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Hydrogen Is Not a Fuel, It’s a Cult

26 points by elorant 5y ago

kayodelycaon 5y ago
Since they talk about using methane to create hydrogen, why not use methane directly? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_vehicle
- pintxo 5y ago
  I understood this as hydrogen from methane is todays method of choice to generate hydrogen for industrial use. Not as proposal for the future.
- hannob 5y ago
  They don't talk about using methane to create hydrogen, that's the standard how it's done today. But that's terrible, because it creates huge amounts of CO2. There is some debate whether to use methane reforming with CCS, though it's pretty controversial and there are some huge questionmarks whether that can deliver what's promised. But you can't do that in any practical way in a vehicle.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    Doesn't methane reforming also create CO2? It's the same chemical reaction at bottom.
- buescher 5y ago
  The thinking has been that the efficiency of steam reforming of methane to hydrogen (up to 75%) times the efficiency of fuel cells (claimed to be up to ~60% today) gives you system efficiency that is substantially better than conventional engines. There's problems with that, but I'm not prepared to write an essay on them.
- MisterTea 5y ago
  There are methane fuel cells which operate on methane directly. No need to decompose the gas (edit: no need to decompose externally). The main issues are the current methane fuel cells operate at very high temperatures of around 1000 C (built in steam reforming) requiring exotic materials. There are low temp catalyst materials in labs but they are consumable and have impractical service life.
  - ephbit 5y ago
    Methanol operated fuel cells appear to be more promising for applications like vehicles.
pixelgeek 5y ago
Would be nice if he could divorce the opinion from the reporting in the piece. The use of the word 'cult' to describe people who disagree with you is also not only annoying but flags the article as being too opinion driven to be worth reading. Anyone know of any factual articles about the issue?
- jacquesm 5y ago
  I can see the point though, even HN has seen some of this hydrogen cult stuff. Utter uncritical acceptance of anything hydrogen related while at the same time denying everything else.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    >"Utter uncritical acceptance of anything hydrogen related while at the same time denying everything else." I think the GP is warning against sentiments like this. It is really easy to declare someone who is passionate about something to have arrived at their stance due to uncritical acceptance. But, how do we actually know someone has arrived at their position because of "uncritical acceptance"? For instance, I am an advocate of nuclear energy and I'm sure many anti-nuclear folks out there believe that I have uncritically endorsed fission without thinking about the risks. But I certainly have thought about it. I am also of the opinion that the current state of renewables is in no way sufficient to actually solve our energy needs. In a way, it does sound like I am denying everything else. But I would counter that by saying I have good reason to hold that position.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      I give you exhibit one: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Hypx_ https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Hypx_ You'll need showdead on and scroll back through their comment history to see what I'm getting at, but if that doesn't leave you convinced then I would not know what to do next.
  - pixelgeek 5y ago
    I am not arguing against his thesis. The presentation and tone just puts me off. And even if he is correct, that doesn't give one the moral authority to look down your nose at the opposing camp. Its difficult to say that someone else swallowed the Kool-aid when you sound like you drank some of your own.
raxxorrax 5y ago
Wind and solar have phases of overproduction and hydrogen generation seems sensible here, especially if you scale up generation, the article is wrong here. If you should wait for a hydrogen car instead of a battery one is indeed questionable. I also think that storing hydrogen will always be difficult. But as a fuel cell it might have its uses. This isn't about either/or. Far more cultish is the idea that says otherwise.
- drcongo 5y ago
