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Hydrogen almost certainly won't go anywhere, in my opinion. * The efficiency compared to battery tech is horrendous. * Hydrogen is effectively a storage techn

Hydrogen almost certainly won't go anywhere, in my opinion. * The efficiency compared to battery tech is horrendous. * Hydrogen is effectively a storage technology -- we have to generate it and compress it. Which combined with the above means that charging a hydrogen car will always be more expensive than putting the same amount of usable energy into a battery powered car. * Let's not forget that the cheapest way of generating hydrogen is from fossil fuels. Electrolysis is very inefficient. * Any concern there might exist for the effect on the electrical grid coming battery powered cars multiplies for hydrogen due to the inefficiency. * You need a large infrastructure to produce and distribute it. * It's a huge chicken and egg problem -- a hydrogen car needs hydrogen, and there's nowhere convenient right now to get it from. * In the end, a hydrogen car is ultimately electric. What is more convenient, having a car that can be plugged into an outlet, or a car that needs an extremely specialized hydrogen station? IMO the only excitement from hydrogen is for fossil fuel companies, because that's what the vast majority of it is made from, and because it'd be a fairly natural fit into their existing infrastructure. There may be some niches where hydrogen could be the better solution -- hydrogen trucks might be viable because there you can have well defined routes, and trucks have a weight limit which may not play well with batteries. But for normal cars I don't really see it.

