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> hydrogen buses must be more expensive than electric Fuel cells are presumably more expensive than battery packs. The former are barely produced, while the la
by elric 2y ago
> hydrogen buses must be more expensive than electric
Fuel cells are presumably more expensive than battery packs. The former are barely produced, while the latter are made in gigafactories. You can't just fill up the gas tank with hydrogen, it will leak out and/or cause a violent reaction with oxygen.
> somehow the hydrogen fuel must be a long way from the bus depot
You can't just store hydrogen in a tank and call it a day. Again, it leaks through everything and is rather reactive. Maybe it could be stored on site, but even then it'll still need to get there.
> it is much quicker to refuell a hydrogen vehicle than a battery vehicle
Not intrinsically. Buses could be built with swappable battery packs.
> allow a major user like a bus company to make their own hydrogen on site.
How many solar panels and how much water you need to power those 100 buses you mention? Hydrolysis isn't very efficient.
> hydrogen can be produced using surplus electricity, making good use of renewables by storing the energy
In theory, maybe. In practice, it is difficult to store at scale.
- jimnotgym 2y ago> Fuel cells are presumably more expensive than battery packs. Maybe, but a tank of hydrogen burnt through an ICE is much cheaper than either For your storage and production concerns, here it is working in practice https://youtu.be/5rk1RsT64o4?si=LLmX51kT2_YeRp2g https://youtu.be/5rk1RsT64o4?si=LLmX51kT2_YeRp2g
- Tade0 2y ago> Maybe, but a tank of hydrogen burnt through an ICE is much cheaper than either It's really not. Most of the hydrogen bus projects were killed by the surprising cost of fueling - approximately 4x the cost of electricity. And no wonder: just the energy wasted producing hydrogen and then using it in a fuel cell is enough to build a battery pack that will last the equivalent.
- jimnotgym 2y agoIs that the cost of the fuel itself, or the high cost of providing it in a world with little infrastructure?
- Tade0 2y agoAt its best, generating hydrogen and then putting it through a fuel cell is less than 50% efficient, and that's discounting all the losses present both in BEVs and hydrogen cars. Hydrogen combustion engines slash that efficiency in half. Even if you handwave over the hardware required to do all that, the cost is double that of equivalent electricity.