11 ms·

Real Engineering did a video about this and committed the same fallacy. Engineers nearly always overlook practicality and chase perfection. Heres the thing: It

Real Engineering did a video about this and committed the same fallacy. Engineers nearly always overlook practicality and chase perfection. Heres the thing: It's not about efficiency, it's about convenience. Transferring 2700 megajoules of energy to an f150 via gasoline in a few minutes is very convenient, something that would take a Tesla a few hours. If consumers were concerned with efficiency the same way engineers were, we'd all be driving electric hummers and cybertrucks. Hydrogen isn't aiming to be as efficient as batteries. It's assuming to be as convenient as gasoline, but with little environmental impact.

ttul 6y ago
Also, it’s not just an option for passenger vehicles. Natural gas can be replaced with hydrogen in the existing pipeline network, providing distribution of heating gas at extremely low cost and with a very minimal investment in retooling of existing furnaces.
- exabrial 6y ago
  Hydrogen pipelines with probably never be a thing. It's safer and more convenient to just produce h2 at the distribution point. The oil refinery/pipeline model exists because of the difficulty in synthesizing hydrocarbons, whereas h2 is (relatively speaking) far easier to create.
  - _jahh 6y ago
    I believe OP is thinking more municipal pipes that feed individual buildings rather than a distribution pipeline like Keystone XL.
- yholio 6y ago
  Aside from blending small amounts on hydrogen in existing methane feeds, no one will do this. Pure hydrogen is a dangerous gas that burns much hotter than methane, can seep trough the tiniest of cracks that methane/propane cannot and can even penetrate the crystal lattice of common metals such as steel, leading to embrittlement and catastrophic failure under normal use. By the time you upgrade the methane infrastructure to handle it, you will build a whole network all together. And there is also an economic argument: methane/propane work because they are pure energy coming from the ground, you can only burn them to recover it. To produce Hidrogen, you need electric energy, or some very hot source that could be turn to electricity at a high efficiency. It makes zero sense to generate hidrogen in order to burn it for domestic heating, when the equivalent electric energy could give 3-5 more heat using electric heat pumps.
  - zbrozek 6y ago
    It looks like you can blend something in the neighborhood of 10-15% hydrogen into the existing natural gas infrastructure without negative consequence. That's not game changing, but it's a significant environmental improvement if you're using renewables to produce it. It's a fine way to utilize daily or even seasonal renewables overproduction in a useful way without blowing up tons of existing infrastructure. Many diverse steps - some small, some large - are needed to get ourselves to a carbon negative lifestyle.
  - mojomark 6y ago
    >>To produce Hidrogen, you need electric energy, or some very hot source that could be turn to electricity at a high efficiency. This is not a true statement... Aluminum alloys readily liberate H2 from H20 at room temperarure (an exothermic reaction generating roughly equal parts thermal and chemical potential energy - both of which of course can be used for work) [1]. The oxidized aluminum is environmentally benign and can be recycled by applying more energy to deoxydize the product. The 'purification' process is ultimately where the useful energy comes from. The energy to power the purification can come from any number of sources - but as good stewards, we opt for clean energy sources. Al smelting historically produced a lot of carbon, but thanks to R&D by Apple, there are new carbon-free alternatives for this process [2]. At my company we are researching application of this energy infrastructure loop for powering ships (where source water is abundant). Essentalially, the Al+ is your fuel (battery), and from a volumetric energy density perspective (important for ships), you can store about 2X as much as gasoline/diesel - and way better than liquified or compressed H2 storage. However, on a mass energy density perspective (important for automobiles), it is a bit worse (heavier) than hydrocarbon fuels. Again though, each application has it's own constraints when considering an energy storage medium. The automotive or civil sectors aren't the only use-cases for hydrogen fuel cells. One needs to take a look at all sectors to really grasp the global impact. A large part of my job is to explore this big-picutre aspect, because we need to understand the long term infrastructure stability/availability of potential "clean" energy supply chains, and it's VERY complex when you consider process efficiencies over the entire supply chain, raw material abundance and regeneration potential/economics/environmental impacts/speed, geopolitical forces affecting supply chains, the list goes on and on (and on). H2 is an interesting "energy storage" option and it will certainly continue to be researched and applied broadly. 