  Forbes is just a vanity blog at this point, I've no idea why it keeps getting posted here.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Wind and solar over production can be stored in superconducting loops (this is pretty common in places where the grid is weak and large amounts of windpower are connected), batteries, pumped storage, supercaps and a whole host of other possible storage methods. Compared to those Hydrogen production and subsequent conversion back into energy is pretty clunky.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    It may be clunky, but is it more expensive? Other than pumped storage, the options you listed sound expensive per Watthour, and pumped storage is not available everywhere. Hydrogen should have around 50% round trip efficiency from electricity back to electricity and it can (partially?) reuse existing infrastructure for natural gas.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Yes, compared to generation they are very expensive. But so is a hydrogen installation of any capacity. The trick is to have enough of it to be able to level the peaks in both demand and surplus production. You're not going to store days or weeks worth of capacity like that, the function is closer to a capacitor than it is to a long term storage medium.
    - 5y ago
Mvandenbergh 5y ago
This is nonsense. This guy is an automotive journalist and if he or his editors had used "Hydrogen personal cars are a cult," he would have had a point and I would have agreed with him. Literally everything he has said is specifically about hydrogen cars. "These ideas appear to have been propagated to delay the uptake of battery-electric vehicles. In Europe at least, it doesn’t seem to be working yet, with every month an improvement on the last for EV sales." Have they been propagated for that purpose? I don't think they have. "The UK government is also putting a lot of emphasis on hydrogen, with some dramatic numbers about how many jobs could be created and how much the industry could be worth by 2050 (100,000 jobs and £13 billion / $17 billion). The UK has already switched a lot of its generation grid to renewables, particularly wind, which sometimes now supplies over half the country’s electricity. But that still doesn’t mean there will be loads of surplus to be used for producing hydrogen." By 2035, the UK will have more offshore wind nameplate capacity than the forecast Average Cold Spell consumption peak. When you combine that with onshore wind, and solar PV it actually does mean a lot of instantaneous surplus. Some of that will go into charging chemical batteries but even after that, there's a lot of MWhs going spare looking for a home. The poor efficiency of electrolysis is a lot less important at that point that electrolyser capex.
- pjc50 5y ago
  The problem is that hydrogen is a submarine; most of the people advertising it at the moment come from the natural gas industry, and they want to sell H2 from natural gas as a "stopgap" and hope that nobody asks where the CO2 goes in practice. You could make it from electrolysis, but unless you check all the time, that's not where it actually comes from.
  - LinAGKar 5y ago
    Doesn't the same thing apply to electricity though? In some countries, quite a bit of it comes from coal
    - danaris 5y ago
      To some extent, yes, but as I understand it, the effort and expenditure needed to produce hydrogen purely by electrolysis (so-called "green hydrogen") is fairly significant—and, perhaps more importantly, is a separate expenditure from that required to green our electrical grid, which is an effort that's already underway in many places and more or less guaranteed to eventually complete, barring further shenanigans on the part of the fossil fuel industry.
yboris 5y ago
There's a great video (by Undecided with Matt Ferrell) on a "breakthrough" technology that might work for hydrogen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7CCq4oBgw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7CCq4oBgw4 The gist is that a company has found a way to store hydrogen energy using solid storage film that is compact, light, reusable, and durable. So "fueling" the car would be swapping out a small object (rather like a data tape).
jcfrei 5y ago
It's not a cult. But as alluded to in the article it's an attempt by a dying business model to amortize some of their investments. A move to BEVs breaks lots of business models. For example when people stop refueling: Gas station shops lose customers, fuel transportation companies lose contracts, technicians maintaining the pump systems lose jobs, etc. Lower maintenance BEVs also mean: Less work for car mechanics, lower sale of ICE maintenance products, like lubricants, less parts in a BEV also means less work for lots of automotive suppliers, etc. Using hydrogen instead of batteries could save or at least extend the lifetime of a lot of these business models. That's why these companies try to push hydrogen so hard.
- pixelgeek 5y ago
  > It's not a cult. It never is. It is often, in my experience, a marker of a particular [political bias on the part of the author. > A move to BEVs breaks lots of business models. There are going to be a lot of dramatic changes coming and it is interesting to see just how little we are doing to take them into account.
darksaints 5y ago
