more and more companies have parking lots with electrical outlets.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  The charge rate on electric vehicles is very slow, though, unless you're using one of Tesla's superchargers (which aren't everywhere). I think that, when people are worrying about charge time, they're really asking, "Will charge times mean that a 5-hour trip to visit Mom and Dad now turns into a 10-hour trip, or, worse, something that requires an overnight stay?"
  - Retric 8y ago
    Batteries are rapidly approaching the point most people will want to stop before their charge runs out. ~330 mile range is available today, which is pricy, but quickly dropping. The expected 50% battery price drop within 5 years is probably going to make 300+ mile ranges become standard and likely 600+ Mile ranges will start showing up. Further once you get into the 400+ mile range territory particularly charging say during lunch can significantly increase range without completely filling the battery.
    - bunderbunder 8y ago
      I can see it charging sufficiently over lunch if you use a supercharger. And that will be great if you've got superchargers installed in the parking lot at the place you stop for lunch. But I wouldn't fault anyone for feeling like that's a pretty big "if". Especially if truck stop food isn't your bag of peas.
foobarbecue 8y ago
(In investing jargon, this is known as the "Death Valley Curve.") All this time I thought it was a biblical reference but I guess it's actually about California. Everything's about California, really, when you get right down to it.
nimish 8y ago
Hydrogen has serious technical issues compared to batteries. It is very hard to store, easily flammable, can cause metal issues -- see hydrogen embrittlement and attack -- and is basically not present in nature except as a byproduct of fossil fuel extraction. So you need to dump a bunch of energy in creating a very difficult to handle material. In comparison, battery tech gets 7-10% better each year and has the immense economies of scale of electronics, electric motors, and power electronics all driving down cost and increasing competition. There's a reason oil and gas companies propelled a lot of this development.
- mdekkers 8y ago
  Hydrogen [...] is basically not present in nature. I am probably misunderstanding the whole "most abundant element in the universe" thing. Can you explain?
  - nimish 8y ago
    Hydrogen the atom is very common but what is needed is hydrogen the gas i.e. molecular hydrogen or H2. Hydrogen is very reactive so it's usually always bound up, for example in water. Stripping off the hydrogen atoms into H2 gas is energy intensive. Since it's so reactive, it's both a pain to handle and to extract unless you have a lot of natural gas reserves, where it's relatively abundant. Or you find it in the interstellar medium but I mean good luck mining a nebula.
    - mdekkers 8y ago
      thank you for the excellent explanation!
mavhc 8y ago
Not related to hydrogen, but it takes as much electricity to refine and distribute gasoline to drive 1km as an electric car uses to drive 1km
DubiousPusher 8y ago
This seems kind of silly to me. I'm no expert but as far as I can tell, almost all the difficulties confronting electrics are known quantities that we make slow but steady progress on each year. Meanwhile this author is saying, that for hydrogen to be viable we just have to solve this one massive distribution system problem and we're good. Isn't it kind of obvious which tech is more likely to overcome its impediments? Especially since problems that can be solved in small bitsized pieces is exactly the kind of thing big corporations are good at?
notaki 8y ago
"This remains a categorical advantage over BEVs, which even under fast-charging conditions typically require several hours to fully recharge." -That's BS. Should say 30 min. to 1 hour. Hydrogen is a dead end. Toyota and Hyundai are only making hydrogen cars for the ZEV credits. https://youtu.be/UOt9KF2fsdw?t=128 https://youtu.be/UOt9KF2fsdw?t=128 https://youtu.be/zC3zM9rrUT0?t=609 https://youtu.be/zC3zM9rrUT0?t=609
nullifidian 8y ago
6000 words and no technical arguments of why hydrogen is viable or not.
Animats 8y ago
The hydrogen car is mostly a way to return drivers to slavery to gas stations. Heavy trucks, though...
vlehto 8y ago
"Most H2 is created through a technique called "cracking," which involves splitting the methane molecule (CH4) found in natural gas into two H2 molecules and a free carbon atom." You can generate methane from rotting garbage, cow dung and whatnot. Almost anything that rots. And some of it is now torched as the transport is too expensive from far away oilfields. But here's and idea: burn that methane directly in fuel cell? https://newatlas.com/platinum-free-methane-fueled-fuel-cells/17064/ https://newatlas.com/platinum-free-methane-fueled-fuel-cells... People are WAY too exited about that "only water vapor from the tailpipe!" -hype.
Justsignedup 8y ago
Isn't the problem that the _COST_ of hydrogen powered cars / fuel astronomical compared to batteries and petroleum?
pasbesoin 8y ago
I think we'll end up with enough "next generation" energy (renewable, whatever), that we'll be able to afford the inefficiencies in manufacturing "legacy", high-energy-density fuels -- and product precursors, e.g plastics -- where still needed. (Avoiding further extraction and all the pollution and environmental damage and unqualified and quantified future impacts.) And our overall carbon burden may be enough less (disregarding accumulated atmospheric load, in this arugment), that we can afford the corresponding limited amounts of exhaust. So, for common transport, I don't know whether pure hydrogen still fits in. It hasn't scaled, and it's still more difficult to handle.