1. PDF - https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/aluminium_water_hydrogen.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjkm9f-juztAhUuwFkKHbPvBL4QFjABegQIBxAF&usg=AOvVaw1bMfnlyBgz28F8mDBPA7mN https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/... 2. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/05/apple-paves-the-way-for-breakthrough-carbon-free-aluminum-smelting-method/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/05/apple-paves-the-way-f...
lowercase1 6y ago
75 kWh doesn't take a few hours with a supercharger. Doing similar with hydrogen is probably a similar level of infrastructure.
cmrdporcupine 6y ago
Except that as we keep trying to point out, 90% of EV charging occurs overnight at home, or at work during the day. Yes, that does not cover all cases for all people, but it covers a large part and the scenario people keep bringing up is the exception to the rule that would only take place if people were on road trips or there was no charging at their residence or work. Obsessively talking about charging times is a frame of reference influenced by decades of driving ICE vehicles. And frankly the hydrogen vehicle thing also seems like it is heavily influenced by this mindset as well. I can't make or fill gasoline (or hydrogen) at home. After years of "refueling" my Volt this way, I'd have a hard time giving up my "gas butler" that gives me a full "tank" every time I leave my house, and having to return to going to gas stations sounds highly unpleasant and very inconvenient.
- creddit 6y ago
  > Except that as we keep trying to point out, 90% of EV charging occurs overnight at home, or at work during the day. This isn't a good comparison at all. You're looking at the set of people who looked at the operational requirements for EVs and said "yes, this works for my needs" and then looking at how those needs are met. What you would really want to do is compare the operational requirements for EVs and the general usage of motor vehicles to see what proportion of the general usage of motor vehicles can be replaced by EVs and their operational requirements. EDIT: Even further, you would really want to know about the value of different modes of usage as well. So, for example, it is possible that users value edge case usage (such as very long trips) much, much higher than they do day-to-day usage and so still you could meet 90% of general motor vehicle usage with EVs at the same convenience but if the remaining 10% was far more valuable to end users and the inconvenience too high, it might still not be reasonable.
  - vmception 6y ago
    > What you would really want to do is compare the operational requirements for EVs and the general usage of motor vehicles to see what proportion of the general usage of motor vehicles can be replaced by EVs and their operational requirements. Okay, has this been done by anyone? Something that shows current limitations of the infrastructure and projected mitigation of those?
DarmokJalad1701 6y ago
> that would take a Tesla a few hours Even with "version 2" superchargers, this is not true. With 250kW (v3) charging, you can get to a sufficiently high state of charge (>80%) in under 30 minutes. And the thing is, given how efficient an EV is, you don't need 2700 mega-joules (20 gallons of gas or 750 kWh) to go ~500 miles. The Cybertruck will do that range to with ~100-150 kWh of battery and charge up in under an hour. This will probably get faster over the coming year as charging rates go up. And like another comment pointed out, majority of charging happens overnight or during the day when the car sits idle. I own a Model 3 myself and I have not been to a supercharger in several months.
- bananabreakfast 6y ago
  This is a point that needs to driven home. Yes, filling up gasoline delivers energy at an insanely high rate due to its density but the vast majority of that is wasted and not converted to miles driven. The real comparison is miles of range delivered per minute of fueling. And a Tesla supercharger is already competitive with gasoline by this metric. If hydrogen takes longer than gas to fill up a tank for a similar range then its already behind just charging directly.
- huntertwo 6y ago
  20 gallons of gas still only takes 5 minutes to fill. If I can get 125 KwH in 30 minutes with your v3 charging that's still a 6x multiplier, not really something you can ignore. Now you need bigger charging stations because people are spending longer at the pump or else you'll have longer lines. Adding to that, I sure as hell am not spending half an hour at a pump on an already long road trip. The lack of population density in the US, especially in the middle of the country, makes electric vehicles not a great choice for many people. I'm guessing this is why we see higher adoption in Europe on a consumer and infrastructure level.
