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I have an acquaintance who has made a substantial fortune from energy focused startups (including a battery tech one) and is now working on another hard tech st

I have an acquaintance who has made a substantial fortune from energy focused startups (including a battery tech one) and is now working on another hard tech startup and they are very critical of hydrogen as a fuel. I’ve had superficial conversations with them about it but could never get a sense of their fundamental arguments. Is hydrogen a non starter or are they just protecting their investments with FUD?

Gravityloss 5y ago
They could work for cases where long distances are needed and charging is inconvenient, like for trucks. I do wonder how much the driver needs to rest, if high speed charging works during the driver's breaks. Could use overhead chargers. Ammonia is another alternative.
fossuser 5y ago
The arguments I’ve seen have specifically been about hydrogen in the context of EVs (specifically almost always as a way to dismiss EVs). - The trade-offs work in favor of EVs, hydrogen has a similar distribution problem to gasoline (fueling stations). - Hydrogen requires production somehow, electricity we already have the grid and people can charge at home - The things hydrogen is good at (lighter weight than batteries, faster refueling) are starting to become less relevant as battery and charging tech improves. - The argument that you need an equivalent charging infrastructure isn’t really true since you only need that for long tail long range trips (and also we have that now). The reason I personally dismiss people talking about hydrogen or supporting it (Japanese automakers) is it ignores the obvious current success of EVs in addition to the arguments above and it often feels like a disingenuous argument in bad faith. Specifically, someone is anti-EV and bringing up hydrogen as misdirection to make some EV thing harder to implement. The success and market uptake of hydrogen vs. EV seems to be empirically obvious at this point. I suspect because EVs could get over the chicken/egg charging infrastructure issue because early adopters could just charge at home (and most trips are short range).
- bkor 5y ago
  > - The argument that you need an equivalent charging infrastructure isn’t really true since you only need that for long tail long range trips (and also we have that now). To add: Hydrogen stations are fairly unique. It's really expensive to build such stations (millions). Plus heavy restrictions on where they can be placed. Putting up a charge station is really cheap in comparisons (think it was something like 10k for on a public street with 2 charge ports), plus you can place them pretty much anywhere (way less safety restrictions). What I dislike about EVs is how expensive they're to charge if you're not using your own electricity. At least, that's the situation in NL.
- gorjusborg 5y ago
  The chicken or egg problem with charging is one of the reasons I tend to down-weight the opinions of EV owners when talking about the future of transportation. People that own EVs have to deal with the lack of supporting infrastructure, and have a vested interest in steering public opinion to go in a direction they have already personally committed. That doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong about the future, just that they have incentives that could cause them to hang onto some bad ideas because they adopted early (and want to save face).
  - gorjusborg 5y ago
    In case anyone was wondering where the Overton window was.
cogman10 5y ago
Here a few major issues hydrogen would need to solve. * There isn't a fuel distribution system. The reason BEVs work is because everywhere has power, setting up power distribution is generally just plugging into the local grid. * Hydrogen escapes any container it's placed in. That's a pretty hard thing to deal with. Most approaches have looked at chemically binding hydrogen to something in order to keep it from escaping, but that, as you can imagine, is expensive. The other option is onsite electrolysis, but that's rather expensive to pull off. * Speaking of electrolysis, while we can get hydrogen from many sources, the one we are likely to actually use isn't electrolysis but rather natural gas and oil. Why is that? Because electrolysis is inefficient (about 20% efficiency IIRC edit I recalled incorrectly. Electrolysis has a ~70% effciency). So you have a hard to store fuel, without a distribution network, that may be coming from fossil fuels anyways. -So why do major companies like Toyota love hydrogen? Because it doesn't require them to make any major changes to their fleet. You can get a lot more miles out of the basic combustion engine design and you don't need to retool all your product lines.- edit I was wrong, looks like most hydrogen vehicles are fuel cell based. Now, that isn't to say that hydrogen has no place in the future. I think because of it's energy density hydrogen will likely play a role in the airline industry. It may even be possible that hydrogen ends up finding a place in long range shipping. However, hydrogen in a consumer car is, IMO, DOA. BEVs already exist as do their charge networks.
- effie 5y ago
  > So why do major companies like Toyota love hydrogen? Because it doesn't require them to make any major changes to their fleet. Toyota Mirai (their hydrogen powered car) is fuel cell vehicle, it uses hydrogen to power electric motors.
- mastazi 5y ago
  > You can get a lot more miles out of the basic combustion engine design Why would there be a combustion engine in a hydrogen car? I expect that there would be a fuel cell powering electric motors. Are there other ways to use hydrogen in cars, other than fuel cell? I'm not an expert.
  - 5y ago
ppf 5y ago
In this use case, hydrogen forms a fairly inefficient way of transferring energy from renewable sources to your car. As well as that, you have severe problems with distribution and storage - the pressures required are frankly terrifying as an end-user, and hydrogen embrittlement of any steel in contact with the hydrogen is also a big problem.
starfallg 5y ago
There's a lot of Hydrogen FUD for sure, but the core of the problem is storage and transport. Hydrogen is just extremely hard to store and move around pressurised. This makes it uneconomical in most use cases. There's nothing fundamentally wrong about it as a technology (if you treat it as a energy store instead of a fuel), just engineering challenges and cost.
KMnO4 5y ago
There’s a ridiculous amount of of FUD from the industry (at both/all ends). It’s a Catch 22. You need infrastructure before people will invest in infrastructure. You don’t want to invest the millions/billions in the wrong one, so people spread FUD to protect their investment. For example, Elon Musk had doubled down on battery tech, so H2 winning out isn’t in his best interest.
danparsonson 5y ago
Aside from the other points raised here, presumably there are safety concerns too - a hydrogen tank is basically a highly pressurised bomb; I'm not sure how you go about keeping that safe in a collision except making it heavily-armoured and hoping for the best.
- effie 5y ago
  It is a bomb alright, but surprisingly that is the least of its problems. The bomb can be made strong enough to withstand great majority of accidents. Of course it won't withstand some very nasty ones, but that rare possibility people could live with. The problem with hydrogen is there is no hydrogen available, we have to first generate it and distribute it to cars. So far this process is much more expensive than generating and distributing electric power.