67 points by scottie_m 8y ago

Hydrogen is a dream technology, but it comes with some caveats. Right now production tends to be linked to fossile fuels, either as a result of extraction, refinement, or from electrolysis powered by coal. Presently the only for this to scale and be green will be nuclear power, and the politics are poisonous around that in every way. It’s expensive to even try to build a plant, and without the political will to deal with the waste, it’s dsngerous too. Then there’s storage of Hydrogen, which is manageable, but not trivial. Transportation is difficult, but again possible to manage given enough drive to make it work. Fuel cells also currently require expensive catalysts such as platinum. I don’t see any of these problems close to being approached, never mind solved. This is a well written and comprehensive article, but I don’t feel it has answers to the central issues of scaling up the Hydrogen economy. On the other hand, Hydrogen can be green, while mass produced lithium batteries are anything, but.

audunw 8y ago
> This is a well written and comprehensive article, but I don’t feel it has answers to the central issues of scaling up the Hydrogen economy. On the other hand, Hydrogen can be green, while mass produced lithium batteries are anything, but. This is not really fair.. Batteries can be produced cleanly just as much as hydrogen. It's just a matter of chemistry, mining practices and cost. Furthermore, batteries is not a fuel. It is not burned. It can be recycled or reused. But I get what you mean. All in all this is a technological arms race, and it seems to me that batteries have a pretty big head start. Though it's not over until we get a battery that is made from cheap common elements that has 2-3 times the capacity of todays batteries. In the meantime I suppose hydrogen fuel for the personal transport sector has a chance.

eip 8y ago

Stan Meyer tech has been ready for mass production for well over a decade. But it can't be released until the death of the petro-dollar slavery system. Energy == Money == Power and currently the MIC has most of it. Decentralized production of energy is their biggest threat.

pjc50 8y ago
That's a perpetual motion fraud.

mikeash 8y ago

The one advantage of hydrogen cars, refueling speed, is not actually an advantage for typical driving habits. A hydrogen car takes about five minutes to refuel. On a typical day, a battery car takes about five seconds to refuel: you plug it in and you leave it overnight. Sure, the actual charging takes longer, but who cares? You’re not involved. On long trips, this reverses, but how often do you do those? Most people do a couple a year. You might lose a couple of hours waiting for charging there. Otherwise you’re saving minutes every week. This is something I see people having a hard time truly understanding. They see that a car takes hours to recharge on a home 240V outlet, think “that’s a long time!” and stop there. They don’t realize that it’s a time saver most of the time. Even if there was a hydrogen station on every corner, and the price was as cheap as electricity, I’d still never buy a hydrogen car. Who wants to visit a fueling station every week?