  - DarmokJalad1701 6y ago
    I live in Iowa. It's about as "middle-of-the-country" as it gets. Lines at charger stations are really a California problem as of now. I have never encountered it driving throughout the midwest and I have gone on some long road-trips. As for taking 30 minutes to charge, what people usually do is to make sure their charging stops line up with food/bathroom breaks. Realistically, if I drive 10-12 hours in a day, I would stop about 3-4 times for food/bathroom breaks, if not more. This lines up perfectly with the range in my Model 3 AWD. In many cases, I have ended up having to get up and go get my car to avoid idle-rates because it finished charging while we were still eating. On these trips, I usually pick a hotel/B&B with destination charging so that I can get going in the morning the next day with a full battery.
aquadrop 6y ago
Using electricity usually is even more convenient, since you can do that at home, and very few of us have gas station in the garage.
manmal 6y ago
I charge my electric Hyundai with a normal power outlet, and every once in a while I fast-charge it. 99% of the time that‘s good enough already. If we‘re going by convenience, plugging in at home is probably more comfortable than driving to a gas station, waiting 5 minutes, paying, and driving back.
TheRealPomax 6y ago
and economics. If I can make an H2 vehicle for less than it cost me to make a gas or electric vehicle, it's worth my time and money to push into or even create a market that'll buy them.
deeviant 6y ago
> Transferring 2700 megajoules of energy to an f150 via gasoline in a few minutes is very convenient, something that would take a Tesla a few hours. A 75% charge can happen in ~20 minutes on something like a 250kw Telsa super charger. Battery tech and battery charging tech will only get better/faster. Also the vast majority miles driven on the road aren't "road trip" miles in which you would see the drive-to-fuel/energy exhaustion over and over for days on end scenario. When a Tesla plugs in at home and charges over night, that's actually more convenient than having to go to a gas station.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> Heres the thing: It's not about efficiency, it's about convenience. Transferring 2700 megajoules of energy to an f150 via gasoline in a few minutes is very convenient, something that would take a Tesla a few hours. If consumers were concerned with efficiency the same way engineers were, we'd all be driving electric hummers and cybertrucks. There are 2 types of convenience. - Being able to fuel up quickly on a long trip - Having your fuel tank full at the beginning of every single trip. Hydrogen fuel cells (and combustion engines in general) are better only for the former case. Since most people drive less than 300 miles most of the time, it's hard to argue a car optimized for longer trips is more convenient for most drivers.
pdonis 6y ago
> Hydrogen isn't aiming to be as efficient as batteries. It's assuming to be as convenient as gasoline And it won't be. H2 is terrible for convenience of handling compared to gasoline. Handling liquid H2 is a nonstarter, it liquefies at 21 K at atmospheric pressure; cryogenics like that are not convenient at all. Gaseous H2 will escape through every tiny gap in whatever containment setup you choose, plus it's highly flammable, much easier to ignite inadvertently than gasoline. And to top it all off, at the end of the day, its available chemical energy per unit mass is only two to three times that of liquid hydrocarbons. That's simply not enough of an advantage to overcome all the downsides. What H2 can be used for is to make liquid hydrocarbons, through various chemical processes.
- m4rtink 6y ago
  Hydrogen is also notoriously low density, even in liquid form. It embritles metals on contact. Hydrogen fires are invisible during the day (if you see rocket engineers walking around with broom pointed forward in front of them, that's why). Personally I count on hydrogen for high energy space propulsion (either chemical with oxygen or alone in a NERVA for NTR) as otherwise it's IMHO too much of a headache to work with in practice.
- aqme28 6y ago
  It doesn't just escape through tiny gaps. It's small enough to permeate through any material we use to contain it.
ericd 6y ago
>Heres the thing: It's not about efficiency, it's about convenience. >Hydrogen isn't aiming to be as efficient as batteries. It's assuming to be as convenient as gasoline, but with little environmental impact. Energy conversion efficiency is pretty important for that "little environmental impact" part.

