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The New Hydrogen Car That Travels 2k Km with a Single Tank
- antiquark 4y agoHow large is this tank?
- dtgriscom 4y agoWell, smaller than the envelope of the car, but that's all we can guess at this point.
- ncr100 4y agohttp://opensfhistory.org/Download/wnp27.6626.jpg http://opensfhistory.org/Download/wnp27.6626.jpg Kidding. Yes that's the real question, the recent Engineering Explained video on hydrogen cars gave me a good amount of concern that viable hydrogen cars require careful consideration of how much hydrogen they can store on board, and so they can easily be compromised.
- michaelmrose 4y agoNow I want someone to attach a large blimp shaped balloon emblazoned with explosive hazard warnings with a fake line going into the car labeled "prototype hydrogen car" and drive around and film it.
- Inhibit 4y agoWhat immediately came to mind was a dirigible. I'm hoping that's not really the case.
- Smoosh 4y agoRough guess (based on info here: https://demaco-cryogenics.com/blog/energy-density-of-hydrogen/ https://demaco-cryogenics.com/blog/energy-density-of-hydroge...) if stored at 700bar is 400L. Which doesn't sound right. Can someone correct me please?
- dmix 4y agoEdit: nevermind the archive.today is 404 too Made a new one with an added URL param: https://archive.ph/heHOE https://archive.ph/heHOE
- jp0d 4y agoThis is really promising. But I usually sense some pessimism from the EV crowd about the viability of Hydrogen. I personally hope for a Hydrogen future.
- palata 4y agoIMO because hydrogen is less efficient (by a factor of two, I believe) than using the electricity directly. So given that we are going to have less energy in the future (because fossil fuels are not unlimited, e.g. we passed the production peak of conventional oil back in 2008), then we should use it wisely. And we need hydrogen for other applications (steel, methanol, fertilisers), so probably we should keep it for those.
- gonzo41 4y agoWe'll be making hydrogen from saltwater with sunlight and wind energy in ~15 years or less. There's a race to own these industries right now.
- smt88 4y agoThe same sunlight and wind energy could be used directly as electricity in homes and EV batteries. There is a significant cost to storing the energy as hydrogen, and there's no benefit.
- Dylan16807 4y agoInstalling battery banks to last longer and longer has an increasing cost, so you start to run out of batteries to fill during high production times. At a certain point hydrogen should get cheaper per watt to soak up production.
- gonzo41 4y agoFor countries that import LNG as source of power now, there's a future in shipping h2 as ammonia and converting it to hydrogen on the other end. Places with lots and sun, lots of ocean and existing LNG infrastructure are in a good place to assist in this transformation.
- nelox 4y agoTwo thousand Kelvin metres. Impressive.
- wcoenen 4y agoThe metric prefix kilo should indeed be abbreviated with a lower case k instead of upper case K. But if using metric prefixes correctly is the goal, then the submitter should have used 2 Mm ("megameters") :-)
- ISL 4y agoIf we're being pedantic, the "2k Km" is simply incorrect. See 6.1.5 here: https://www.nist.gov/pml/special-publication-811/nist-guide-si-chapter-6-rules-and-style-conventions-printing-and-using https://www.nist.gov/pml/special-publication-811/nist-guide-... If it were Kelvin-meters, it would either be written "K m" or, preferred, "K·m"
- lob_it 4y agoHydrogen 1.0 engines are very exciting to see! https://www.britannica.com/technology/gasoline-engine/Development-of-gasoline-engines https://www.britannica.com/technology/gasoline-engine/Develo... Hydrogen was used in 1820 when gasoline engine 1.0 came about in 1823. Interesting stats in the linked video, but we'll see what happens with hydrogen 2.0/3.0 engines in a few years instead of with retrofitted types. Diversification still works fine in the 1st world. https://youtu.be/3IPR50-soNA https://youtu.be/3IPR50-soNA
- 7speter 4y agoReading the article this seems really amazing. Hydrogen technology that seems to be a drop in for solid state batteries without all the issues of using what seems to be water? This seems like a destiny changing game changer. Whats the dream bubble popper with this one? It even seems like volkswagen solved the issue of using rare metals.
- grecy 4y agoStoring the hydrogen. You need an extremely well insulated high pressure tank, that is either prohibitively heavy, expensive, large or all of the above. Also, the consequences of that tank puncturing are a lot worse than a regular gasoline tank.
