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At the end of the day it's a matter of infrastructure. BEVs benefit from a pre-established electric grid, end of story. Sure that grid might need improvements

At the end of the day it's a matter of infrastructure. BEVs benefit from a pre-established electric grid, end of story. Sure that grid might need improvements/hardening/modernization as BEVs become more popular, but the fundamental infrastructure exists. Hydrogen needs entirely separate refineries/production facilities, specialized transport vehicles and fuel stations, all of which must be built entirely from scratch and negate many of its efficiency benefits. A viable hydrogen vehicle market would likely need tens if not hundreds of billions in initial capital just to get off the ground and be self-sustaining; and even if such an effort was politically feasible why not put that money into BEVs where it will arguably do more good?

alex_duf 7y ago
The title of the article is unclear, they mostly talk about increasing the mix of hydrogen with methane on the natural gas grid. This requires new ways of production but is re-entering the existing gas infrastructure for transport. Most boilers and gas hobs are fine up to 10% hydrogen instead of 100% methane. It's a good way to reduce the carbon footprint of heating by 10% (edit: after reading the message from aurelwu, this doesn't make sense, it won't reduce by 10, but by less than that), assuming the hydrogen has been produced in a reasonable way (excess solar and wind for instance).
admax88q 7y ago
Theoretically you could just electrolyze water on site using power from existing grid. It wouldn't be that much more difficult infrastructure wise than building charging facilities for EV. However according to the diagram included on this article[1] the pipeline from AC power to usable thrust is 3x more efficient for battery vehicles currently. EDIT: forgot to link the article but I'm on my phone now. Some clever googling will find it for you if you're interested.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  And they’ll have to deal with the pesky fact that hydrogen gas from natural gas is cheaper than H2 from electricity. So it’s either: 1) more nuclear plants in Germany (lol) 2) increased German dependence on Russian natural gas (lol)
  - llampx 7y ago
    What happens to the carbon from natural gas once the hydrogen is extracted?
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      Ultimately becomes CO2. Because it's produced centrally, you could collect it and do something with it or store it.
      - pfdietz 7y ago
        It's possible to just leave it as carbon. The energy needed to convert methane to carbon + H2 is much less (per unit H2) than that needed to convert water to O2 + H2.
    - azernik 7y ago
      There are experiments (currently underway in Germany) to extract hydrogen from natural gas without burning the resulting carbon, leaving behind graphite powder which can then be either buried or fed into carbon-composite manufacturing.
  - the8472 7y ago
    If you buy electricity on the spot market it can be extremely cheap or even negative-priced. But the downside of that strategy is that you can only operate your facility for some times of the day.
    - ethbro 7y ago
      That's an interesting point, in aggregate. As we move towards more intermittent renewables, assuming the market remains intermittent, there's an entire new class of demand that's feasible. Essentially anything that "only needs power sometime in the next week, can soak up a semi-arbitrary amount of power, and can start/stop quickly (ideally grid-controlled)."
      - 7y ago
- rbf 7y ago
  From what I've seen on current hydrogen fuelling stations having the capacity to actually refuel a significant amount of cars are limited (because tanks have to be repressurised), if you add electrolysis to this I imagine the fuelling rate is even more limited.
seppel 7y ago
> At the end of the day it's a matter of infrastructure. No, in the end of the day it is a matter of efficiency, i.e. money. Hydrogen is just really inefficient in production, storage, and converting it back to energy. Unless this is solved (which I don't see) it cannot compete with batteries.
LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
BEVs also benefited from the whole smarthphone, e-tech explosion in general. If the car industry runs into a crisis, it tends to shut down production on a large scale, selling off stored vehicles. Off which there are a lot. This market alone is not enough to sustainable support fuel cell production at scale. Thus, you would need fuel cells for laptops and cellphones.

alex_duf 7y ago

The title of the article is unclear, they mostly talk about increasing the mix of hydrogen with methane on the natural gas grid. This requires new ways of production but is re-entering the existing gas infrastructure for transport. Most boilers and gas hobs are fine up to 10% hydrogen instead of 100% methane. It's a good way to reduce the carbon footprint of heating by 10% (edit: after reading the message from aurelwu, this doesn't make sense, it won't reduce by 10, but by less than that), assuming the hydrogen has been produced in a reasonable way (excess solar and wind for instance).

admax88q 7y ago

Theoretically you could just electrolyze water on site using power from existing grid. It wouldn't be that much more difficult infrastructure wise than building charging facilities for EV. However according to the diagram included on this article[1] the pipeline from AC power to usable thrust is 3x more efficient for battery vehicles currently. EDIT: forgot to link the article but I'm on my phone now. Some clever googling will find it for you if you're interested.

Scoundreller 7y ago
And they’ll have to deal with the pesky fact that hydrogen gas from natural gas is cheaper than H2 from electricity. So it’s either: 1) more nuclear plants in Germany (lol) 2) increased German dependence on Russian natural gas (lol)
- llampx 7y ago
  What happens to the carbon from natural gas once the hydrogen is extracted?
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    Ultimately becomes CO2. Because it's produced centrally, you could collect it and do something with it or store it.
    - pfdietz 7y ago
      It's possible to just leave it as carbon. The energy needed to convert methane to carbon + H2 is much less (per unit H2) than that needed to convert water to O2 + H2.
  - azernik 7y ago
    There are experiments (currently underway in Germany) to extract hydrogen from natural gas without burning the resulting carbon, leaving behind graphite powder which can then be either buried or fed into carbon-composite manufacturing.
- the8472 7y ago
  If you buy electricity on the spot market it can be extremely cheap or even negative-priced. But the downside of that strategy is that you can only operate your facility for some times of the day.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    That's an interesting point, in aggregate. As we move towards more intermittent renewables, assuming the market remains intermittent, there's an entire new class of demand that's feasible. Essentially anything that "only needs power sometime in the next week, can soak up a semi-arbitrary amount of power, and can start/stop quickly (ideally grid-controlled)."
    - 7y ago
rbf 7y ago
From what I've seen on current hydrogen fuelling stations having the capacity to actually refuel a significant amount of cars are limited (because tanks have to be repressurised), if you add electrolysis to this I imagine the fuelling rate is even more limited.

seppel 7y ago

> At the end of the day it's a matter of infrastructure. No, in the end of the day it is a matter of efficiency, i.e. money. Hydrogen is just really inefficient in production, storage, and converting it back to energy. Unless this is solved (which I don't see) it cannot compete with batteries.

LifeLiverTransp 7y ago

BEVs also benefited from the whole smarthphone, e-tech explosion in general. If the car industry runs into a crisis, it tends to shut down production on a large scale, selling off stored vehicles. Off which there are a lot. This market alone is not enough to sustainable support fuel cell production at scale. Thus, you would need fuel cells for laptops and cellphones.