Transrapid 5y ago
>The efficiency compared to battery tech is horrendous. nope >Hydrogen is effectively a storage technology -- we have to generate it and compress it. Which combined with the above means that charging a hydrogen car will always be more expensive than putting the same amount of usable energy into a battery powered car. Nope, 350kw charger -> loss >Let's not forget that the cheapest way of generating hydrogen is from fossil fuels. Electrolysis is very inefficient. no, newest one >95% >Any concern there might exist for the effect on the electrical grid coming battery powered cars multiplies for hydrogen due to the inefficiency. Nope you get more energy with less area used via pipeline than grid lines > In the end, a hydrogen car is ultimately electric. What is more convenient, having a car that can be plugged into an outlet, or a car that needs an extremely specialized hydrogen station? home hydrogen station exist > IMO the only excitement from hydrogen is for fossil fuel companies, because that's what the vast majority of it is made from, and because it'd be a fairly natural fit into their existing infrastructure. wrong fossil fuel companies still want to sell fossil fuels. we have to deal with emission inside cities. hydrogen cars cleaning the air while driving. battery cars still emit emissions.
- dabeeeenster 5y ago
  Astroturfing account
  - Transrapid 5y ago
    what? no!
  - epistasis 5y ago
    There are some hydrogen boosters who are "good" in that it's honest boosting of good technology. They tend to share good information about PEM tech, for example. But in the last six months they have been drowned out by misinformation spreading accounts that carefully omit any mention of natural gas' role in the next few decades of the future of hydrogen... That said, I'm not sure that calling out astroturf is appropriate on HN.
- SigmundA 5y ago
  Nope: https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2019/08/hydrogen-or-battery--that-is-the-question.html https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2019/08/hydroge...
puchatek 5y ago
I know this article is from bmw but afaik people are interested in hydrogen for other types of vehicles than cars. Ships, for instance. Forklifts. Trains. Planes will never work well due to hydrogens low energy-to-volume ratio, unfortunately.
- larshen 5y ago
  Tell that to Airbus. It will work well on 500 miles trips with 50 passengers, which is most air transportation.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    500 mile trips are easily doable with battery-electric aircraft.
    - _fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
      No way, not even close. Maybe for single seat or double seaters, but not for commercial airliners with 50 or so seats.
      - nickik 5y ago
        We already have the first 8 seater that can go around 400 miles in testing. And that is using pretty conservative battery tech. And there is a significant amount of potential optimization left. Using the batteries as load structures is just one of them, that significantly changes the simplified calculation people do on density. There are many other ideas. The problem is a lot of investment and engineering is needed and to get a passenger plane threw the regulatory process, specially something as new as E-Plane is a gigantic project. In the future battery tech will get significantly better in the next 10 years and rethinking the plane from the ground up with that technology in mind will do the trick and beat hydrogen.
        Robotbeat 5y ago
        Yeah, it is possible to do long haul (5000km or more) electric aircraft. Difficult, but possible. 500 miles wouldn’t even be a big challenge. And “number of passengers” doesn’t even appear on the Breguet Range Equation (modified for electric flight).
japanuspus 5y ago
I completely agree that hydrogen is fundamentally flawed, but from a commercial point of view it makes sense in the EU where the "Green deal" has allocated upwards of 500 billion euros for establishing a hydrogen economy over the next decade. See e.g. https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-separating-hype-from-hydrogen-part-one-the-supply-side/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-separating-hype-from-h...
- epistasis 5y ago
  Love this two part series. Hydrogen has an important role in a decarbonized economy, but it certainly isn't for cars. And it won't be ready ver soon. And hydrogen will likely be dwarfed by batteries as a storage mechanism.
larshen 5y ago
Electric cars weigh more and accelerate faster. Consequently tires and road sealing is worn more. Hydrogen cars do not weigh more.
- epistasis 5y ago
  I don't see that being generally true. For example, the Toyota Mirai weighs 4300 lbs to the Tesla Model 3 weighing 4000 pounds: https://www.caranddriver.com/toyota/mirai/specs https://www.caranddriver.com/toyota/mirai/specs https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-3/specs https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-3/specs As far as acceleration, that's just a design parameter, as both are driven by electric motors. I'm surprised the Mirai can't perform better given it's extra weight.
  - SigmundA 5y ago
    Mirai can't perform better because the fuel cell can't put out enough burst power, it needs a buffer battery as is for acceleration and regenerative braking and the buffer battery isn't big enough either for Tesla like acceleration due to size and weight constraints.
  - new_realist 5y ago
    The Mirai offers more range; it’s not apples to apples. FCEVs do have some constant overheads around the fuel stack weight.
larshen 5y ago
Diesel engines were built into trucks and taxis before they were used in passenger cars. Same thing will happen with hydrogen.
threeseed 5y ago
> cheapest way of generating hydrogen is from fossil fuels Cheapest way of charging EVs is from fossil fuels. > You need a large infrastructure to produce and distribute it But you can reuse gas stations as the delivery mechanism. Versus EVs which require all new infrastructure since the charging time is so much longer. > It's a huge chicken and egg problem No different from EVs right now. > What is more convenient, having a car that can be plugged into an outlet, or a car that needs an extremely specialized hydrogen station Hydrogen charges a full tank in < 5 minutes which makes it the more convenient solution for most of the world who don't have access to outlets at home.