- senectus1 4y agoOR to change that hydrogen into something that stores and transports easier... Ammonia is one way, I have also read that the germans have developed something called powerpaste that essentially makes it inert for safe and simple transport. These are just the beginning. I am bullish on Hydrogen. I suspect it going to be very big in the future. It may not be a silver bullet (or THE solution) but its definitely going to be a big player.
- BLKNSLVR 4y agoDisolving hydrogen in ammonia has been discussed, in Australian media anyway, as a way that Australia could 'export it's sunlight' to the world. I also believe it's best to have at least a couple of option branches as there are a very wide number of use-cases, to all of which a single option is unlikely able to cater.
- DenisM 4y ago> the consequences of that tank puncturing are a lot worse than a regular gasoline tank Are they? Hydrogen should float up, up, and away. Just don’t store it indoors.
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- timbit42 4y agoAssuming it is running on green hydrogen, how far could a Tesla Model 3 go on the electricity used to generate the hydrogen to go 2k km?
- solardev 4y agoAbout twice as far for a given amount of energy input, BUT that's leaving out the energy density of hydrogen fuel cells vs li-ion batteries. For grid storage purposes, batteries might be more efficient. But for automotive purposes, for an EV to go as far as a hydrogen vehicle, it'd have to be much bigger & heavier. In a sense, hydrogen makes the grid work harder, but once it does, you can squeeze it into a smaller/lighter package that can go much further than a similarly sized EV. Edit: A readable primer: https://www.theautochannel.com/news/2021/11/03/1066723-toyota-s-chief-scientist-hydrogen-vs-lithium-ion-batteries-why.html https://www.theautochannel.com/news/2021/11/03/1066723-toyot...
- bryanlarsen 4y agoA hydrogen Mirai is heavier than a Model 3 of comparable range.
- BLKNSLVR 4y agoI'm assuming you're asking because the electricity required to generate the hydrogen to power the car would be (much) more efficiently used to directly power the car. ie. electricity is being used as a process mid-point rather than end-result. I hear a bit of cynicism about hydrogen being touted by traditional automotive and fossil fuel companies because the business case around it is essentially the same as fossil fuels, where re-charging an electric car can be done at home "for free" (pending a number of dependencies being met), and I agree that it could be a half-step forwards rather than a full-step. But I also believe that it's best to have more than one option, and there are likely to be wildly varying use cases in which each option can an obvious stand-out for different use cases. What other trade-offs are there in hydrogen vs electric engines? (dependence on rare-earths being one negative on the electric side, but are there also rare-earths required for hydrogen engines or the generation of hydrogen?) What are the use cases? city driving, country driving, buses, trucks, towing, rail, light aircraft, passenger aircraft, military.
- photochemsyn 4y agoTheir claims about a ceramic membrane for the fuel cell, and the elimination of the platinum electrode, are certainly interesting on the side of fuel cell technology. In the past, fuel cells had a real lifetime problem (i.e. imagine having to replace the vehicles engine once every three years under normal use, at similar cost, i.e. at least several thousand dollars). However, without knowing the vehicle's mass and performance characteristics, the 2000 km claim isn't very illuminating. Maintaining the hydrogen fueling system is also problematic. It'd be interesting to see what the numbers are for fully loaded semi trucks hauling goods from point A to point B, that seems like a more realistic use, and whether they'd be more economically and energy efficient than electric semi trucks.
- tersers 4y agoAssuming hydrogen engines become viable, does hydrogen have any feasible distribution mechanism comparable to electricity? With the rollout of EVs, charging stations can be placed pretty much anywhere but we can’t say the same for hydrogen. Are we assuming existing gas stations can be converted or Will natural gas distribution improve to allow people to fill up at home?
- davidkuennen 4y agoThis is the biggest argument for me why EVs are the superior technology. Thinking further with renewable energies, heat pumps and more, soon we'd only need infrastructure for electricity and internet.
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- jimrandomh 4y agoThis is fake. The article switches part-way through from claiming a 10x improvement in range, which would be a transformative breakthrough but which would fundamentally require doing something other than storing hydrogen gas in a pressure vessel, to talking about about improvements in the fuel cell, which is not the bottleneck for hydrogen-vehicle range. Hydrogen continues to not be a viable fuel for cars, because it isn't dense enough.
- 7e 4y agoThe Nexo and Mirai are hydrogen cars on roads today. What about hydrogen volumetric density causes problems for them?
- vardump 4y ago"A thinly veiled advertisement for Kraftwerk Tubes, whose founder Sascha Kühn has at least once before completely failed to deliver." See a recent dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33395796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33395796
- tdsanchez 4y agoGraphene supercaps will become viable before hydrogen fuel cell infrastructure.