This is by far the dumbest take I've ever seen on the matter. No, people aren't obsessed with hydrogen because they can fill up in 5 minutes, because for the vast majority of car buyers, charging at home is an even better idea. Hydrogen cars are unlikely to ever take hold outside of maybe the taxi market, which is why so few automakers are investing in them. But there is a massively promising market for hydrogen trucks and other long haul transport. There is a reason why the company that actually released the first electric truck has invested billions more in hydrogen research. It's all about the energy density.
- qdog 5y ago
  I constantly see people say they won't buy an EV because of recharge times and not being able to go on a 'road trip'. There seems to be some misunderstanding about how easy it will be to add hydrogen filling stations vs charging stations. While I don't know the % of people that actually care about charge/filling times, there are always some comments. I mean, I know someone in real life that says that, or at least did, and could certainly afford a Tesla, but still chooses a gas vehicle. Now, will they eventually come around? Maybe, but a refillable combustion engine burning hydrogen certainly has some marketability, and perhaps some companies (like Toyota) made a miscalculation on how easy it would be to get people into EVs vs actually developing Hydrogen vehicles. I have a hard time understanding why Toyota has so little in EV offerings if this is not the case (and Toyota's advertising in Japan still doesn't mention full EV as the future).
  - ephbit 5y ago
    Methanol powered fuel cell electric vehicles FCEV appear very promising to me. Filling up methanol is much more convenient than hydrogen or charging a BEV. The hurdles are of course that fuel cells are more complex and apparently not yet reliable and cheap enough to compete with batteries. Also, the overall energy efficiency of FCEV will obviously never be on par with BEV. My belief is that if enough big players in the truck/car/... industry invest heavily in advancing fuel cell technology ... then the huge advantage of ease/convenience of use (and also the independance from electrical grid) will make FCEV the most used tech in the long term.
kurthr 5y ago
Although it’s qualified later in the article, this headline is pretty wrong. There are definitely use cases for hydrogen…. It’s just not cars or utilities. For an example, see this aircraft Hertz talk from ZeroAvia, as well as other posts to HN. https://youtu.be/e6c2Dmh4Sq4 https://youtu.be/e6c2Dmh4Sq4
- pixelgeek 5y ago
  That is why I dug into the article a bit further. Editorial teams in sites are notorious for taking the author's suggested title and replacing it with clickbait BS. That said, he uses the term in the article himself
dragontamer 5y ago
Hydrogen makes more sense when you consider that fillup stations are built with concrete and steel... while electric is full of SiC MOSFETs, expensive electronics, and a ton of copper to pass through 2MW of electricity. There's a tradeoff of course. What's easier for refueling stations is less convenient for the consumer. But if you're a fleet operator (ex: Delivery trucks or Semi-trucks), suddenly you care more about the cost of refueling stations. So I dunno, lets have the methodologies compete and may the best tech win? I'm mostly just happy that a variety of alternative fuels are competing now.
- masklinn 5y ago
  > But if you're a fleet operator (ex: Delivery trucks or Semi-trucks), suddenly you care more about the cost of refuelling stations. The concrete and steel station of hydrogen refuelling is quite a few steps (miles) beyond petrol though, and the danger (and thus the additional security risks) are in an entirely different realm as well. > So I dunno, lets have the methodologies compete and may the best tech win? The problem is... compete how? Because currently electricity has already won (if we ignore the elephant of fossil fuels in the room).
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    > The problem is... compete how? https://www.reuters.com/article/olympics-2022-energy-hydrogen-idCNL1N2SR0GD https://www.reuters.com/article/olympics-2022-energy-hydroge... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-hydrogen-olympics-lit-a-torch-for-the-clean-fuels-future1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-hydrogen-olym... By building and testing Hydrogen solutions. You may declare it over, except everyone sees the problem with electric and is continuing to try to make progress on this front.
    - masklinn 5y ago
      Well done getting smoked by the fossil fuel industry and their attempt to sell their dirty hydrogen as a transition fuel. > clean-burning fuel [...] as long as you make the hydrogen from a clean source that's one hell of a footnote you've got here, because currently 95% of hydrogen production is not that.
nixpulvis 5y ago
It feels like the main two factors for EVs in play here are efficency and charge rate. Greater efficency the more green, while faster charge rate the more like what we're used to, therefor adoption. Not to mention longevity, which is already degrading across the board.