ttul 6y ago

Also, it’s not just an option for passenger vehicles. Natural gas can be replaced with hydrogen in the existing pipeline network, providing distribution of heating gas at extremely low cost and with a very minimal investment in retooling of existing furnaces.

exabrial 6y ago
Hydrogen pipelines with probably never be a thing. It's safer and more convenient to just produce h2 at the distribution point. The oil refinery/pipeline model exists because of the difficulty in synthesizing hydrocarbons, whereas h2 is (relatively speaking) far easier to create.
- _jahh 6y ago
  I believe OP is thinking more municipal pipes that feed individual buildings rather than a distribution pipeline like Keystone XL.
yholio 6y ago
Aside from blending small amounts on hydrogen in existing methane feeds, no one will do this. Pure hydrogen is a dangerous gas that burns much hotter than methane, can seep trough the tiniest of cracks that methane/propane cannot and can even penetrate the crystal lattice of common metals such as steel, leading to embrittlement and catastrophic failure under normal use. By the time you upgrade the methane infrastructure to handle it, you will build a whole network all together. And there is also an economic argument: methane/propane work because they are pure energy coming from the ground, you can only burn them to recover it. To produce Hidrogen, you need electric energy, or some very hot source that could be turn to electricity at a high efficiency. It makes zero sense to generate hidrogen in order to burn it for domestic heating, when the equivalent electric energy could give 3-5 more heat using electric heat pumps.
- zbrozek 6y ago
  It looks like you can blend something in the neighborhood of 10-15% hydrogen into the existing natural gas infrastructure without negative consequence. That's not game changing, but it's a significant environmental improvement if you're using renewables to produce it. It's a fine way to utilize daily or even seasonal renewables overproduction in a useful way without blowing up tons of existing infrastructure. Many diverse steps - some small, some large - are needed to get ourselves to a carbon negative lifestyle.
- mojomark 6y ago
  >>To produce Hidrogen, you need electric energy, or some very hot source that could be turn to electricity at a high efficiency. This is not a true statement... Aluminum alloys readily liberate H2 from H20 at room temperarure (an exothermic reaction generating roughly equal parts thermal and chemical potential energy - both of which of course can be used for work) [1]. The oxidized aluminum is environmentally benign and can be recycled by applying more energy to deoxydize the product. The 'purification' process is ultimately where the useful energy comes from. The energy to power the purification can come from any number of sources - but as good stewards, we opt for clean energy sources. Al smelting historically produced a lot of carbon, but thanks to R&D by Apple, there are new carbon-free alternatives for this process [2]. At my company we are researching application of this energy infrastructure loop for powering ships (where source water is abundant). Essentalially, the Al+ is your fuel (battery), and from a volumetric energy density perspective (important for ships), you can store about 2X as much as gasoline/diesel - and way better than liquified or compressed H2 storage. However, on a mass energy density perspective (important for automobiles), it is a bit worse (heavier) than hydrocarbon fuels. Again though, each application has it's own constraints when considering an energy storage medium. The automotive or civil sectors aren't the only use-cases for hydrogen fuel cells. One needs to take a look at all sectors to really grasp the global impact. A large part of my job is to explore this big-picutre aspect, because we need to understand the long term infrastructure stability/availability of potential "clean" energy supply chains, and it's VERY complex when you consider process efficiencies over the entire supply chain, raw material abundance and regeneration potential/economics/environmental impacts/speed, geopolitical forces affecting supply chains, the list goes on and on (and on). H2 is an interesting "energy storage" option and it will certainly continue to be researched and applied broadly. 1. PDF - https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/aluminium_water_hydrogen.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjkm9f-juztAhUuwFkKHbPvBL4QFjABegQIBxAF&usg=AOvVaw1bMfnlyBgz28F8mDBPA7mN https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/... 2. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/05/apple-paves-the-way-for-breakthrough-carbon-free-aluminum-smelting-method/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/05/apple-paves-the-way-f...