- epistasis 5y ago
  > Cheapest way of charging EVs is from fossil fuels. Fossil fuel electricity is more expensive than wind and solar. Even the most expensive solar, residential, is cheaper than buying from a dirty grid for the vast majority of customers. And the intermittent nature of solar and wind is a perfect match for charging a fleet of EVs. In contrast, green hydrogen is nowhere near as cheap as fossil fuel hydrogen from steam methane reformation. The dirty secret that no hydrogen fan talks about is that "blue hydrogen" the bridge to green hydrogen, requires carbon capture technology that does not currently exist at scale. And it requires transporting CO2 back to some sequestration site, doubling the amount of transportation of gasses.
  - pkphilip 5y ago
    Battery technology isn't very "green" either. Lithium and its alternatives require extensive, polluting mining operations while Hydrogen can be generated from water, water vapor, methane etc.
    - epistasis 5y ago
      And how does that hydrogen get transformed from water? Alkaline or PEM electrolyzers, but at what environmental cost? And all the fuel cell materials? Why selectively evaluate only one side of the equation? That seems rather biased.
LeonM 5y ago
You forgot safety. Hydrogen poses some serious dangers as it is odorless and colorless if it leaks. It is very easy to ignite and it is explosive at a wide range of mixtures with oxygen. [0] An hydrogen leak in an underground parking garage will be a very dangerous situation. Obviously any dense concentration of energy will be dangerous. The gasoline in a traditional car is also highly flammable (though less likely to be explosive), and lithium reactions also also very hard to extinguish. But with both gasoline and lithium fire, you have some time to get yourself to a safe distance, with hydrogen... not so much. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_safety
- boringg 5y ago
  Odorless / colorless -- same as natural gas. Just drop in a tracer chemical.
  - barrygwn 5y ago
    Unfortunately, these tracer chemicals tend to poison the fuel cells in cars. So that is not an option
    - boringg 5y ago
      Surely there is a tracer chemical that could work.
      - HPsquared 5y ago
        The usual ones are sulfur based.
jackthezipper 5y ago
While inefficiency is indeed a problem, I feel like a lot of people overlook the one huge pro hydrogen has over batteries, namely charging time. Of course this might not be important for the daily commute, or 99% of the vehicles' use. But for that remaining 1% it _is_ a huge deal. And most people buy cars to fulfill a 100% of their needs, not 99%. Now I should say, I know basically nothing about battery tech. But unless full charging time can be greatly reduced, by which I mean under 5 or at most 10 minutes, I still feel hydrogen could have the upper hand even if it is more expensive and less efficient.
- epistasis 5y ago
  I don't think the difference between 10 and 15 minutes is enough to cause a huge problem in those 1% of situations. There are a lot of happy EV customers that go on multi-day road trips, just as they would in a gas car, without issue. I'm one of them, and will never go back to a fuel based car. That extra five minutes on road trips is far far far less than the amount of extra time that has cars take day to day, needing to stop at gas stations rather than get plugged in at the garage. The tradeoff is hugely in EVs favor, IMHO.
  - krzyk 5y ago
    > I don't think the difference between 10 and 15 minutes is enough to cause a huge problem "Charging" with gasoline is like 2 minutes. With electricity AFAIR it is more like 30 minutes (in case of fast charger or longer in case of ordinary one). The time difference is huge (e.g. if you travel with kids, every minute counts). E.g. vacation travel in Poland from south to north (very popular during vacation) takes ~8h (depending where you start), during that time I need to tank gas twice, EV would need at least 2-4 times, this would increase travel time by 1-2h.
    - eptcyka 5y ago
      I recently made a trip through Poland, and, starting with a full tank of gas, I only needed to refuel the car once. But we still made 3 stops on the way, each being longer than 30 minutes. That's plenty of time to recharge an electric car. I think the issue would be that we'd never make it if all of the cars on the road were electric - a petrol pump can service far more cars hour than a tesla super charger.
_fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
I don't really see hydrogen going anywhere for cars (except maybe as range extender there might be case). However, for certain applications batteries become to heavy to be practical, i.e. aviation, shipping, large trucks etc.
- oblio 5y ago
  Hydrogen could be great for the power grid.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    Yeah, I think seasonal storage with hydrogen makes more sense than hydrogen trucks. People often underestimate just how heavy hydrogen fuel tanks are and the required cells and especially the huge radiator you need to get rid of all the heat. I once heard that the prototype for a Nikola hydrogen truck had a heat rejection system that required just as much power as a Nissan Leaf.
    - nickik 5y ago
      Seasonal storage is a total fantasy that has no practical application in the real world if you do the math on it. Building gigantic storage with 1 year cycle is a gigantic waste of resources and even if you assume electricity to be totally free to make it pay for itself the invest most per storage would have to be like 100x cheaper then current grid storage. Hydrogen in no shape or form will every be used as seasonal storage. Hydrogen is just another form of battery that would practically have to have a 6h to a few day cycle. And in that case there are better options.
      - Robotbeat 5y ago