Gravityloss 5y ago

They could work for cases where long distances are needed and charging is inconvenient, like for trucks. I do wonder how much the driver needs to rest, if high speed charging works during the driver's breaks. Could use overhead chargers. Ammonia is another alternative.

fossuser 5y ago

The arguments I’ve seen have specifically been about hydrogen in the context of EVs (specifically almost always as a way to dismiss EVs). - The trade-offs work in favor of EVs, hydrogen has a similar distribution problem to gasoline (fueling stations). - Hydrogen requires production somehow, electricity we already have the grid and people can charge at home - The things hydrogen is good at (lighter weight than batteries, faster refueling) are starting to become less relevant as battery and charging tech improves. - The argument that you need an equivalent charging infrastructure isn’t really true since you only need that for long tail long range trips (and also we have that now). The reason I personally dismiss people talking about hydrogen or supporting it (Japanese automakers) is it ignores the obvious current success of EVs in addition to the arguments above and it often feels like a disingenuous argument in bad faith. Specifically, someone is anti-EV and bringing up hydrogen as misdirection to make some EV thing harder to implement. The success and market uptake of hydrogen vs. EV seems to be empirically obvious at this point. I suspect because EVs could get over the chicken/egg charging infrastructure issue because early adopters could just charge at home (and most trips are short range).

