4 ms·

this is the case while they're in the hype building phase, when people are paying attention if hydrogen even gained widespread adoption, it would be mass produ

by blibble 8mo ago

this is the case while they're in the hype building phase, when people are paying attention if hydrogen even gained widespread adoption, it would be mass produced via steam reforming of natural gas (which is why the oil majors are the ones desperately pushing it)

b112 8mo ago
That makes no sense. If the oil companies were pushing H2, every car would be H2 by now. H2 can be generated anywhere there is power. Any power that can be used to charge a car's battery, can be used to make H2. Yes, I'm sure you have 1000 reasons, but I don't really care, it's just not reasonable to discredit h2 because of made up paranoia. We should embrace any way to get a clean running car on the road.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- BadBadJellyBean 8mo ago
  But isn't that a counter point? Just putting the electricity directly into a car seems sensible instead of converting it to H2 and then back to electricity. Especially now that wo don't usually have a huge oversupply of green energy. We can think of ways to use the oversupply when it really becomes a problem. But I'd assume then BEV will be so dominant the no one will go through the hassle of supporting H2.
- Tade0 8mo ago
  There's no point. EVs go 50% further on the same amount of energy, are easier to charge and are, of course, cheaper.
  - b112 7mo ago
    EVs take forever to charge, rendering long trips unrealistic. They are not cheaper long term, for they rely upon thousands of pounds of heavy batteries. If they go further now, that is not a given down the road. Were you to employ this logic when electric cars first came out, there wouldn't be a single one on the road. It's only through trillions of research dollars, that current battery tech is where it is. But sure, let's not work on multiple paths. Let's discount other attempts at clean tech. Even if they're older, cost less to the environment to build (batteries are terrible, environmentally), and so on.
    - Tade0 7mo ago
      > EVs take forever to charge, rendering long trips unrealistic. You'll find EVs that will go 700km+ with just one, 15min stop, as they charge at over 350kW in this day and age: https://ev-database.org/#group=vehicle-group&av-1=1&rs-pr=10000_100000&rs-er=0_1000&rs-ld=700_1000&rs-ac=2_23&rs-dcfc=0_400&rs-ub=10_200&rs-tw=0_3000&rs-ef=100_350&rs-sa=-1_5&rs-w=1000_3500&rs-c=0_5000&rs-y=2010_2030&s=1&p=0-10 https://ev-database.org/#group=vehicle-group&av-1=1&rs-pr=10... You'd want to make that 15min stop at least once on such a trip. Or fly instead. > It's only through trillions of research dollars, that current battery tech is where it is. Problem is that while batteries only needed scale and improvements in manufacturing processes to become cheaper, there's no such path with hydrogen. The tank and the fuel cell are inherently expensive. The fueling station costs literally 10x that of a fast charger and in this day and age doesn't even charge faster as while the first customer will be done in less than 15min, the next needs to wait for the system to repressurize and that takes time. Also it goes kaboom if it fails, which is something we know, because it already happened. The fuel itself cannot be cheaper than electricity unless you want to make it from natural gas, in which case you better just use that instead. > (batteries are terrible, environmentally) The sheer energy that's wasted by a hydrogen car vs EV over its life cycle is enough to produce and safely dispose of a battery. And this is what it really boils down to: hydrogen is not energetically efficient, therefore you can't make it cheaper unless you use fossil fuels. We already have fossil fuel cars.
      - b112 7mo ago
        There is only one car in that database that has even close to a 700km range on long trips, and that is only under perfect conditions. As with any car, you don't wait until out of fuel to recharge. Instead, you seek to do so well before. These pages at least understand a little of that, and cite a real-world range under perfect conditions of 450km before recharging, with a range of 300km afterwards. Yet these figures are with no heat or AC, with it not below -10C, and with an incredibly slow speed of 110km/hr, which is illegal on some freeways in the US and Canada (yes, too slow on a freeway is illegal). At least, according to this page. And yes, this is a "long trip" after all. I often have circumstances where I drive 1600km a day. For current situations, although the future can be different, if you click on the details, it's actually 22 minutes to get an 80% charge, and of course with 400kw thrown at it. You have to get to the charger, hope one is free, then start this business. Just the on/off plus charging would realistically be 30 minutes, and taking 1 1/2 hours off to charge is ridiculous. The current real world problems are, you'll never find that level of charging anywhere along the route of your long trip. Not with assurances it actually works, and that you don't have to redirect 100s of kms out of the path you wish to take. I cite current, because the future is just that. However, you'll literally have to spend trillions on infra just to do anything more than that, because if you're having literal parking lots full of cars charging at turn-offs on interstates, that's going to require massive, new long-haul electricity infra. Which is really the point. Very slow to charge, hard to get charged, and once the infra is in place, there's still issues. Like recycling. And weight of car. And peak demand vs storage (such as with h2). And more. Each tech stands poorly against gas cars, in terms of usability, reliability, range, fueling issues, and so on. That's to be expected though, with over 100 years of relentless development of carbon beasts, in planes, ships, cars, engines of all sorts. It will take decades at the very least to get as good with electric in any form. Yet what do I hear and see? What madness do I see relentlessly spouted? That one tech is the only answer, that R&D will change nothing, that even though range is an issue, the person is the problem, not the range, and so on. Like the crass "use an airplane" comment. Ah well.
- matthewdgreen 8mo ago
  H2 from electrolysis is wildly expensive. H2 from natural gas is more affordable. Both are alternatives to BEVs, which are the better approach to electrifying transport. If Toyota had gone all in on BEVs when it began its H2 strategy, it would be selling more EVs than Tesla. Instead it entirely ceded the field to others, first Tesla and BYD.