sleepysysadmin 5y ago
Hydrogen is a fuel. I suspect trains in north america will be converted to hydrogen first and later move to battery electric when better batteries and charging at that scale become available. We missed the window of converting our rail to electric overhead. The extreme subsidies for truckers also negatively impacts rail investment. Planes might be replaced with blimps. Hydrogen blimps with hydrogen storage on board outperforms any boat in terms of cost to move goods. Going from nyc to los angeles would be much longer, similar to driving across, but what if the blimp is like a resort or night train where you're given a room and beds? Have entertainment options. Though really what the OP is about. Hydrogen isn't an option for cars. The japanese government made some decisions and now Toyota and Honda are pretty far behind. Even where Toyota in the USA with bzx4. We dont technically know yet but it seems like their battery sucks. They likely intended 150kw single motor and then 300kw dual motor. Yet their abysmal 160kw dual motor signifies their battery is trash. It's also tremendously small. They are targeting lower cost, which is fine, but low cost new platforms? They are going to have a bad time. If toyota and honda are smart, they'll see their hydrogen call value in other transportation fields like blimps.
garbagecoder 5y ago
Forbes is basically a blog site now, like HuffPo for non lefties.
meatsauce 5y ago
This article is a good example of "those who can't do, preach." Author doesn't seem to have any subject expertise beyond journalism and academia. Also, UK energy source is 73% fossil. Wind/solar will never be able to produce more than a fraction of what we need. And this is not even mentioning the energy and materials demand that such "renewables" require. "Renewable" technology is simply not renewable because there's a finite amount of resources available on the planet. The high price tag of the technology is also a blocking factor. If everyone went out and purchased EVs, the power grid would collapse. Plus there is a finite amount of lithium we need to make all the batteries we need. If demand for EV was higher, we'd need to slash and strip far more of the earth's surface than "green" energy activists would admit. Some estimates put our lithium available at 50MM tons, and we'd run out by 2040 if EVs were adopted at the same level as CV. They may not preclude EV, new battery technology can be developed, but you still need to charge them. Unless there is some major breakthrough, the solution for this is nuclear. But these facts doesn't stop those pushing the green energy, lobbying for "research" and selling products they know are flash-in-the-pan, with no long term viability. On the contrary, the "green" energy industry, lobbyists, and talking heads act more like religious zealots than those who engineer and propose practical, affordable, & sustainable solutions.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  Just FYI, "Those who can't, teach" is the saying
- jillesvangurp 5y ago
  I'm not sure what you are talking about? The electricity sector is getting pretty clean in the UK. Lots of wind, a bit of solar, a bit of imported hydro. Coal is all but gone. Gas is the big remaining polluter on the grid. The transport sector is going electric quite rapidly, just like elsewhere. Basically a done deal in the UK. Probably over with by 2035-2040 time frame. So "never" has largely already happened and will have completed happening on a pretty predictable timescale. As for your numbers, you might want to check them. Reality and your numbers don't seem to line up. Your predictions are worth even less. We're not even close to running out of lithium. There's plenty of it and we can recycle it endlessly once we get out of the ground. Also arguing for nuclear with weak arguments like you are presenting here is probably not helping that case. You are basically doing what you are (wrongly) accusing the journalists that wrote this article.
TYPE_FASTER 5y ago
There is some really interesting research being done into hydrogen: https://twitter.com/future_crunch/status/1361797670164135937?lang=en https://twitter.com/future_crunch/status/1361797670164135937... Convert off-shore drilling platforms to hydrogen electrolysis, and transport it to land in existing pipelines as paste: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24529-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24529-3 My guess is we'll keep researching hydrogen, and eventually get to a point where it's economical, just like wind and solar.
modshatereality 5y ago
Liquid piston engine (basically an inverted rotary/wankel) can run on hydrogen, also fuel cells, checkmate. Not even going to click the link. Is research even a thing anymore? Petrol is the cult, you've got the whole headline backwards!