        Nah, that’s not true if you use a container with cheap enough cost per storage-kWh, for instance salt caverns. In fact we ALREADY use them for seasonal natural gas storage. The references to this toy model show how to get extremely low cost per storage-kWh, as cheap as 0.7 € per kWh. (So amortized over 20 years, that’s a pretty small addition to the energy cost). https://model.energy https://model.energy Details on the salt cavern hydrogen storage: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2018.05.059 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2018.05.059 Or think in context of this liquid air (or compressed air) battery. If you can get liquid air or compressed air batteries to cost $300/kWh or so, hydrogen in the same container compressed to the same degree can store about 100 times the energy (especially if sub-cooled). So the storage cost (if dominated by the container structure) drops by a factor of ~100. That’s $3/kWh for storage, if you don’t use salt caverns. Not great if only amortized over 20 years (plus the bad round-trip efficiency), but also not terrible if it’s only used for like 5% of the electricity needs. And that’s the real issue with seasonal storage: no one needs it really until you get to 95-100% decarbonization of the grid. Otherwise, best to use like a few gas turbines or something as backup/seasonal power. So investing a bunch of storage when you haven’t even built out a bunch of solar or wind, yet, is kind of suboptimal. Good to do demo plants, though, so you can get ready with the tech for when you DO need to decarbonize that last 5% or so.
kenOfYugen 5y ago
I rarely see this mentioned, but you don't have to compress hydrogen that much for transportation/storage. Ongoing research on metal hydrides is promising [1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage#Metal_hydrides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage#Metal_hydride...
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  You’re adding yet more weight and inefficiency.
Black101 5y ago
> Hydrogen is effectively a storage technology a lot like batteries and gas tanks
- aillarra 5y ago
  Hydrogen, like electricity and batteries, is an energy vector: you spend more energy producing that form than what you get from it. Fossil fuels in general (maybe not shale oil) are sources, since you get more energy than what you spend. So, their energy return on energy invested (EROEI) is positive. In this regard, we're facing diminishing returns, the low hanging fruit is long gone. This, plus resource scarcity, is going to be a huge limiting factor to growth…
  - Black101 5y ago
    We need a photosynthesis-like process that creates pure hydrogen...
natmaka 5y ago
Efficiency is not really a concern if hydrogen is "produced" during peaks of some "sources" (mainly solar, wind): the surplus of energy, which today is a burden, will be used to obtain hydrogen. Producing hydrogen may solve the "intermittence" challenge.
- shafyy 5y ago
  Charging batteries with solar and wind is much more efficient than producing hydrogen. Why would you not charge batteries during peaks?
  - new_realist 5y ago
    Because batteries are laughably costly for long term energy storage. It’s not even close; batteries will never be used for anything but short term storage.
    - boringg 5y ago
      Untrue - long-term energy storage options are being targeted by deep pocketed capital. E.g. Form Energy and Vanadium technologies. LiON batteries can't do seasonal though - short term only.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  Hydrogen is a good choice for storing peak power from renewables. Distributing all that highly flammable high pressure blow-up juice around the world for consumer use is another matter.
- nickik 5y ago
  Its a fantasy to believe that anybody would install such and absurd amount of access wind and solar that it could both cover the low production times and enough to export for use in vehicles. That simply not economical. In fact several technologies are more likely to be used then hydrogen for grid storage.
  - 5y ago
boringg 5y ago
Red Herring in that --> Green hydrogen + Solar + Wind + Energy Storage are all important components of the future energy portfolio as we deleverage traditional O&G. They serve different functions and should all be targeted aggressively. I agree a Hydrogen car is a long way away though. Many more viable options in the near term. And electrolysis and plasma based hydrogen from renewable natural gas coupled with renewable energy are going to be cost-competitive with SMR based hydrogen very soon. Faster than anyone thinks.
- reportingsjr 5y ago
  "green" hydrogen is a greenwashing term being pushed heavily by oil and gas to make people think that hydrogen is currently low pollution, sustainable material/energy storage device. Effectively all hydrogen currently produced, and this will be true for decades, is from splitting methane.
  - boringg 5y ago
    No that is factually untrue. Green hydrogen is electrolysis based hydrogen that uses renewable electricity OR plasma based hydrogen that uses Renewable Natural Gas with or without renewable electricity. Anything that is made from Natural Gas is by its very nature grey or blue (per ridiculous color definitions). The better approach is to use Carbon Intensity values but that is too difficult for the general public (and most professionals) to understand the nuances. What you are referring to is if it is possible to roll out electrolysis quickly enough using renewable electricity to ensure that our hydrogen portfolio is net zero or at least significantly better than oil and gas as current stands.
specialist 5y ago
How do we transmute those disadvantages into wins? What will it take? What are the alternatives?
jokoon 5y ago
So hydrogen busses might be viable... As long as there are enough passengers in a day, that could be a good use-case, provided maintenance is good enough.
Hypx_ 5y ago
Hydrogen is guaranteed to be the future of energy storage. What we're seeing now is the normal "reaction" from established business that fear being disrupted. It's so predictable that it's embarrassing to even see people try to argue it away on a website like this. Remember, people said the same thing about electric cars and they were wrong. This is just history repeating itself. In a decade, no one will seriously try to argue against hydrogen.