lowercase1 6y ago

75 kWh doesn't take a few hours with a supercharger. Doing similar with hydrogen is probably a similar level of infrastructure.

cmrdporcupine 6y ago

Except that as we keep trying to point out, 90% of EV charging occurs overnight at home, or at work during the day. Yes, that does not cover all cases for all people, but it covers a large part and the scenario people keep bringing up is the exception to the rule that would only take place if people were on road trips or there was no charging at their residence or work. Obsessively talking about charging times is a frame of reference influenced by decades of driving ICE vehicles. And frankly the hydrogen vehicle thing also seems like it is heavily influenced by this mindset as well. I can't make or fill gasoline (or hydrogen) at home. After years of "refueling" my Volt this way, I'd have a hard time giving up my "gas butler" that gives me a full "tank" every time I leave my house, and having to return to going to gas stations sounds highly unpleasant and very inconvenient.

creddit 6y ago
> Except that as we keep trying to point out, 90% of EV charging occurs overnight at home, or at work during the day. This isn't a good comparison at all. You're looking at the set of people who looked at the operational requirements for EVs and said "yes, this works for my needs" and then looking at how those needs are met. What you would really want to do is compare the operational requirements for EVs and the general usage of motor vehicles to see what proportion of the general usage of motor vehicles can be replaced by EVs and their operational requirements. EDIT: Even further, you would really want to know about the value of different modes of usage as well. So, for example, it is possible that users value edge case usage (such as very long trips) much, much higher than they do day-to-day usage and so still you could meet 90% of general motor vehicle usage with EVs at the same convenience but if the remaining 10% was far more valuable to end users and the inconvenience too high, it might still not be reasonable.
- vmception 6y ago
  > What you would really want to do is compare the operational requirements for EVs and the general usage of motor vehicles to see what proportion of the general usage of motor vehicles can be replaced by EVs and their operational requirements. Okay, has this been done by anyone? Something that shows current limitations of the infrastructure and projected mitigation of those?

DarmokJalad1701 6y ago

> that would take a Tesla a few hours Even with "version 2" superchargers, this is not true. With 250kW (v3) charging, you can get to a sufficiently high state of charge (>80%) in under 30 minutes. And the thing is, given how efficient an EV is, you don't need 2700 mega-joules (20 gallons of gas or 750 kWh) to go ~500 miles. The Cybertruck will do that range to with ~100-150 kWh of battery and charge up in under an hour. This will probably get faster over the coming year as charging rates go up. And like another comment pointed out, majority of charging happens overnight or during the day when the car sits idle. I own a Model 3 myself and I have not been to a supercharger in several months.

bananabreakfast 6y ago
This is a point that needs to driven home. Yes, filling up gasoline delivers energy at an insanely high rate due to its density but the vast majority of that is wasted and not converted to miles driven. The real comparison is miles of range delivered per minute of fueling. And a Tesla supercharger is already competitive with gasoline by this metric. If hydrogen takes longer than gas to fill up a tank for a similar range then its already behind just charging directly.
huntertwo 6y ago
20 gallons of gas still only takes 5 minutes to fill. If I can get 125 KwH in 30 minutes with your v3 charging that's still a 6x multiplier, not really something you can ignore. Now you need bigger charging stations because people are spending longer at the pump or else you'll have longer lines. Adding to that, I sure as hell am not spending half an hour at a pump on an already long road trip. The lack of population density in the US, especially in the middle of the country, makes electric vehicles not a great choice for many people. I'm guessing this is why we see higher adoption in Europe on a consumer and infrastructure level.
- DarmokJalad1701 6y ago
  I live in Iowa. It's about as "middle-of-the-country" as it gets. Lines at charger stations are really a California problem as of now. I have never encountered it driving throughout the midwest and I have gone on some long road-trips. As for taking 30 minutes to charge, what people usually do is to make sure their charging stops line up with food/bathroom breaks. Realistically, if I drive 10-12 hours in a day, I would stop about 3-4 times for food/bathroom breaks, if not more. This lines up perfectly with the range in my Model 3 AWD. In many cases, I have ended up having to get up and go get my car to avoid idle-rates because it finished charging while we were still eating. On these trips, I usually pick a hotel/B&B with destination charging so that I can get going in the morning the next day with a full battery.