bkor 5y ago
> - The argument that you need an equivalent charging infrastructure isn’t really true since you only need that for long tail long range trips (and also we have that now). To add: Hydrogen stations are fairly unique. It's really expensive to build such stations (millions). Plus heavy restrictions on where they can be placed. Putting up a charge station is really cheap in comparisons (think it was something like 10k for on a public street with 2 charge ports), plus you can place them pretty much anywhere (way less safety restrictions). What I dislike about EVs is how expensive they're to charge if you're not using your own electricity. At least, that's the situation in NL.
gorjusborg 5y ago
The chicken or egg problem with charging is one of the reasons I tend to down-weight the opinions of EV owners when talking about the future of transportation. People that own EVs have to deal with the lack of supporting infrastructure, and have a vested interest in steering public opinion to go in a direction they have already personally committed. That doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong about the future, just that they have incentives that could cause them to hang onto some bad ideas because they adopted early (and want to save face).
- gorjusborg 5y ago
  In case anyone was wondering where the Overton window was.

cogman10 5y ago

Here a few major issues hydrogen would need to solve. * There isn't a fuel distribution system. The reason BEVs work is because everywhere has power, setting up power distribution is generally just plugging into the local grid. * Hydrogen escapes any container it's placed in. That's a pretty hard thing to deal with. Most approaches have looked at chemically binding hydrogen to something in order to keep it from escaping, but that, as you can imagine, is expensive. The other option is onsite electrolysis, but that's rather expensive to pull off. * Speaking of electrolysis, while we can get hydrogen from many sources, the one we are likely to actually use isn't electrolysis but rather natural gas and oil. Why is that? Because electrolysis is inefficient (about 20% efficiency IIRC edit I recalled incorrectly. Electrolysis has a ~70% effciency). So you have a hard to store fuel, without a distribution network, that may be coming from fossil fuels anyways. -So why do major companies like Toyota love hydrogen? Because it doesn't require them to make any major changes to their fleet. You can get a lot more miles out of the basic combustion engine design and you don't need to retool all your product lines.- edit I was wrong, looks like most hydrogen vehicles are fuel cell based. Now, that isn't to say that hydrogen has no place in the future. I think because of it's energy density hydrogen will likely play a role in the airline industry. It may even be possible that hydrogen ends up finding a place in long range shipping. However, hydrogen in a consumer car is, IMO, DOA. BEVs already exist as do their charge networks.

effie 5y ago
> So why do major companies like Toyota love hydrogen? Because it doesn't require them to make any major changes to their fleet. Toyota Mirai (their hydrogen powered car) is fuel cell vehicle, it uses hydrogen to power electric motors.
mastazi 5y ago
> You can get a lot more miles out of the basic combustion engine design Why would there be a combustion engine in a hydrogen car? I expect that there would be a fuel cell powering electric motors. Are there other ways to use hydrogen in cars, other than fuel cell? I'm not an expert.
- 5y ago

ppf 5y ago

In this use case, hydrogen forms a fairly inefficient way of transferring energy from renewable sources to your car. As well as that, you have severe problems with distribution and storage - the pressures required are frankly terrifying as an end-user, and hydrogen embrittlement of any steel in contact with the hydrogen is also a big problem.

starfallg 5y ago

There's a lot of Hydrogen FUD for sure, but the core of the problem is storage and transport. Hydrogen is just extremely hard to store and move around pressurised. This makes it uneconomical in most use cases. There's nothing fundamentally wrong about it as a technology (if you treat it as a energy store instead of a fuel), just engineering challenges and cost.

KMnO4 5y ago

There’s a ridiculous amount of of FUD from the industry (at both/all ends). It’s a Catch 22. You need infrastructure before people will invest in infrastructure. You don’t want to invest the millions/billions in the wrong one, so people spread FUD to protect their investment. For example, Elon Musk had doubled down on battery tech, so H2 winning out isn’t in his best interest.

danparsonson 5y ago

Aside from the other points raised here, presumably there are safety concerns too - a hydrogen tank is basically a highly pressurised bomb; I'm not sure how you go about keeping that safe in a collision except making it heavily-armoured and hoping for the best.

effie 5y ago
It is a bomb alright, but surprisingly that is the least of its problems. The bomb can be made strong enough to withstand great majority of accidents. Of course it won't withstand some very nasty ones, but that rare possibility people could live with. The problem with hydrogen is there is no hydrogen available, we have to first generate it and distribute it to cars. So far this process is much more expensive than generating and distributing electric power.