Transrapid 5y ago

>The efficiency compared to battery tech is horrendous. nope >Hydrogen is effectively a storage technology -- we have to generate it and compress it. Which combined with the above means that charging a hydrogen car will always be more expensive than putting the same amount of usable energy into a battery powered car. Nope, 350kw charger -> loss >Let's not forget that the cheapest way of generating hydrogen is from fossil fuels. Electrolysis is very inefficient. no, newest one >95% >Any concern there might exist for the effect on the electrical grid coming battery powered cars multiplies for hydrogen due to the inefficiency. Nope you get more energy with less area used via pipeline than grid lines > In the end, a hydrogen car is ultimately electric. What is more convenient, having a car that can be plugged into an outlet, or a car that needs an extremely specialized hydrogen station? home hydrogen station exist > IMO the only excitement from hydrogen is for fossil fuel companies, because that's what the vast majority of it is made from, and because it'd be a fairly natural fit into their existing infrastructure. wrong fossil fuel companies still want to sell fossil fuels. we have to deal with emission inside cities. hydrogen cars cleaning the air while driving. battery cars still emit emissions.

dabeeeenster 5y ago
Astroturfing account
- Transrapid 5y ago
  what? no!
- epistasis 5y ago
  There are some hydrogen boosters who are "good" in that it's honest boosting of good technology. They tend to share good information about PEM tech, for example. But in the last six months they have been drowned out by misinformation spreading accounts that carefully omit any mention of natural gas' role in the next few decades of the future of hydrogen... That said, I'm not sure that calling out astroturf is appropriate on HN.
SigmundA 5y ago
Nope: https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2019/08/hydrogen-or-battery--that-is-the-question.html https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2019/08/hydroge...

puchatek 5y ago

I know this article is from bmw but afaik people are interested in hydrogen for other types of vehicles than cars. Ships, for instance. Forklifts. Trains. Planes will never work well due to hydrogens low energy-to-volume ratio, unfortunately.

larshen 5y ago
Tell that to Airbus. It will work well on 500 miles trips with 50 passengers, which is most air transportation.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  500 mile trips are easily doable with battery-electric aircraft.
  - _fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
    No way, not even close. Maybe for single seat or double seaters, but not for commercial airliners with 50 or so seats.
    - nickik 5y ago
      We already have the first 8 seater that can go around 400 miles in testing. And that is using pretty conservative battery tech. And there is a significant amount of potential optimization left. Using the batteries as load structures is just one of them, that significantly changes the simplified calculation people do on density. There are many other ideas. The problem is a lot of investment and engineering is needed and to get a passenger plane threw the regulatory process, specially something as new as E-Plane is a gigantic project. In the future battery tech will get significantly better in the next 10 years and rethinking the plane from the ground up with that technology in mind will do the trick and beat hydrogen.
      - Robotbeat 5y ago
        Yeah, it is possible to do long haul (5000km or more) electric aircraft. Difficult, but possible. 500 miles wouldn’t even be a big challenge. And “number of passengers” doesn’t even appear on the Breguet Range Equation (modified for electric flight).

japanuspus 5y ago

I completely agree that hydrogen is fundamentally flawed, but from a commercial point of view it makes sense in the EU where the "Green deal" has allocated upwards of 500 billion euros for establishing a hydrogen economy over the next decade. See e.g. https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-separating-hype-from-hydrogen-part-one-the-supply-side/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-separating-hype-from-h...