aquadrop 6y ago

Using electricity usually is even more convenient, since you can do that at home, and very few of us have gas station in the garage.

manmal 6y ago

I charge my electric Hyundai with a normal power outlet, and every once in a while I fast-charge it. 99% of the time that‘s good enough already. If we‘re going by convenience, plugging in at home is probably more comfortable than driving to a gas station, waiting 5 minutes, paying, and driving back.

TheRealPomax 6y ago

and economics. If I can make an H2 vehicle for less than it cost me to make a gas or electric vehicle, it's worth my time and money to push into or even create a market that'll buy them.

deeviant 6y ago

> Transferring 2700 megajoules of energy to an f150 via gasoline in a few minutes is very convenient, something that would take a Tesla a few hours. A 75% charge can happen in ~20 minutes on something like a 250kw Telsa super charger. Battery tech and battery charging tech will only get better/faster. Also the vast majority miles driven on the road aren't "road trip" miles in which you would see the drive-to-fuel/energy exhaustion over and over for days on end scenario. When a Tesla plugs in at home and charges over night, that's actually more convenient than having to go to a gas station.

ogre_codes 6y ago

> Heres the thing: It's not about efficiency, it's about convenience. Transferring 2700 megajoules of energy to an f150 via gasoline in a few minutes is very convenient, something that would take a Tesla a few hours. If consumers were concerned with efficiency the same way engineers were, we'd all be driving electric hummers and cybertrucks. There are 2 types of convenience. - Being able to fuel up quickly on a long trip - Having your fuel tank full at the beginning of every single trip. Hydrogen fuel cells (and combustion engines in general) are better only for the former case. Since most people drive less than 300 miles most of the time, it's hard to argue a car optimized for longer trips is more convenient for most drivers.

pdonis 6y ago

> Hydrogen isn't aiming to be as efficient as batteries. It's assuming to be as convenient as gasoline And it won't be. H2 is terrible for convenience of handling compared to gasoline. Handling liquid H2 is a nonstarter, it liquefies at 21 K at atmospheric pressure; cryogenics like that are not convenient at all. Gaseous H2 will escape through every tiny gap in whatever containment setup you choose, plus it's highly flammable, much easier to ignite inadvertently than gasoline. And to top it all off, at the end of the day, its available chemical energy per unit mass is only two to three times that of liquid hydrocarbons. That's simply not enough of an advantage to overcome all the downsides. What H2 can be used for is to make liquid hydrocarbons, through various chemical processes.

m4rtink 6y ago
Hydrogen is also notoriously low density, even in liquid form. It embritles metals on contact. Hydrogen fires are invisible during the day (if you see rocket engineers walking around with broom pointed forward in front of them, that's why). Personally I count on hydrogen for high energy space propulsion (either chemical with oxygen or alone in a NERVA for NTR) as otherwise it's IMHO too much of a headache to work with in practice.
aqme28 6y ago
It doesn't just escape through tiny gaps. It's small enough to permeate through any material we use to contain it.

ericd 6y ago

>Heres the thing: It's not about efficiency, it's about convenience. >Hydrogen isn't aiming to be as efficient as batteries. It's assuming to be as convenient as gasoline, but with little environmental impact. Energy conversion efficiency is pretty important for that "little environmental impact" part.