26 points by elorant 5y ago

Since they talk about using methane to create hydrogen, why not use methane directly? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_vehicle

pintxo 5y ago
I understood this as hydrogen from methane is todays method of choice to generate hydrogen for industrial use. Not as proposal for the future.
hannob 5y ago
They don't talk about using methane to create hydrogen, that's the standard how it's done today. But that's terrible, because it creates huge amounts of CO2. There is some debate whether to use methane reforming with CCS, though it's pretty controversial and there are some huge questionmarks whether that can deliver what's promised. But you can't do that in any practical way in a vehicle.
- pdonis 5y ago
  Doesn't methane reforming also create CO2? It's the same chemical reaction at bottom.
buescher 5y ago
The thinking has been that the efficiency of steam reforming of methane to hydrogen (up to 75%) times the efficiency of fuel cells (claimed to be up to ~60% today) gives you system efficiency that is substantially better than conventional engines. There's problems with that, but I'm not prepared to write an essay on them.
MisterTea 5y ago
There are methane fuel cells which operate on methane directly. No need to decompose the gas (edit: no need to decompose externally). The main issues are the current methane fuel cells operate at very high temperatures of around 1000 C (built in steam reforming) requiring exotic materials. There are low temp catalyst materials in labs but they are consumable and have impractical service life.
- ephbit 5y ago
  Methanol operated fuel cells appear to be more promising for applications like vehicles.

pixelgeek 5y ago

Would be nice if he could divorce the opinion from the reporting in the piece. The use of the word 'cult' to describe people who disagree with you is also not only annoying but flags the article as being too opinion driven to be worth reading. Anyone know of any factual articles about the issue?

jacquesm 5y ago
I can see the point though, even HN has seen some of this hydrogen cult stuff. Utter uncritical acceptance of anything hydrogen related while at the same time denying everything else.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  >"Utter uncritical acceptance of anything hydrogen related while at the same time denying everything else." I think the GP is warning against sentiments like this. It is really easy to declare someone who is passionate about something to have arrived at their stance due to uncritical acceptance. But, how do we actually know someone has arrived at their position because of "uncritical acceptance"? For instance, I am an advocate of nuclear energy and I'm sure many anti-nuclear folks out there believe that I have uncritically endorsed fission without thinking about the risks. But I certainly have thought about it. I am also of the opinion that the current state of renewables is in no way sufficient to actually solve our energy needs. In a way, it does sound like I am denying everything else. But I would counter that by saying I have good reason to hold that position.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    I give you exhibit one: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Hypx_ https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Hypx_ You'll need showdead on and scroll back through their comment history to see what I'm getting at, but if that doesn't leave you convinced then I would not know what to do next.
- pixelgeek 5y ago
  I am not arguing against his thesis. The presentation and tone just puts me off. And even if he is correct, that doesn't give one the moral authority to look down your nose at the opposing camp. Its difficult to say that someone else swallowed the Kool-aid when you sound like you drank some of your own.

raxxorrax 5y ago

Wind and solar have phases of overproduction and hydrogen generation seems sensible here, especially if you scale up generation, the article is wrong here. If you should wait for a hydrogen car instead of a battery one is indeed questionable. I also think that storing hydrogen will always be difficult. But as a fuel cell it might have its uses. This isn't about either/or. Far more cultish is the idea that says otherwise.

drcongo 5y ago
Forbes is just a vanity blog at this point, I've no idea why it keeps getting posted here.
jacquesm 5y ago
Wind and solar over production can be stored in superconducting loops (this is pretty common in places where the grid is weak and large amounts of windpower are connected), batteries, pumped storage, supercaps and a whole host of other possible storage methods. Compared to those Hydrogen production and subsequent conversion back into energy is pretty clunky.
- adrianN 5y ago
  It may be clunky, but is it more expensive? Other than pumped storage, the options you listed sound expensive per Watthour, and pumped storage is not available everywhere. Hydrogen should have around 50% round trip efficiency from electricity back to electricity and it can (partially?) reuse existing infrastructure for natural gas.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Yes, compared to generation they are very expensive. But so is a hydrogen installation of any capacity. The trick is to have enough of it to be able to level the peaks in both demand and surplus production. You're not going to store days or weeks worth of capacity like that, the function is closer to a capacitor than it is to a long term storage medium.
  - 5y ago