jdblair 8y ago
I second this. From experience, walking out of my house and driving off immedately with a fully-charged car is less trouble than going to a gas station. Still, we're a two-car family and our second car is ICE (a Subaru). Gasoline is way more convenient than electric for out-of-town weekend trips. I take these trips frequently enough (more than once per month) that I don't want to rely on renting a car every time.
Pulcinella 8y ago
This only works if you live in a house or an apartment that has electric car outlets installed. Most apartments have no place to plug in your electric vehicle.
- adrianN 8y ago
  I'd assume that public parking will eventually be equipped with chargers.
- adrianmonk 8y ago
  Apartments will probably eventually offer electric charging. It's a small investment, and they can turn it into an additional revenue stream (which they love) and/or can advertise it as an amenity that sweetens the deal of leasing there. However, will they plenty of charging stations, so that you never have to worry about moving your car so someone else can charge? That seems doubtful. I suppose they could allow a monthly lease of a reserved charging station, though.

audunw 8y ago

I think hydrogen cars is a technology that kills itself. Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas), and that a BEV is cheaper to assemble (less parts, less piping), the market for hydrogen cars is completely dependent on the price of batteries. As batteries get cheaper, and rapid chargers get faster, the niche that hydrogen can occupy gets smaller. The thing is, hydrogen cars are electric cars. It's possible some of them will even include a larger battery and become plug-in. So every hydrogen car sold will also benefit the development of better BEVs. To me, this is a clear feedback loop that benefits pure BEVs. And where will BEVs be when hydrogen cars actually hit the market with significant numbers and models? What if 150kWh batteries are standard? What if 400kW charging is standard? What if the price is not much higher? These are all within reach. It's just a matter of time, and the hydrogen economy does not seem to be moving fast enough that its got time to spare. But I fully support all subsidies and financial support for development of hydrogen fuel cells. Maybe it won't be success in cars, but it could be in other fields.

jk2323 8y ago
> Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas) There are other options. You can producte H2 directly from sunlight. https://setis.ec.europa.eu/setis-reports/setis-magazine/fuel-cells-and-hydrogen/mimicking-nature-producing-hydrogen-sunlight https://setis.ec.europa.eu/setis-reports/setis-magazine/fuel... And we might run out of Lithium. Or Cobalt. Or Vanadium. I doubt that we run out of Hydrogen.
- audunw 8y ago
  Yeah, thats an interesting option. Still remains to be seen if that’ll actually be cheaper. Sounds like something that is harder to decentralize than electrolysis, which can be a downside. With electrolysis you can make the hydrogen on-site. Lithium-cobalt is not the only chemistry. I’m optimistic about alternate chemistries in the long term. Especially now that the battery market is growing so rapidly. There are massive investments in research. I doubt we’ll run out though. They’re not that rare. Besides, it’s a renewable resource, not a combustible one.

StevenPaul 8y ago

If you could remove the protons from the hydrogen then the remaining electrons could be piped through wires, vastly simplifying distribution

CiaranMcNulty 8y ago
I guess we'd need to suspend the wires above the carriageway?

mtgx 8y ago

There is no case to be made for hydrogen-powered cars. EVs are going mainstream full-power ahead. In 5 years there will be like 50 EV models on the market (already being designed right now).

sharpercoder 8y ago

When discussing hydrogen cars, I particularly like the blog of Mux about this topic. Part 1: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11470/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-1 https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11470/why-fuel-cell-ca... Part 2: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11493/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-2 https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11493/why-fuel-cell-ca... Part 3: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11556/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-3 https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11556/why-fuel-cell-ca... Part 4: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11572/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-4 https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11572/why-fuel-cell-ca...