epistasis 5y ago
Love this two part series. Hydrogen has an important role in a decarbonized economy, but it certainly isn't for cars. And it won't be ready ver soon. And hydrogen will likely be dwarfed by batteries as a storage mechanism.

larshen 5y ago

Electric cars weigh more and accelerate faster. Consequently tires and road sealing is worn more. Hydrogen cars do not weigh more.

epistasis 5y ago
I don't see that being generally true. For example, the Toyota Mirai weighs 4300 lbs to the Tesla Model 3 weighing 4000 pounds: https://www.caranddriver.com/toyota/mirai/specs https://www.caranddriver.com/toyota/mirai/specs https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-3/specs https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-3/specs As far as acceleration, that's just a design parameter, as both are driven by electric motors. I'm surprised the Mirai can't perform better given it's extra weight.
- SigmundA 5y ago
  Mirai can't perform better because the fuel cell can't put out enough burst power, it needs a buffer battery as is for acceleration and regenerative braking and the buffer battery isn't big enough either for Tesla like acceleration due to size and weight constraints.
- new_realist 5y ago
  The Mirai offers more range; it’s not apples to apples. FCEVs do have some constant overheads around the fuel stack weight.

larshen 5y ago

Diesel engines were built into trucks and taxis before they were used in passenger cars. Same thing will happen with hydrogen.

threeseed 5y ago

> cheapest way of generating hydrogen is from fossil fuels Cheapest way of charging EVs is from fossil fuels. > You need a large infrastructure to produce and distribute it But you can reuse gas stations as the delivery mechanism. Versus EVs which require all new infrastructure since the charging time is so much longer. > It's a huge chicken and egg problem No different from EVs right now. > What is more convenient, having a car that can be plugged into an outlet, or a car that needs an extremely specialized hydrogen station Hydrogen charges a full tank in < 5 minutes which makes it the more convenient solution for most of the world who don't have access to outlets at home.

epistasis 5y ago
> Cheapest way of charging EVs is from fossil fuels. Fossil fuel electricity is more expensive than wind and solar. Even the most expensive solar, residential, is cheaper than buying from a dirty grid for the vast majority of customers. And the intermittent nature of solar and wind is a perfect match for charging a fleet of EVs. In contrast, green hydrogen is nowhere near as cheap as fossil fuel hydrogen from steam methane reformation. The dirty secret that no hydrogen fan talks about is that "blue hydrogen" the bridge to green hydrogen, requires carbon capture technology that does not currently exist at scale. And it requires transporting CO2 back to some sequestration site, doubling the amount of transportation of gasses.
- pkphilip 5y ago
  Battery technology isn't very "green" either. Lithium and its alternatives require extensive, polluting mining operations while Hydrogen can be generated from water, water vapor, methane etc.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    And how does that hydrogen get transformed from water? Alkaline or PEM electrolyzers, but at what environmental cost? And all the fuel cell materials? Why selectively evaluate only one side of the equation? That seems rather biased.

LeonM 5y ago

You forgot safety. Hydrogen poses some serious dangers as it is odorless and colorless if it leaks. It is very easy to ignite and it is explosive at a wide range of mixtures with oxygen. [0] An hydrogen leak in an underground parking garage will be a very dangerous situation. Obviously any dense concentration of energy will be dangerous. The gasoline in a traditional car is also highly flammable (though less likely to be explosive), and lithium reactions also also very hard to extinguish. But with both gasoline and lithium fire, you have some time to get yourself to a safe distance, with hydrogen... not so much. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_safety

boringg 5y ago
Odorless / colorless -- same as natural gas. Just drop in a tracer chemical.
- barrygwn 5y ago
  Unfortunately, these tracer chemicals tend to poison the fuel cells in cars. So that is not an option
  - boringg 5y ago
    Surely there is a tracer chemical that could work.
    - HPsquared 5y ago
      The usual ones are sulfur based.