Mvandenbergh 5y ago

This is nonsense. This guy is an automotive journalist and if he or his editors had used "Hydrogen personal cars are a cult," he would have had a point and I would have agreed with him. Literally everything he has said is specifically about hydrogen cars. "These ideas appear to have been propagated to delay the uptake of battery-electric vehicles. In Europe at least, it doesn’t seem to be working yet, with every month an improvement on the last for EV sales." Have they been propagated for that purpose? I don't think they have. "The UK government is also putting a lot of emphasis on hydrogen, with some dramatic numbers about how many jobs could be created and how much the industry could be worth by 2050 (100,000 jobs and £13 billion / $17 billion). The UK has already switched a lot of its generation grid to renewables, particularly wind, which sometimes now supplies over half the country’s electricity. But that still doesn’t mean there will be loads of surplus to be used for producing hydrogen." By 2035, the UK will have more offshore wind nameplate capacity than the forecast Average Cold Spell consumption peak. When you combine that with onshore wind, and solar PV it actually does mean a lot of instantaneous surplus. Some of that will go into charging chemical batteries but even after that, there's a lot of MWhs going spare looking for a home. The poor efficiency of electrolysis is a lot less important at that point that electrolyser capex.

pjc50 5y ago
The problem is that hydrogen is a submarine; most of the people advertising it at the moment come from the natural gas industry, and they want to sell H2 from natural gas as a "stopgap" and hope that nobody asks where the CO2 goes in practice. You could make it from electrolysis, but unless you check all the time, that's not where it actually comes from.
- LinAGKar 5y ago
  Doesn't the same thing apply to electricity though? In some countries, quite a bit of it comes from coal
  - danaris 5y ago
    To some extent, yes, but as I understand it, the effort and expenditure needed to produce hydrogen purely by electrolysis (so-called "green hydrogen") is fairly significant—and, perhaps more importantly, is a separate expenditure from that required to green our electrical grid, which is an effort that's already underway in many places and more or less guaranteed to eventually complete, barring further shenanigans on the part of the fossil fuel industry.

yboris 5y ago

There's a great video (by Undecided with Matt Ferrell) on a "breakthrough" technology that might work for hydrogen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7CCq4oBgw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7CCq4oBgw4 The gist is that a company has found a way to store hydrogen energy using solid storage film that is compact, light, reusable, and durable. So "fueling" the car would be swapping out a small object (rather like a data tape).

jcfrei 5y ago

It's not a cult. But as alluded to in the article it's an attempt by a dying business model to amortize some of their investments. A move to BEVs breaks lots of business models. For example when people stop refueling: Gas station shops lose customers, fuel transportation companies lose contracts, technicians maintaining the pump systems lose jobs, etc. Lower maintenance BEVs also mean: Less work for car mechanics, lower sale of ICE maintenance products, like lubricants, less parts in a BEV also means less work for lots of automotive suppliers, etc. Using hydrogen instead of batteries could save or at least extend the lifetime of a lot of these business models. That's why these companies try to push hydrogen so hard.

pixelgeek 5y ago
> It's not a cult. It never is. It is often, in my experience, a marker of a particular [political bias on the part of the author. > A move to BEVs breaks lots of business models. There are going to be a lot of dramatic changes coming and it is interesting to see just how little we are doing to take them into account.

darksaints 5y ago

This is by far the dumbest take I've ever seen on the matter. No, people aren't obsessed with hydrogen because they can fill up in 5 minutes, because for the vast majority of car buyers, charging at home is an even better idea. Hydrogen cars are unlikely to ever take hold outside of maybe the taxi market, which is why so few automakers are investing in them. But there is a massively promising market for hydrogen trucks and other long haul transport. There is a reason why the company that actually released the first electric truck has invested billions more in hydrogen research. It's all about the energy density.