stephengillie 8y ago
The first part is a 60-minute read. Could you summarize the thesis of the first part or 2 into a few bullet points?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- taneq 8y ago
  It literally starts with a summary: > This is an extremely long, in-depth blog series, so I'll start by giving you a summary.
- FrojoS 8y ago
  tldr: Hydrogen cars are worse than battery electric cars and always will be.
FrojoS 8y ago
Very interesting! > Besides the battery, the biggest component(s) by weight is/are the motor(s). Current generation electric cars use still fairly heavy central motors with an actual axle to the wheels. Upcoming generations will use in-wheel or near-wheel motors that have almost no drive train associated with them: no transmission, no gearing at all, no weight lost to things that aren't necessary. This is one of the reasons electric cars can actually become lighter than traditional gasoline-powered cars; the chassis can be reduced because there are almost no driving forces on it anymore. Note though: this is an advantage of both battery and fuel cell electric cars! Motor on the wheel seems so obvious but still no one seems to build such a car. I’ve asked automotive engineers about this and the answer I get is often: Wheel based motor would make the wheel heavier and thereby increase rotational inertia which decreases acceleration and increases the required (kinetic) energy for a given speed of the car. I also heard that the increased wheel weight reduces the performance of the suspension. I suppose another problem is the need for two (4 for 4WD) gear boxes, since electric motors are low torque, high rpm. The author says „no gearing at all“ but how is this feasible with an electric motor? Anyone in the knows can comment on this?

unknown_apostle 8y ago

Not sure if hydrogen cars are the future. But at the least, for a few years, they will run side by side with BEVs. Definitely in the form of buses and garbage trucks. That's why I'm currently quite fond of platinum as a speculative investment. Fuel cells require quite a bit of platinum. Yet platinum has rarely been cheaper relative to other commodities like gold. I think because the market is discounting a decline in diesel engines and maybe because of recycling. (Even though platinum has been more expensive than gold even before catalysts were common.) In addition, platinum deserves to receive a geopolitical risk premium. 80% of the world's platinum is mined (at a loss!) in South Africa, which is prone to intense labor disputes and looking less attractive every day. And the next big producer is Russia. Yet above ground stock piles have declined in the past decade. In the 1+ year that I've been in platinum, it hasn't been a success. The market just remains comatose. But we'll see :-)

ianai 8y ago
Platinum is also something like 3 orders of magnitude rarer in the crust than gold. What it’s value needs is a use case. Gold appears in many more places than the one or two places platinum does.

te_chris 8y ago

Does anyone know anything about the potential for fuel cell tech to replace diesel in diesel-electric locomotives?

Theodores 8y ago

The only way hydrogen works as a fuel storage medium if you have more electricity than customers for it. In he Orkney Isles wind is used in this way. Hydrogen does not fit into the more popularly imagined future where renewables creates electricity that is then stored in parked cars, to be used when everyone gets home and the solar has run out.

_ph_ 8y ago

Things not so often mentioned in the Hydrogen vs batteries discussions: - just fueling hydrogen vehicles requires an substantial amount of electricity for the compressors. An electric vehicle could drive at least 10% of the distance on this electricity alone. That is not counting the compression work at any the production site and when filling the trucks. - distributing hydrogen requires trucks. In most places, the elecricity network is available. - refueling with a hydrogen vehicle is faster then recharging. But you have to refuel them at fuel stations. Electric vehicles can recharge at home or any parking lot with outlets - more and more companies have parking lots with electrical outlets.

bunderbunder 8y ago
The charge rate on electric vehicles is very slow, though, unless you're using one of Tesla's superchargers (which aren't everywhere). I think that, when people are worrying about charge time, they're really asking, "Will charge times mean that a 5-hour trip to visit Mom and Dad now turns into a 10-hour trip, or, worse, something that requires an overnight stay?"
- Retric 8y ago
  Batteries are rapidly approaching the point most people will want to stop before their charge runs out. ~330 mile range is available today, which is pricy, but quickly dropping. The expected 50% battery price drop within 5 years is probably going to make 300+ mile ranges become standard and likely 600+ Mile ranges will start showing up. Further once you get into the 400+ mile range territory particularly charging say during lunch can significantly increase range without completely filling the battery.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    I can see it charging sufficiently over lunch if you use a supercharger. And that will be great if you've got superchargers installed in the parking lot at the place you stop for lunch. But I wouldn't fault anyone for feeling like that's a pretty big "if". Especially if truck stop food isn't your bag of peas.

