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Heavy trucks is probably where green hydrogen makes sense unless you want 10 ton behemoths destroying roads annually (considering impact of construction costs e

Heavy trucks is probably where green hydrogen makes sense unless you want 10 ton behemoths destroying roads annually (considering impact of construction costs etc.)

bodyfour 3y ago
and/or add overhead power delivery to major motorways, allowing trucks to have (relatively) small batteries for the non-motorway parts of their journeys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3P_S7pL7Yg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3P_S7pL7Yg
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Those can already run on batteries. Australia has some electrified road trains that are 165 tonnes, way more than is allowed on roads in most countries. Brutally simple solution with batteries that can be swapped in a few minutes. https://thedriven.io/2023/04/18/australian-miner-to-trial-worlds-first-electric-triple-road-train-with-swappable-battery/ https://thedriven.io/2023/04/18/australian-miner-to-trial-wo... Hydrogen is likely never going to be very popular for road transport. It's way more costly than battery electric to operate and most transport companies deeply care about their margins. Besides that, the infrastructure simply isn't there for hydrogen (never mind green hydrogen). And the battery equivalents are already being used on roads right now in pretty much any weight class. High speed megawatt chargers are already being developed. And with swapping batteries the whole argument against having to wait goes away.
- _hypx 3y ago
  Economics of road trains plus battery swapping will be disastrous. You will need many times more batteries than even other large BEV trucking ideas. In reality, it's pretty much a guarantee that hydrogen displaces batteries for most cases, and likely all of heavy transport. The mistake critics are making is assuming that this must be expensive. But just like other types of renewable energy, this is actually heading towards nearly zero.
  - jillesvangurp 3y ago
    The road trains I mentioned are diesel truck conversions. It's that simple. Get rid of the original drive train, put an electrical drive train in. Shove in some battery where the fuel used to go. Actually works. On a 165 tonne road trains. Not a hypothetical but in commercial operation right now defying your notions of what is and isn't feasible. Imagine what a truck that is designed from the ground up to do that could do. Probably would do quite a bit better. Paying 2-3x for hydrogen and depending on infrastructure that simply does not exist yet doesn't even sound like the beginnings of a plan. It doesn't make any economical sense whatsoever. It's a pipe dream financed by companies reluctant to get out of the diesel truck business. By the time energy really gets that cheap, battery electric trucks will have been dominating the roads for decades and there won't be any point in replacing them with less efficient hydrogen trucks. There isn't one now. There won't be one a few decades from now.
    - _hypx 3y ago
      A hydrogen truck is basically the same idea just economically sane and doesn’t have a huge weight penalty. You’re mostly repeating BEV propaganda and it is mostly just close-mindedness. The point is that hydrogen trucks are actually economically viable in this setting. Not to mention that BEVs are a >100 year old technology, and the idea that something that old can maintain a permanent cost advantage over all possible alternatives is a completely delusional idea. This even ignores the fact that fuel cells are electrochemical systems and don’t have any fundamental disadvantages compared to li-ion batteries. FCEVs are literally just a cheaper type of EV.
  - _aavaa_ 3y ago
    Except hydrogen is not a renewable source of energy. It’s at best a carrier. And it’s a really bad carrier at that. Hydrogen will never be cheaper than the electricity you make it from. The electrolyzers are expensive and the rest of the equipment for them is already mass produced and as cheap as it’s going to get. The transportation and production is expensive and inherently difficult. As for the certainty that they will go hydrogen, the only certainty is that they will not go hydrogen. Here’s from only 2 days ago, news of actual mines explicitly choosing electric over hydrogen for the obvious concerns: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/07/05/australian-mining-companies-chose-battery-electric-over-hydrogen-fuel-cell-mining-trucks/ https://cleantechnica.com/2023/07/05/australian-mining-compa...
occz 3y ago
Alternatively, we could build more rail and move the shipping done by heavy trucks to trains. Even in their very reduced current form, and with heavy trucks getting their infrastructure for free, trains are still more economical than heavy trucks, so if we remove those factors then trains become the obvious choice.
_aavaa_ 3y ago
I highly doubt that. The end-to-end efficiency, energy density, safety, difficulty in transit and storage, and cost will make it a very dubious choice for anything but the niche of niche cases. I'm pretty convinced that anything that can't realistically be electrified is likely going to end up being biodiesel.