qdog 5y ago
I constantly see people say they won't buy an EV because of recharge times and not being able to go on a 'road trip'. There seems to be some misunderstanding about how easy it will be to add hydrogen filling stations vs charging stations. While I don't know the % of people that actually care about charge/filling times, there are always some comments. I mean, I know someone in real life that says that, or at least did, and could certainly afford a Tesla, but still chooses a gas vehicle. Now, will they eventually come around? Maybe, but a refillable combustion engine burning hydrogen certainly has some marketability, and perhaps some companies (like Toyota) made a miscalculation on how easy it would be to get people into EVs vs actually developing Hydrogen vehicles. I have a hard time understanding why Toyota has so little in EV offerings if this is not the case (and Toyota's advertising in Japan still doesn't mention full EV as the future).
- ephbit 5y ago
  Methanol powered fuel cell electric vehicles FCEV appear very promising to me. Filling up methanol is much more convenient than hydrogen or charging a BEV. The hurdles are of course that fuel cells are more complex and apparently not yet reliable and cheap enough to compete with batteries. Also, the overall energy efficiency of FCEV will obviously never be on par with BEV. My belief is that if enough big players in the truck/car/... industry invest heavily in advancing fuel cell technology ... then the huge advantage of ease/convenience of use (and also the independance from electrical grid) will make FCEV the most used tech in the long term.

kurthr 5y ago

Although it’s qualified later in the article, this headline is pretty wrong. There are definitely use cases for hydrogen…. It’s just not cars or utilities. For an example, see this aircraft Hertz talk from ZeroAvia, as well as other posts to HN. https://youtu.be/e6c2Dmh4Sq4 https://youtu.be/e6c2Dmh4Sq4

pixelgeek 5y ago
That is why I dug into the article a bit further. Editorial teams in sites are notorious for taking the author's suggested title and replacing it with clickbait BS. That said, he uses the term in the article himself

dragontamer 5y ago

Hydrogen makes more sense when you consider that fillup stations are built with concrete and steel... while electric is full of SiC MOSFETs, expensive electronics, and a ton of copper to pass through 2MW of electricity. There's a tradeoff of course. What's easier for refueling stations is less convenient for the consumer. But if you're a fleet operator (ex: Delivery trucks or Semi-trucks), suddenly you care more about the cost of refueling stations. So I dunno, lets have the methodologies compete and may the best tech win? I'm mostly just happy that a variety of alternative fuels are competing now.

masklinn 5y ago
> But if you're a fleet operator (ex: Delivery trucks or Semi-trucks), suddenly you care more about the cost of refuelling stations. The concrete and steel station of hydrogen refuelling is quite a few steps (miles) beyond petrol though, and the danger (and thus the additional security risks) are in an entirely different realm as well. > So I dunno, lets have the methodologies compete and may the best tech win? The problem is... compete how? Because currently electricity has already won (if we ignore the elephant of fossil fuels in the room).
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > The problem is... compete how? https://www.reuters.com/article/olympics-2022-energy-hydrogen-idCNL1N2SR0GD https://www.reuters.com/article/olympics-2022-energy-hydroge... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-hydrogen-olympics-lit-a-torch-for-the-clean-fuels-future1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-hydrogen-olym... By building and testing Hydrogen solutions. You may declare it over, except everyone sees the problem with electric and is continuing to try to make progress on this front.
  - masklinn 5y ago
    Well done getting smoked by the fossil fuel industry and their attempt to sell their dirty hydrogen as a transition fuel. > clean-burning fuel [...] as long as you make the hydrogen from a clean source that's one hell of a footnote you've got here, because currently 95% of hydrogen production is not that.

nixpulvis 5y ago

It feels like the main two factors for EVs in play here are efficency and charge rate. Greater efficency the more green, while faster charge rate the more like what we're used to, therefor adoption. Not to mention longevity, which is already degrading across the board.

