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The only thing that I could find other than regurgitations of the press release was an article on HackaDay. [0] "Most electric cars have batteries exceeding 70

The only thing that I could find other than regurgitations of the press release was an article on HackaDay. [0] "Most electric cars have batteries exceeding 70 kWh in capacity; it would take over 18 such canisters to provide the same amount of power." You might be able to use less in town but swapping 5 or 6 canisters every day sounds less pleasant than simply unplugging your EV at the start of the day and plugging it back in later. I've read that Japan is trying to develop alternatives to EVs because their landscape is rarely flat and doesn't have the sun for optimum solar power generation. But it seems like generating hydrogen via renewable sources would be comparable to simply generating electricity. https://hackaday.com/2022/08/02/toyotas-cartridge-helps-make-hydrogen-portable/ https://hackaday.com/2022/08/02/toyotas-cartridge-helps-make...

ephbit 4y ago
> You might be able to use less in town but swapping 5 or 6 canisters every day sounds less pleasant than simply unplugging your EV at the start of the day and plugging it back in later. Have you been using an EV in your daily life for at least a few months? Honest question. I haven't. But still I'd imagine I'd strongly prefer swapping the canisters (even several times a day) over having to basically plan the structure of the day around the charging of the EV, as the foundational element. Which is what you'd probably have to do, if you don't always make short trips that only use 15 % of battery capacity. Being spontaneous is really what makes owning a car useful for most people. And I think you'd loose a good part of that with an EV. (I don't even own a car, by the way. Nor do I drive one more than a handful times a year at most.)
panick21_ 4y ago
Japan strategy just makes no sense. Some large companies in Japan have focused on it and Japan bought in so the whole 'hydrogen economy' dream has lots of institutional support in Japan. It never really made any sense, so don't look for logic. Japan should clearly have focused on nuclear, its the source of energy the have in abundance.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Hydrogen is an energy storage and transport mechanism. Comparing it against nuclear is like comparing apples and baskets and makes no sense. It compliments nuclear reasonably well, because the cost of peak capacity for nuclear is completely off the charts. Cost for baseload is merely very high, so storage is important for nuclear. Especially given nuclear's increasing unreliability due to being over-centralised and sensitive to weather as we are seeing in france and china right now. Hydrogen has a major advantage over batteries in that very large scale storage is much cheaper (if your tank is big enough to keep at cryo temperatures it's even reasonably compact). It's much worse than ither fuels in this regard, but the better efficiency of production makes it a good candidate for some things.
  - erik_seaberg 4y ago
    The other advantage of hydrogen is that a driver can go get one and swap it quickly; no need for a dedicated parking space with electrical service added.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    Well you can actually compare apple to baskets. So when you are going into a shop and you have certain amount of money you can decide to invest into apples or a basket. You get what I am talking about? It also didn't make sense that Japan talked about hydorgen in terms of energy independence. But they did. > It compliments nuclear reasonably well, because the cost of peak capacity for nuclear is completely off the charts. If you actually invested in enough nuclear and build modern plants that can load follow way better then this isn't big problem. It would only make sense if building storage over added capacity was way, way cheaper, and I not sure it actually is once you are pumping out lots of nuclear. Even then, you would likely go for heat storage, not chemical storage if you are paring it with nuclear. > Especially given nuclear's increasing unreliability due to being over-centralised and sensitive to weather as we are seeing in france and china right now. Again this is mostly a problem if you have not built enough and every plant need to be on at all times. In addition modern nuclear plants can be air cooled and should be way less sensitive. So again with nuclear, the main problem is that we are building 60s technology that was designed for submarines.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
> You might be able to use less in town but swapping 5 or 6 canisters every day sounds less pleasant than simply unplugging your EV at the start of the day and plugging it back in later. Japan is thankfully one of the more resistant countries against the 'need moar bigger car for running over pedestrians' insanity infesting the rest of the world and has a long distance train network. 6kWh (2 canisters) is plenty for a LEV and even in a kei car you'd typically have maybe 5 or 6.

ephbit 4y ago

> You might be able to use less in town but swapping 5 or 6 canisters every day sounds less pleasant than simply unplugging your EV at the start of the day and plugging it back in later. Have you been using an EV in your daily life for at least a few months? Honest question. I haven't. But still I'd imagine I'd strongly prefer swapping the canisters (even several times a day) over having to basically plan the structure of the day around the charging of the EV, as the foundational element. Which is what you'd probably have to do, if you don't always make short trips that only use 15 % of battery capacity. Being spontaneous is really what makes owning a car useful for most people. And I think you'd loose a good part of that with an EV. (I don't even own a car, by the way. Nor do I drive one more than a handful times a year at most.)

panick21_ 4y ago

Japan strategy just makes no sense. Some large companies in Japan have focused on it and Japan bought in so the whole 'hydrogen economy' dream has lots of institutional support in Japan. It never really made any sense, so don't look for logic. Japan should clearly have focused on nuclear, its the source of energy the have in abundance.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
Hydrogen is an energy storage and transport mechanism. Comparing it against nuclear is like comparing apples and baskets and makes no sense. It compliments nuclear reasonably well, because the cost of peak capacity for nuclear is completely off the charts. Cost for baseload is merely very high, so storage is important for nuclear. Especially given nuclear's increasing unreliability due to being over-centralised and sensitive to weather as we are seeing in france and china right now. Hydrogen has a major advantage over batteries in that very large scale storage is much cheaper (if your tank is big enough to keep at cryo temperatures it's even reasonably compact). It's much worse than ither fuels in this regard, but the better efficiency of production makes it a good candidate for some things.
- erik_seaberg 4y ago
  The other advantage of hydrogen is that a driver can go get one and swap it quickly; no need for a dedicated parking space with electrical service added.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Well you can actually compare apple to baskets. So when you are going into a shop and you have certain amount of money you can decide to invest into apples or a basket. You get what I am talking about? It also didn't make sense that Japan talked about hydorgen in terms of energy independence. But they did. > It compliments nuclear reasonably well, because the cost of peak capacity for nuclear is completely off the charts. If you actually invested in enough nuclear and build modern plants that can load follow way better then this isn't big problem. It would only make sense if building storage over added capacity was way, way cheaper, and I not sure it actually is once you are pumping out lots of nuclear. Even then, you would likely go for heat storage, not chemical storage if you are paring it with nuclear. > Especially given nuclear's increasing unreliability due to being over-centralised and sensitive to weather as we are seeing in france and china right now. Again this is mostly a problem if you have not built enough and every plant need to be on at all times. In addition modern nuclear plants can be air cooled and should be way less sensitive. So again with nuclear, the main problem is that we are building 60s technology that was designed for submarines.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

> You might be able to use less in town but swapping 5 or 6 canisters every day sounds less pleasant than simply unplugging your EV at the start of the day and plugging it back in later. Japan is thankfully one of the more resistant countries against the 'need moar bigger car for running over pedestrians' insanity infesting the rest of the world and has a long distance train network. 6kWh (2 canisters) is plenty for a LEV and even in a kei car you'd typically have maybe 5 or 6.