8 ms·
HD Hyundai set to debut production 14 ton hydrogen wheeled excavator
- thenthenthen 2y agoI was surprised when I saw a dump truck pass by and seconds later realised there was no engine noise or stank… turns out it was an EV wow! It was a BYD but not the one in the ref[0]. [0] https://www.electrive.com/2018/05/15/shenzhen-byd-lands-large-order-for-electric-dump-trucks/ https://www.electrive.com/2018/05/15/shenzhen-byd-lands-larg...
- theginger 2y agoWhat an odd choice of words for a headline. Expecting something to do with big balloon tyres that could drive on water or something. They meant hydrogen powered wheeled excavator. I could understand it if it was just the hacker news title but the article headline doesn't either. Not sure if this human error, bad AI or deliberately click bait.
- tecleandor 2y agoNo, I think it's the way they call them in the industrial sector. You have "wheel excavator" or "track excavator" depending on its ways of movement.
- rascul 2y agoThe headline was clear to me. Maybe I'm already vaguely familiar with excavators, though.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 2y agoDead on arrival, as the author concludes. Why is it making the frontpage? Looking forward to BEV versions.
- zppln 2y agoWould it be possible to achieve the same 8 hours of operation between charges?
- Retric 2y agoYes. Hydrogen has even worse issues with total energy storage in these kinds of appliances than batteries.
- rad_gruchalski 2y agoBut one can bring hydrogen with an electric truck…
- Retric 2y agoHydrogen work vehicles require hydrogen storage and delivery. PEV work vehicles can also use hydrogen powered generators on site but they can also use anything from an on-site solar to a standard grid connection. As long as 98% of our hydrogen is coming from fossil fuels it’s only a net negative here.
- rad_gruchalski 2y agoWhatever, good luck hauling electricity on a truck. We’re talking in the context of „you’re building a new highway, good luck getting enough electricity to charge those machines in that place”. What, you gonna haul your solar farm as the construction moves on for dozens of miles?
- Loudergood 2y agoIs it time to bring up swappable batteries again? You could truck in a trailer just like diesel.
- rad_gruchalski 2y agodo that
- b112 2y agoThe author concluding this, doesn't make it so. And his conclusions are linking to another article, claiming current h2 cost and production means the future will be the same. Which is the same as claiming we'd never have solar now, because solar was expensive years ago. The article also says South Korea is full bore on h2, so this will have a market, and thrive there. BEV doesn't have the capacity to do this. These units cannot be charged for 1hr 4 times a day. H2 is an instant recharge.
- eptcyka 2y agoH2 is not instant, it is a pressurised gas. Recharging h2 vehichles is as fast as the pressure difference between the intermediate tank and the vehichle tank.
- b112 2y agoNitpicking. Nothing is truly instant. Gasoline isn't truely instant either, yet people refer to it as so. The many different makes ans models of H2 cars recharge instantly by this metric, and so will this.
- chroma 2y agoIn practice, hydrogen cars take significantly longer than gas cars to fill, and the filling station can’t have a high duty cycle because the nozzle will freeze to the car. (Ideal gas law means the hydrogen cools as it goes from high pressure to low pressure.) Synthesizing fuels from CO2, water, and electricity seems like a better solution. It works with existing infrastructure and doesn’t have the storage or safety issues of hydrogen.
- axus 2y agoI couldn't find that conclusion. It seemed like a positive piece with discussion but not much critical analysis.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 2y agoThe article says: >The thing is, it’s highly unlikely that hydrogen will ever become a mainstream alternative to battery power – at least when it comes to on-road transportation This points to https://electrek.co/2024/04/13/man-to-build-200-hydrogen-trucks-to-prove-that-hydrogen-doesnt-work/ https://electrek.co/2024/04/13/man-to-build-200-hydrogen-tru..., which quote MAN's CEO saying >it's impossible for hydrogen to effectively compete with battery electric trucks. A positive piece indeed.
- trimethylpurine 2y ago>...zero-emission... In other words, emission, but hidden further up the supply chain.
- b112 2y agoNot any more than electricity. With electricity, each thing we convert from petrochemicals to electricity, prevents us from offlining the first power source we'd otherwise decommission. And the first thing we'd decommission would be the dirtiest power plants, eg Ng, coal, or some such. H2 can be made clean, and so can electricity. No difference. What we need to do is scale up clean h2, and support it. More clean tech is better, it's not a competition.
- Xylakant 2y agoThe problem with h2 compared to electricity is that it has abysmal round trip efficiency. It makes sense for a few, limited use cases and an excavator may be one of them - if they’re used in places where no electric grid is available. In almost all other use cases, batteries provide a better efficiency.
