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One of the main reasons for this is research funding and regulation by the European Union. Something similar is probably going to happen with hydrogen productio

One of the main reasons for this is research funding and regulation by the European Union. Something similar is probably going to happen with hydrogen production over the next years. (Not as fuel for cars but for industry)

mrpopo 4y ago
Mandatory reminder that hydrogen as fuel for cars is an incredible waste of primary energy and will be for a long time. A petrol car engine is inefficient due to constraints (small + no cooling source other than air). An electric engine + battery is extremely efficient (the "downside" is you can't use the wasted energy to heat up the car in winter like an ICE). An electric engine + hydrogen fuel tank brings back inefficiency, and you can't even reuse that wasted energy because most of this waste is electrolysis.
- samtho 4y ago
  On the other hand, you can refill a pressurized hydrogen tank in seconds. Electricity itself is merely a mode of energy transmission. Energy storage has and will continue to be a huge innovation area as the current means of battery charging are either slow or low capacity. We’re getting really good at getting energy from the sun, and excess energy not consumed is wasted, so why not make hydrogen? Heck, why not have fuel stations in the middle of nowhere have a well (for water extraction) and an array of solar panels so the station can produce its own product to sell? I can see a future where you can opt for a hydrogen fuel cell EV rather than a battery powered one. Efficiently using the hydrogen will be a non-issue if we are able to trivially produce a vast abundance of it. It’s hard to say that an EV is just as good (for the consumer) as an ICE engine if I am taking a road trip and one of many fill-ups makes me wait for hours. There are these uncommon cars that opponents usually cite and are sometimes unfairly dismissed. I say this because we can and will make EV technology better and cheaper and I’m willing to bet money that hydrogen fuel cell in lieu of batteries will become a thing.
  - tedk-42 4y ago
    You think you have two good points (refill time + H2 generation from water) but really you have nothing. Hydrogen might fill a gap to replace large vehicles like buses or trucks but not passenger vehicles.
    - samtho 4y ago
      Those are great points, actually and your comment provides so little detail that I begin to question the intentions behind it. We have yet to design many vehicles around a hydrogen fuel cell and we have yet to really realize it’s full potential as a power source, dismissing it on these grounds is simply short-signed thinking. We can extract this resource from a very abundant resource, water, which is huge. With only energy (from the grid or a micro-grid) and water as inputs, you can produce a substance that is able to store energy for later use who’s only byproduct is water.
  - mrpopo 4y ago
    Solar power is 1.68% of the USA's primary energy mix in 2021. Wind is 3.89%, about 2.5% more than a decade ago, and the trend is not accelerating that fast. It is not even 3 decades to 2050, which is the USA's target date for net zero carbon, so with conservative estimates primary energy from wind should increase by at least 10% per decade, so 4 times faster than last decade. Where is the vast abundance of renewable energy that you are talking about? Now is not the time for deploying another massively wasteful technology just because some people want to go on road trips without taking a 30 min break (a recent EV fast charge does not take hours) every few hours.
    - saveferris 4y ago
      Some updated figures through 2021 Solar = 2.8% Wind = 9.2% Total renewables = 20.1%, that includes hydro which may not be as renewable as we thought. Just had this discussion but relative to why not re-invest in nuclear so we looked up the amount of nuclear energy (~20%). Not sure if we are looking at different sources, they are counted differently, etc. Source for this is; https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

mrpopo 4y ago

Mandatory reminder that hydrogen as fuel for cars is an incredible waste of primary energy and will be for a long time. A petrol car engine is inefficient due to constraints (small + no cooling source other than air). An electric engine + battery is extremely efficient (the "downside" is you can't use the wasted energy to heat up the car in winter like an ICE). An electric engine + hydrogen fuel tank brings back inefficiency, and you can't even reuse that wasted energy because most of this waste is electrolysis.

samtho 4y ago
On the other hand, you can refill a pressurized hydrogen tank in seconds. Electricity itself is merely a mode of energy transmission. Energy storage has and will continue to be a huge innovation area as the current means of battery charging are either slow or low capacity. We’re getting really good at getting energy from the sun, and excess energy not consumed is wasted, so why not make hydrogen? Heck, why not have fuel stations in the middle of nowhere have a well (for water extraction) and an array of solar panels so the station can produce its own product to sell? I can see a future where you can opt for a hydrogen fuel cell EV rather than a battery powered one. Efficiently using the hydrogen will be a non-issue if we are able to trivially produce a vast abundance of it. It’s hard to say that an EV is just as good (for the consumer) as an ICE engine if I am taking a road trip and one of many fill-ups makes me wait for hours. There are these uncommon cars that opponents usually cite and are sometimes unfairly dismissed. I say this because we can and will make EV technology better and cheaper and I’m willing to bet money that hydrogen fuel cell in lieu of batteries will become a thing.
- tedk-42 4y ago
  You think you have two good points (refill time + H2 generation from water) but really you have nothing. Hydrogen might fill a gap to replace large vehicles like buses or trucks but not passenger vehicles.
  - samtho 4y ago
    Those are great points, actually and your comment provides so little detail that I begin to question the intentions behind it. We have yet to design many vehicles around a hydrogen fuel cell and we have yet to really realize it’s full potential as a power source, dismissing it on these grounds is simply short-signed thinking. We can extract this resource from a very abundant resource, water, which is huge. With only energy (from the grid or a micro-grid) and water as inputs, you can produce a substance that is able to store energy for later use who’s only byproduct is water.
- mrpopo 4y ago
  Solar power is 1.68% of the USA's primary energy mix in 2021. Wind is 3.89%, about 2.5% more than a decade ago, and the trend is not accelerating that fast. It is not even 3 decades to 2050, which is the USA's target date for net zero carbon, so with conservative estimates primary energy from wind should increase by at least 10% per decade, so 4 times faster than last decade. Where is the vast abundance of renewable energy that you are talking about? Now is not the time for deploying another massively wasteful technology just because some people want to go on road trips without taking a 30 min break (a recent EV fast charge does not take hours) every few hours.
  - saveferris 4y ago
    Some updated figures through 2021 Solar = 2.8% Wind = 9.2% Total renewables = 20.1%, that includes hydro which may not be as renewable as we thought. Just had this discussion but relative to why not re-invest in nuclear so we looked up the amount of nuclear energy (~20%). Not sure if we are looking at different sources, they are counted differently, etc. Source for this is; https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3