6 ms·

Germany has this recurring fixation on hydrogen for whatever reason. Even when Tesla had already long hit the mainstream market, German car manufacturers were s

by kleiba 2y ago

Germany has this recurring fixation on hydrogen for whatever reason. Even when Tesla had already long hit the mainstream market, German car manufacturers were still arguing against EVs in favor for hydrogen-powered cars that would theoretically be vastly superior. Well, we all know how that turned out for Mercedes, BMW, and the so on.

mmooss 2y ago
If people followed that reasoning, there would be few EVs now because EVs had been tried for decades without success; so were airplanes and AI. If people quit as easily as you say hydrogen car manufacturers should, we wouldn't have much of anything.
- addicted 2y ago
  This is true but this analysis fails to consider why hydrogen receives so much interest, because similar reasoning could indicate we should be spending more on every other potential fuel source, including biofuels, and maybe running engines on cellulose. And the fact that hydrogen is most popular in Germany and Japan should provide a clue. These are countries with well established ICE car industries and therefore shifting to hydrogen provides the least disruption when it comes to their car manufacturing as well as infrastructure. The disproportionately high interest in hydrogen is likely not being driven because of a belief in its future success, but likely more as a hope to continuing the status quo.
- kleiba 2y ago
  Right. But at some point, you should acknowledge reality. That's why I'm not currently trying to collect VC money for a new start-up on BetaMax recording technology.
- philjohn 2y ago
  Yes - but Hydrogen vehicles have not proven to match or even beat EV's in a lot of key metrics that matter. The biggest one is efficiency. 40% efficient is one figure I saw, versus 80% for EV's. Yes, you can refill quicker, but time to "refuel" EV's is dropping precipitously as well, and it's just all around safer than tanking around highly combustible liquid gas.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    > Hydrogen vehicles have not proven to match or even beat EV's in a lot of key metrics that matter Not yet. That is the nature of technological R&D - if we had the answers, we wouldn't be doing R&D. AI before the last decade or so didn't beat other computer technologies in key metrics; should they have stopped developing it? Fusion power doesn't beat fission and other options in key metrics; solar didn't beat other sources in key metrics, including costs, ... - should humanity have stopped developing those things?
    - philjohn 2y ago
      Toyota have been researching hydrogen cars since the early 90's. Unless you can find a way to double their efficiency, and also get hydrogen down to close to 1:1 energy input to output it's just not an efficienct use of electricity.
      - mmooss 2y ago
        EVs were researched for decades before they came to fruition. That's the nature of research.
  - lesuorac 2y ago
    > Yes, you can refill quicker, but time to "refuel" EV's is dropping precipitously as well, and it's just all around safer than tanking around highly combustible liquid gas. I always think of I, Robot where the protagonist gets on a motorcycle and immediately their passenger complains about how dangerous gasoline is. While not for everybody, EVs have a really great property of being rechargable without much effort on your part. Just spend ~10 seconds plugging it in at home/work and then ~10 seconds unplugging it before your next time. Compared to waiting 20 minutes in line at Costco Gas to save 1 dollar.
    - philjohn 2y ago
      And much cheaper to fill as well. On a pretty efficienct ICE that I had I was averaging about 20p per mile driven. On my EV I'm averaging 2.5p per mile driven.
- ReptileMan 2y ago
  EV has been tried with great success since the moment the electric motor was invented. Trams, metros, trolleybuses. The bottleneck for free range was always the battery - which was solved by the mobile phones. The electronics industry had the money to invest into batteries because of the premium that people were willing to pay for even minor battery improvements. And the economy of scale pushed it down to where a battery pack was costing less than the GDP of Australia and so viable in a car. Hydrogen cars will become available only when hydrogen is used as a temporary storage for renewable energy. But probably even there converting it to electricity in industrial scale fuel cell will make more sense.
  - masklinn 2y ago
    > The bottleneck for free range was always the battery - which was solved by the mobile phones. I wouldn't say solved here. Significantly improved into usability yes, but there are still big issues with batteries: - their low energy density means it's essentially impossible to have a long range in a small car, every long range EV is necessarily quite large, yet still has a shorter range than a city car - specific energy remains meh, contributing to weight inflation (though by no means the only factor here) - low temperature performance remains dreary and something you have to manage (and possibly hack / work around e.g. if your car only does automatic battery conditioning) - while I think fast charge times are a bit overblown as a single driver on long trips (because stretching / resting every 2-3 hours is a good idea anyway), if you have relief drivers and can relay they're a significant impediment Not that I think hydrogen has any future mind. But EVs do have a lot of drawbacks. And the amount of power you need available to charge a bus fleet in reasonable time is significant if you do pure battery.
atoav 2y ago
Reasons I can think of for that fixation are: 1. Germany's existing industrial capacity in terms of machining is a much closer match to hydrogen than to EVs. So in short it is wishful thinking mixed with a kind of self-preservation. 2. There seems to be a (somewhat unfounded) worry about energy storage when it comes to EVs, that many German technologists think is easier to handle and solve with hydrogen. 3. Germans culturally have a slight tendency to be fascinated by intricate and complex systems (which can also be a bad thing, see bureaucracy). Electric vehicles are conceptionally very simple, so the opposite. Hydrogen is a little bit more involved.
- robocat 2y ago
  Toyota had a hydrogen fixation too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai A more complete theory would encompass the Japanese drives as well.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mschuster91 2y ago
> Germany has this recurring fixation on hydrogen for whatever reason. Hydrogen would enable a lot of very rich and powerful businesses to just pivot their business model a bit: the fossil fuel industry would have a destination for "grey hydrogen", pipeline owners could repurpose natural gas pipelines and bunkers for hydrogen, you'd still need refineries, tanker trucks to refill gas stations, you'd still need a nationwide network of gas stations in the first place... In contrast, electric cars cut out a lot of the middlemen - once you got the car and a solar panel on your roof, you don't need _any_ of these industries any more. And you can't have that.