foobarbecue 8y ago

(In investing jargon, this is known as the "Death Valley Curve.") All this time I thought it was a biblical reference but I guess it's actually about California. Everything's about California, really, when you get right down to it.

nimish 8y ago

Hydrogen has serious technical issues compared to batteries. It is very hard to store, easily flammable, can cause metal issues -- see hydrogen embrittlement and attack -- and is basically not present in nature except as a byproduct of fossil fuel extraction. So you need to dump a bunch of energy in creating a very difficult to handle material. In comparison, battery tech gets 7-10% better each year and has the immense economies of scale of electronics, electric motors, and power electronics all driving down cost and increasing competition. There's a reason oil and gas companies propelled a lot of this development.

mdekkers 8y ago
Hydrogen [...] is basically not present in nature. I am probably misunderstanding the whole "most abundant element in the universe" thing. Can you explain?
- nimish 8y ago
  Hydrogen the atom is very common but what is needed is hydrogen the gas i.e. molecular hydrogen or H2. Hydrogen is very reactive so it's usually always bound up, for example in water. Stripping off the hydrogen atoms into H2 gas is energy intensive. Since it's so reactive, it's both a pain to handle and to extract unless you have a lot of natural gas reserves, where it's relatively abundant. Or you find it in the interstellar medium but I mean good luck mining a nebula.
  - mdekkers 8y ago
    thank you for the excellent explanation!

mavhc 8y ago

Not related to hydrogen, but it takes as much electricity to refine and distribute gasoline to drive 1km as an electric car uses to drive 1km

DubiousPusher 8y ago

This seems kind of silly to me. I'm no expert but as far as I can tell, almost all the difficulties confronting electrics are known quantities that we make slow but steady progress on each year. Meanwhile this author is saying, that for hydrogen to be viable we just have to solve this one massive distribution system problem and we're good. Isn't it kind of obvious which tech is more likely to overcome its impediments? Especially since problems that can be solved in small bitsized pieces is exactly the kind of thing big corporations are good at?

notaki 8y ago

"This remains a categorical advantage over BEVs, which even under fast-charging conditions typically require several hours to fully recharge." -That's BS. Should say 30 min. to 1 hour. Hydrogen is a dead end. Toyota and Hyundai are only making hydrogen cars for the ZEV credits. https://youtu.be/UOt9KF2fsdw?t=128 https://youtu.be/UOt9KF2fsdw?t=128 https://youtu.be/zC3zM9rrUT0?t=609 https://youtu.be/zC3zM9rrUT0?t=609

nullifidian 8y ago

6000 words and no technical arguments of why hydrogen is viable or not.

Animats 8y ago

The hydrogen car is mostly a way to return drivers to slavery to gas stations. Heavy trucks, though...

vlehto 8y ago

"Most H2 is created through a technique called "cracking," which involves splitting the methane molecule (CH4) found in natural gas into two H2 molecules and a free carbon atom." You can generate methane from rotting garbage, cow dung and whatnot. Almost anything that rots. And some of it is now torched as the transport is too expensive from far away oilfields. But here's and idea: burn that methane directly in fuel cell? https://newatlas.com/platinum-free-methane-fueled-fuel-cells/17064/ https://newatlas.com/platinum-free-methane-fueled-fuel-cells... People are WAY too exited about that "only water vapor from the tailpipe!" -hype.

Justsignedup 8y ago

Isn't the problem that the _COST_ of hydrogen powered cars / fuel astronomical compared to batteries and petroleum?

pasbesoin 8y ago

I think we'll end up with enough "next generation" energy (renewable, whatever), that we'll be able to afford the inefficiencies in manufacturing "legacy", high-energy-density fuels -- and product precursors, e.g plastics -- where still needed. (Avoiding further extraction and all the pollution and environmental damage and unqualified and quantified future impacts.) And our overall carbon burden may be enough less (disregarding accumulated atmospheric load, in this arugment), that we can afford the corresponding limited amounts of exhaust. So, for common transport, I don't know whether pure hydrogen still fits in. It hasn't scaled, and it's still more difficult to handle.