- unaindz 2y agoThe biggest problem with electricity is the batteries. Right now an EV pollutes more an ICE engine, the pollution is just moved to the power plants. But then you have to take into account the batteries. Making them pollutes a lot and they don't last forever. We should be minimizing the use of cars instead.
- 7thpower 2y agoHydrogen fuel is one of the ultimate tarpit ideas. The concept hasn’t really evolved much during the last 30 years. When I was in elementary school I was supposed to write a paper for science my science ‘class’ and was encouraged by my uncle, who was in the oil industry, to write about this miracle fuel. Even with the primitive technology available to me at the time (Alta vista?), it did not take long to shoot holes in the hydrogen fuels narrative: It’s difficult to store; there is no infrastructure to support it; said infrastructure is expensive; it is almost exclusively produced from hydrocarbons (which is fine, but that’s typically antithetical to the values of the audience that it is ostensibly marketed as an alternative fuel to).. the list goes on. And now Hyundai has invested in building this into a niche (wheeled excavators) of a niche (excavators) product. I don't get it, what am I missing? Does this help them at trade shows?
- londons_explore 2y agoGovernments offer incentives for green tech. The oil industry likes green tech which still uses oil and gas. Hydrogen fills both niches. Hydrogen is perfect, because it can theoretically be made fully green, but practically it never will be due to the terrible economics of electrolysis. But the fact it theoretically could be means it can qualify for all those tax breaks and grants. Some tax breaks are contingent on investing in 'green' stuff - so for the oil industry it makes perfect sense to invest in the only green tech which will never not use oil and gas.
- matthewdgreen 2y agoIt's particularly bad because the steam reforming process starts with one unit of methane, then throws away 25-35% of the energy it contains to make hydrogen. You're literally starting with a usable fuel, then throwing away a bunch of energy to make a much nastier fuel.
- londons_explore 2y agoThat steam reforming process also produces a lot of CO2 which is great for injecting into old oil wells to increase production levels. Win Win (except the environment of course).
- londons_explore 2y agoExcavators are perhaps a good use for electric tech, because so much that an excavator does theoretically uses zero energy. Eg. moving a pile of soil from one place to another. Picking up the soil uses energy, but when you put the bucketload down again you recoup all the energy. Gasoline engines don't recoup the energy, and it just becomes heat in the hydraulic fluid - so much heat that excavators need cooling systems to keep the fluid cool.
- stephenr 2y agoYou've used energy to curl the bucket to scoop the material. Then you've used energy to lift the boom and presumably rotate the machine. Then you've used energy to "tip" the bucket so that the material falls out into the desired location. At what point are you going to be recouping energy?
- olddustytrail 2y agoWhen you lower the boom and release the bucket.
- sandermvanvliet 2y agoI don’t think that’s how hydraulics work. You need to move oil to move the piston the other way (lowering/releasing) which means turning a pump, consuming energy.
- londons_explore 2y agotheoretically hydraulics can be regenerative. Whilst lowering a heavy load to the ground, the pump is being 'sucked', and the engine could be consuming no fuel during such an operation. Practically they rarely are, because the way a piston is moved 'slowly' is to have a half-open valve with a pressure drop across it, and that half open valve wastes all the energy into heat in the fluid.
- ninkendo 2y ago
- icegreentea2 2y agoPerhaps something to consider is that Korea and Japan both don't have extensive lithium deposits within their country. Both countries already know what it's like to be stuck importing nearly all of their energy (oil). They've both been relatively lucky with the geopolitical climate of the last 50 or so years. I think it's perhaps not unreasonable (once again, looking at a many decade long scale) to look at possible futures and perhaps understand why both countries might be looking to try to eke out some greater degree of independence from both China and America.
- shawndrost 2y agoI work in hydrogen and I have semi-solid information* that there is a real economic case for hydrogen as a fuel for large mining equipment. The story as I heard it: the overall output of a mine is often bottlenecked by air quality permits, which effectively limit the amount of diesel/gas/etc that can be burned. How can you run giant mining vehicles in the middle of nowhere without fossil fuels? You can truck in hydrogen or you can truck in batteries, and apparently, hydrogen is the cheaper answer. Hydrogen is not cheaper than burning diesel, but I can believe it's cheaper than shutting down a mine or trucking around lots of batteries. * This information came from an employee of a technology company working on fuel cell mining equipment, on contract from a major US mining company. We were talking shop and it was an offhanded conversation that I haven't researched since.