by kleiba 2y ago

mmooss 2y ago

If people followed that reasoning, there would be few EVs now because EVs had been tried for decades without success; so were airplanes and AI. If people quit as easily as you say hydrogen car manufacturers should, we wouldn't have much of anything.

addicted 2y ago
This is true but this analysis fails to consider why hydrogen receives so much interest, because similar reasoning could indicate we should be spending more on every other potential fuel source, including biofuels, and maybe running engines on cellulose. And the fact that hydrogen is most popular in Germany and Japan should provide a clue. These are countries with well established ICE car industries and therefore shifting to hydrogen provides the least disruption when it comes to their car manufacturing as well as infrastructure. The disproportionately high interest in hydrogen is likely not being driven because of a belief in its future success, but likely more as a hope to continuing the status quo.
kleiba 2y ago
Right. But at some point, you should acknowledge reality. That's why I'm not currently trying to collect VC money for a new start-up on BetaMax recording technology.
philjohn 2y ago
Yes - but Hydrogen vehicles have not proven to match or even beat EV's in a lot of key metrics that matter. The biggest one is efficiency. 40% efficient is one figure I saw, versus 80% for EV's. Yes, you can refill quicker, but time to "refuel" EV's is dropping precipitously as well, and it's just all around safer than tanking around highly combustible liquid gas.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > Hydrogen vehicles have not proven to match or even beat EV's in a lot of key metrics that matter Not yet. That is the nature of technological R&D - if we had the answers, we wouldn't be doing R&D. AI before the last decade or so didn't beat other computer technologies in key metrics; should they have stopped developing it? Fusion power doesn't beat fission and other options in key metrics; solar didn't beat other sources in key metrics, including costs, ... - should humanity have stopped developing those things?
  - philjohn 2y ago
    Toyota have been researching hydrogen cars since the early 90's. Unless you can find a way to double their efficiency, and also get hydrogen down to close to 1:1 energy input to output it's just not an efficienct use of electricity.
    - mmooss 2y ago
      EVs were researched for decades before they came to fruition. That's the nature of research.
- lesuorac 2y ago
  > Yes, you can refill quicker, but time to "refuel" EV's is dropping precipitously as well, and it's just all around safer than tanking around highly combustible liquid gas. I always think of I, Robot where the protagonist gets on a motorcycle and immediately their passenger complains about how dangerous gasoline is. While not for everybody, EVs have a really great property of being rechargable without much effort on your part. Just spend ~10 seconds plugging it in at home/work and then ~10 seconds unplugging it before your next time. Compared to waiting 20 minutes in line at Costco Gas to save 1 dollar.
  - philjohn 2y ago
    And much cheaper to fill as well. On a pretty efficienct ICE that I had I was averaging about 20p per mile driven. On my EV I'm averaging 2.5p per mile driven.
ReptileMan 2y ago
EV has been tried with great success since the moment the electric motor was invented. Trams, metros, trolleybuses. The bottleneck for free range was always the battery - which was solved by the mobile phones. The electronics industry had the money to invest into batteries because of the premium that people were willing to pay for even minor battery improvements. And the economy of scale pushed it down to where a battery pack was costing less than the GDP of Australia and so viable in a car. Hydrogen cars will become available only when hydrogen is used as a temporary storage for renewable energy. But probably even there converting it to electricity in industrial scale fuel cell will make more sense.
- masklinn 2y ago
  > The bottleneck for free range was always the battery - which was solved by the mobile phones. I wouldn't say solved here. Significantly improved into usability yes, but there are still big issues with batteries: - their low energy density means it's essentially impossible to have a long range in a small car, every long range EV is necessarily quite large, yet still has a shorter range than a city car - specific energy remains meh, contributing to weight inflation (though by no means the only factor here) - low temperature performance remains dreary and something you have to manage (and possibly hack / work around e.g. if your car only does automatic battery conditioning) - while I think fast charge times are a bit overblown as a single driver on long trips (because stretching / resting every 2-3 hours is a good idea anyway), if you have relief drivers and can relay they're a significant impediment Not that I think hydrogen has any future mind. But EVs do have a lot of drawbacks. And the amount of power you need available to charge a bus fleet in reasonable time is significant if you do pure battery.

atoav 2y ago

Reasons I can think of for that fixation are: 1. Germany's existing industrial capacity in terms of machining is a much closer match to hydrogen than to EVs. So in short it is wishful thinking mixed with a kind of self-preservation. 2. There seems to be a (somewhat unfounded) worry about energy storage when it comes to EVs, that many German technologists think is easier to handle and solve with hydrogen. 3. Germans culturally have a slight tendency to be fascinated by intricate and complex systems (which can also be a bad thing, see bureaucracy). Electric vehicles are conceptionally very simple, so the opposite. Hydrogen is a little bit more involved.

robocat 2y ago
Toyota had a hydrogen fixation too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai A more complete theory would encompass the Japanese drives as well.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mschuster91 2y ago

> Germany has this recurring fixation on hydrogen for whatever reason. Hydrogen would enable a lot of very rich and powerful businesses to just pivot their business model a bit: the fossil fuel industry would have a destination for "grey hydrogen", pipeline owners could repurpose natural gas pipelines and bunkers for hydrogen, you'd still need refineries, tanker trucks to refill gas stations, you'd still need a nationwide network of gas stations in the first place... In contrast, electric cars cut out a lot of the middlemen - once you got the car and a solar panel on your roof, you don't need _any_ of these industries any more. And you can't have that.