jackthezipper 5y ago

While inefficiency is indeed a problem, I feel like a lot of people overlook the one huge pro hydrogen has over batteries, namely charging time. Of course this might not be important for the daily commute, or 99% of the vehicles' use. But for that remaining 1% it _is_ a huge deal. And most people buy cars to fulfill a 100% of their needs, not 99%. Now I should say, I know basically nothing about battery tech. But unless full charging time can be greatly reduced, by which I mean under 5 or at most 10 minutes, I still feel hydrogen could have the upper hand even if it is more expensive and less efficient.

epistasis 5y ago
I don't think the difference between 10 and 15 minutes is enough to cause a huge problem in those 1% of situations. There are a lot of happy EV customers that go on multi-day road trips, just as they would in a gas car, without issue. I'm one of them, and will never go back to a fuel based car. That extra five minutes on road trips is far far far less than the amount of extra time that has cars take day to day, needing to stop at gas stations rather than get plugged in at the garage. The tradeoff is hugely in EVs favor, IMHO.
- krzyk 5y ago
  > I don't think the difference between 10 and 15 minutes is enough to cause a huge problem "Charging" with gasoline is like 2 minutes. With electricity AFAIR it is more like 30 minutes (in case of fast charger or longer in case of ordinary one). The time difference is huge (e.g. if you travel with kids, every minute counts). E.g. vacation travel in Poland from south to north (very popular during vacation) takes ~8h (depending where you start), during that time I need to tank gas twice, EV would need at least 2-4 times, this would increase travel time by 1-2h.
  - eptcyka 5y ago
    I recently made a trip through Poland, and, starting with a full tank of gas, I only needed to refuel the car once. But we still made 3 stops on the way, each being longer than 30 minutes. That's plenty of time to recharge an electric car. I think the issue would be that we'd never make it if all of the cars on the road were electric - a petrol pump can service far more cars hour than a tesla super charger.

_fizz_buzz_ 5y ago

I don't really see hydrogen going anywhere for cars (except maybe as range extender there might be case). However, for certain applications batteries become to heavy to be practical, i.e. aviation, shipping, large trucks etc.

oblio 5y ago
Hydrogen could be great for the power grid.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Yeah, I think seasonal storage with hydrogen makes more sense than hydrogen trucks. People often underestimate just how heavy hydrogen fuel tanks are and the required cells and especially the huge radiator you need to get rid of all the heat. I once heard that the prototype for a Nikola hydrogen truck had a heat rejection system that required just as much power as a Nissan Leaf.
  - nickik 5y ago
    Seasonal storage is a total fantasy that has no practical application in the real world if you do the math on it. Building gigantic storage with 1 year cycle is a gigantic waste of resources and even if you assume electricity to be totally free to make it pay for itself the invest most per storage would have to be like 100x cheaper then current grid storage. Hydrogen in no shape or form will every be used as seasonal storage. Hydrogen is just another form of battery that would practically have to have a 6h to a few day cycle. And in that case there are better options.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      Nah, that’s not true if you use a container with cheap enough cost per storage-kWh, for instance salt caverns. In fact we ALREADY use them for seasonal natural gas storage. The references to this toy model show how to get extremely low cost per storage-kWh, as cheap as 0.7 € per kWh. (So amortized over 20 years, that’s a pretty small addition to the energy cost). https://model.energy https://model.energy Details on the salt cavern hydrogen storage: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2018.05.059 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2018.05.059 Or think in context of this liquid air (or compressed air) battery. If you can get liquid air or compressed air batteries to cost $300/kWh or so, hydrogen in the same container compressed to the same degree can store about 100 times the energy (especially if sub-cooled). So the storage cost (if dominated by the container structure) drops by a factor of ~100. That’s $3/kWh for storage, if you don’t use salt caverns. Not great if only amortized over 20 years (plus the bad round-trip efficiency), but also not terrible if it’s only used for like 5% of the electricity needs. And that’s the real issue with seasonal storage: no one needs it really until you get to 95-100% decarbonization of the grid. Otherwise, best to use like a few gas turbines or something as backup/seasonal power. So investing a bunch of storage when you haven’t even built out a bunch of solar or wind, yet, is kind of suboptimal. Good to do demo plants, though, so you can get ready with the tech for when you DO need to decarbonize that last 5% or so.

kenOfYugen 5y ago

I rarely see this mentioned, but you don't have to compress hydrogen that much for transportation/storage. Ongoing research on metal hydrides is promising [1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage#Metal_hydrides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage#Metal_hydride...