sleepysysadmin 5y ago

Hydrogen is a fuel. I suspect trains in north america will be converted to hydrogen first and later move to battery electric when better batteries and charging at that scale become available. We missed the window of converting our rail to electric overhead. The extreme subsidies for truckers also negatively impacts rail investment. Planes might be replaced with blimps. Hydrogen blimps with hydrogen storage on board outperforms any boat in terms of cost to move goods. Going from nyc to los angeles would be much longer, similar to driving across, but what if the blimp is like a resort or night train where you're given a room and beds? Have entertainment options. Though really what the OP is about. Hydrogen isn't an option for cars. The japanese government made some decisions and now Toyota and Honda are pretty far behind. Even where Toyota in the USA with bzx4. We dont technically know yet but it seems like their battery sucks. They likely intended 150kw single motor and then 300kw dual motor. Yet their abysmal 160kw dual motor signifies their battery is trash. It's also tremendously small. They are targeting lower cost, which is fine, but low cost new platforms? They are going to have a bad time. If toyota and honda are smart, they'll see their hydrogen call value in other transportation fields like blimps.

garbagecoder 5y ago

Forbes is basically a blog site now, like HuffPo for non lefties.

meatsauce 5y ago

This article is a good example of "those who can't do, preach." Author doesn't seem to have any subject expertise beyond journalism and academia. Also, UK energy source is 73% fossil. Wind/solar will never be able to produce more than a fraction of what we need. And this is not even mentioning the energy and materials demand that such "renewables" require. "Renewable" technology is simply not renewable because there's a finite amount of resources available on the planet. The high price tag of the technology is also a blocking factor. If everyone went out and purchased EVs, the power grid would collapse. Plus there is a finite amount of lithium we need to make all the batteries we need. If demand for EV was higher, we'd need to slash and strip far more of the earth's surface than "green" energy activists would admit. Some estimates put our lithium available at 50MM tons, and we'd run out by 2040 if EVs were adopted at the same level as CV. They may not preclude EV, new battery technology can be developed, but you still need to charge them. Unless there is some major breakthrough, the solution for this is nuclear. But these facts doesn't stop those pushing the green energy, lobbying for "research" and selling products they know are flash-in-the-pan, with no long term viability. On the contrary, the "green" energy industry, lobbyists, and talking heads act more like religious zealots than those who engineer and propose practical, affordable, & sustainable solutions.

me_me_me 5y ago
Just FYI, "Those who can't, teach" is the saying
jillesvangurp 5y ago
I'm not sure what you are talking about? The electricity sector is getting pretty clean in the UK. Lots of wind, a bit of solar, a bit of imported hydro. Coal is all but gone. Gas is the big remaining polluter on the grid. The transport sector is going electric quite rapidly, just like elsewhere. Basically a done deal in the UK. Probably over with by 2035-2040 time frame. So "never" has largely already happened and will have completed happening on a pretty predictable timescale. As for your numbers, you might want to check them. Reality and your numbers don't seem to line up. Your predictions are worth even less. We're not even close to running out of lithium. There's plenty of it and we can recycle it endlessly once we get out of the ground. Also arguing for nuclear with weak arguments like you are presenting here is probably not helping that case. You are basically doing what you are (wrongly) accusing the journalists that wrote this article.

TYPE_FASTER 5y ago

There is some really interesting research being done into hydrogen: https://twitter.com/future_crunch/status/1361797670164135937?lang=en https://twitter.com/future_crunch/status/1361797670164135937... Convert off-shore drilling platforms to hydrogen electrolysis, and transport it to land in existing pipelines as paste: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24529-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24529-3 My guess is we'll keep researching hydrogen, and eventually get to a point where it's economical, just like wind and solar.

modshatereality 5y ago

Liquid piston engine (basically an inverted rotary/wankel) can run on hydrogen, also fuel cells, checkmate. Not even going to click the link. Is research even a thing anymore? Petrol is the cult, you've got the whole headline backwards!