Heavy trucks is probably where green hydrogen makes sense unless you want 10 ton behemoths destroying roads annually (considering impact of construction costs etc.)

bodyfour 3y ago

and/or add overhead power delivery to major motorways, allowing trucks to have (relatively) small batteries for the non-motorway parts of their journeys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3P_S7pL7Yg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3P_S7pL7Yg

jillesvangurp 3y ago

Those can already run on batteries. Australia has some electrified road trains that are 165 tonnes, way more than is allowed on roads in most countries. Brutally simple solution with batteries that can be swapped in a few minutes. https://thedriven.io/2023/04/18/australian-miner-to-trial-worlds-first-electric-triple-road-train-with-swappable-battery/ https://thedriven.io/2023/04/18/australian-miner-to-trial-wo... Hydrogen is likely never going to be very popular for road transport. It's way more costly than battery electric to operate and most transport companies deeply care about their margins. Besides that, the infrastructure simply isn't there for hydrogen (never mind green hydrogen). And the battery equivalents are already being used on roads right now in pretty much any weight class. High speed megawatt chargers are already being developed. And with swapping batteries the whole argument against having to wait goes away.

_hypx 3y ago
Economics of road trains plus battery swapping will be disastrous. You will need many times more batteries than even other large BEV trucking ideas. In reality, it's pretty much a guarantee that hydrogen displaces batteries for most cases, and likely all of heavy transport. The mistake critics are making is assuming that this must be expensive. But just like other types of renewable energy, this is actually heading towards nearly zero.
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  The road trains I mentioned are diesel truck conversions. It's that simple. Get rid of the original drive train, put an electrical drive train in. Shove in some battery where the fuel used to go. Actually works. On a 165 tonne road trains. Not a hypothetical but in commercial operation right now defying your notions of what is and isn't feasible. Imagine what a truck that is designed from the ground up to do that could do. Probably would do quite a bit better. Paying 2-3x for hydrogen and depending on infrastructure that simply does not exist yet doesn't even sound like the beginnings of a plan. It doesn't make any economical sense whatsoever. It's a pipe dream financed by companies reluctant to get out of the diesel truck business. By the time energy really gets that cheap, battery electric trucks will have been dominating the roads for decades and there won't be any point in replacing them with less efficient hydrogen trucks. There isn't one now. There won't be one a few decades from now.
  - _hypx 3y ago
    A hydrogen truck is basically the same idea just economically sane and doesn’t have a huge weight penalty. You’re mostly repeating BEV propaganda and it is mostly just close-mindedness. The point is that hydrogen trucks are actually economically viable in this setting. Not to mention that BEVs are a >100 year old technology, and the idea that something that old can maintain a permanent cost advantage over all possible alternatives is a completely delusional idea. This even ignores the fact that fuel cells are electrochemical systems and don’t have any fundamental disadvantages compared to li-ion batteries. FCEVs are literally just a cheaper type of EV.
- _aavaa_ 3y ago
  Except hydrogen is not a renewable source of energy. It’s at best a carrier. And it’s a really bad carrier at that. Hydrogen will never be cheaper than the electricity you make it from. The electrolyzers are expensive and the rest of the equipment for them is already mass produced and as cheap as it’s going to get. The transportation and production is expensive and inherently difficult. As for the certainty that they will go hydrogen, the only certainty is that they will not go hydrogen. Here’s from only 2 days ago, news of actual mines explicitly choosing electric over hydrogen for the obvious concerns: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/07/05/australian-mining-companies-chose-battery-electric-over-hydrogen-fuel-cell-mining-trucks/ https://cleantechnica.com/2023/07/05/australian-mining-compa...

occz 3y ago

Alternatively, we could build more rail and move the shipping done by heavy trucks to trains. Even in their very reduced current form, and with heavy trucks getting their infrastructure for free, trains are still more economical than heavy trucks, so if we remove those factors then trains become the obvious choice.

_aavaa_ 3y ago

I highly doubt that. The end-to-end efficiency, energy density, safety, difficulty in transit and storage, and cost will make it a very dubious choice for anything but the niche of niche cases. I'm pretty convinced that anything that can't realistically be electrified is likely going to end up being biodiesel.