Robotbeat 5y ago
You’re adding yet more weight and inefficiency.

Black101 5y ago

> Hydrogen is effectively a storage technology a lot like batteries and gas tanks

aillarra 5y ago
Hydrogen, like electricity and batteries, is an energy vector: you spend more energy producing that form than what you get from it. Fossil fuels in general (maybe not shale oil) are sources, since you get more energy than what you spend. So, their energy return on energy invested (EROEI) is positive. In this regard, we're facing diminishing returns, the low hanging fruit is long gone. This, plus resource scarcity, is going to be a huge limiting factor to growth…
- Black101 5y ago
  We need a photosynthesis-like process that creates pure hydrogen...

natmaka 5y ago

Efficiency is not really a concern if hydrogen is "produced" during peaks of some "sources" (mainly solar, wind): the surplus of energy, which today is a burden, will be used to obtain hydrogen. Producing hydrogen may solve the "intermittence" challenge.

shafyy 5y ago
Charging batteries with solar and wind is much more efficient than producing hydrogen. Why would you not charge batteries during peaks?
- new_realist 5y ago
  Because batteries are laughably costly for long term energy storage. It’s not even close; batteries will never be used for anything but short term storage.
  - boringg 5y ago
    Untrue - long-term energy storage options are being targeted by deep pocketed capital. E.g. Form Energy and Vanadium technologies. LiON batteries can't do seasonal though - short term only.
theshrike79 5y ago
Hydrogen is a good choice for storing peak power from renewables. Distributing all that highly flammable high pressure blow-up juice around the world for consumer use is another matter.
nickik 5y ago
Its a fantasy to believe that anybody would install such and absurd amount of access wind and solar that it could both cover the low production times and enough to export for use in vehicles. That simply not economical. In fact several technologies are more likely to be used then hydrogen for grid storage.
- 5y ago

boringg 5y ago

Red Herring in that --> Green hydrogen + Solar + Wind + Energy Storage are all important components of the future energy portfolio as we deleverage traditional O&G. They serve different functions and should all be targeted aggressively. I agree a Hydrogen car is a long way away though. Many more viable options in the near term. And electrolysis and plasma based hydrogen from renewable natural gas coupled with renewable energy are going to be cost-competitive with SMR based hydrogen very soon. Faster than anyone thinks.

reportingsjr 5y ago
"green" hydrogen is a greenwashing term being pushed heavily by oil and gas to make people think that hydrogen is currently low pollution, sustainable material/energy storage device. Effectively all hydrogen currently produced, and this will be true for decades, is from splitting methane.
- boringg 5y ago
  No that is factually untrue. Green hydrogen is electrolysis based hydrogen that uses renewable electricity OR plasma based hydrogen that uses Renewable Natural Gas with or without renewable electricity. Anything that is made from Natural Gas is by its very nature grey or blue (per ridiculous color definitions). The better approach is to use Carbon Intensity values but that is too difficult for the general public (and most professionals) to understand the nuances. What you are referring to is if it is possible to roll out electrolysis quickly enough using renewable electricity to ensure that our hydrogen portfolio is net zero or at least significantly better than oil and gas as current stands.

specialist 5y ago

How do we transmute those disadvantages into wins? What will it take? What are the alternatives?

jokoon 5y ago

So hydrogen busses might be viable... As long as there are enough passengers in a day, that could be a good use-case, provided maintenance is good enough.

Hypx_ 5y ago

Hydrogen is guaranteed to be the future of energy storage. What we're seeing now is the normal "reaction" from established business that fear being disrupted. It's so predictable that it's embarrassing to even see people try to argue it away on a website like this. Remember, people said the same thing about electric cars and they were wrong. This is just history repeating itself. In a decade, no one will seriously try to argue against hydrogen.