  - b112 7mo ago
    H2 from electrolysis is wildly expensive. H2 from natural gas is more affordable. Irrelevant. It seems like everyone who argues against H2 is stuck on "now". Had that been the case with battery powered cars, they'd have never got off of the ground. Batteries were terrible, wildly expensive, extremely unreliable. It's only been the immense research poured into them, that has brought their costs down. Meanwhile, the cost of storage on an H2 car is nothing, compared to the immense and exorbitant cost of all those batteries. Batteries which make a car extremely heavy. Batteries which cannot be charged below -20C, and require heaters. Batteries which are incredibly dangerous in car accidents. Batteries which are costly, and damaging to the environment to create, difficult to recycle, and damaging to the environment to recycle. Compared to battery tech of any type, H2 is a dream from the gods. Yet because there hasn't been 17 trillion dollars of cash thrown into h2 generation tech, people prattle on about how expensive h2 generation is. And it doesn't matter where h2 comes from now. It matters where it can and will come from. The goal isn't to make sources of power to generate h2 clean, the goal is to get end-polluters, cars, clean. If the only goal was "clean", then most electric batteries charging right now, would fail that very goal. After all, there are still coal and gas power plants this very moment, and if we pulled all electric cars off the road, those would close. No, the goal is to work towards more and more solar power, wind, etc. And in parallel, get cars ready for the day when power they're charged from isn't polluting. The myopic view of what I deem hyper-environmentalists, is disturbing to me. It is paramount that we don't let short sighted views fog the reality around us. Anyone arguing 1000lbs of batteries, all environmentally damaging in their construction, recycling cost, and disposal, is superior to h2, is arguing from a pedestal of sandy, earthquake prone, unstable support.
    - fragmede 7mo ago
- blibble 8mo ago
  say you're Shell you are vertically integrated, you have billions invested in oilfields, refineries, distribution, and the retail channel ("gas stations") if transport switches to electric, what's your role? answer: there isn't one, you are completely redundant but what if hydrogen took off instead? if you produce via electrolysis, you only keep the retail channel but if you can get H2 established, then you can do a switcheroo and feed in H2 produced from your existing natural gas infrastructure, and massively undercut everyone's electrolysis business at which point you're back to the old days, just instead of selling gasoline from your oilfields, you're supplying hydrogen produced from their gas ... and that's exactly what they're trying to do
- constantcrying 8mo ago
  >We should embrace any way to get a clean running car on the road. No. We should embrace the technically most feasible, which opens up new technology to the most people. EVs are the clear winners. Every cent spent on hydrogen infrastructure is a cent wasted, because it could go to making the one feasible technology better. Arbitrary openness to technology long after it has been clearly established that the technology is inferior is not a good thing, it is a path to stay on ICEs forever. Hydrogen is a bad idea. The only way to defend it is by pretending modern EVs do not exist, since they solved all the existing problems and offer numerous benefits over hydrogen. Additionally the customer has already chosen and he has chosen the right technology, because the value proposition of an EV is far greater than that of a hydrogen car.
- Dylan16807 8mo ago
  > We should embrace any way to get a clean running car on the road. Only if it's also feasible to fuel that car in a clean way. And looking at where the hydrogen would come from is not "made up" or "paranoia".
  - b112 7mo ago
    It is entirely feasible. And it is made up to claim that "Well, this second it looks like there's no infra for green h2, so it can never happen! So there!" If that was the case, we'd still have electric cars with 50km range, and 1000lbs of batteries.
    - Dylan16807 7mo ago
      I haven't seen any cost models where green hydrogen is feasible without a lot of super cheap excess electricity. And those situations also boost batteries. Do you have one you can show me? It's not just lack of infrastructure, even if you solved the problem of building everything out green hydrogen is still not worth it under conditions close to the present day. And I didn't say it could never under any circumstances be feasible. > If that was the case, we'd still have electric cars with 50km range, and 1000lbs of batteries. I don't follow your logic here. Nobody went out and built tons of lithium ion batteries for cars until they were actually feasible. We're living in the world where companies wait, and it worked out for electric cars.
      - b112 7mo ago
        Research. Battery tech was terrible. Horrible. It was only through endless research, trillions spent, that battery tech can do what it does today. Now apply the same logic to h2.
        Dylan16807 7mo ago
        I didn't suggest stopping research. But while research and scaling up made batteries 50x cheaper, batteries are mostly about material costs and technique. For hydrogen there's a huge per-unit energy cost and that limits how much research helps.
toast0 8mo ago
Natural gas vehicles make way more sense than hydrogen. But they didn't survive in the (US) market outside specific fleet applications. Turns out compressed gas fuel is a big PITA.
- seanmcdirmid 8mo ago
  They were popular in Thailand and Cambodia for awhile due to domestic natural gas reserves. But after those wells began to dry up Thailand at least decided EVs were the future instead.

by blibble 8mo ago

b112 8mo ago

That makes no sense. If the oil companies were pushing H2, every car would be H2 by now. H2 can be generated anywhere there is power. Any power that can be used to charge a car's battery, can be used to make H2. Yes, I'm sure you have 1000 reasons, but I don't really care, it's just not reasonable to discredit h2 because of made up paranoia. We should embrace any way to get a clean running car on the road.

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
BadBadJellyBean 8mo ago
But isn't that a counter point? Just putting the electricity directly into a car seems sensible instead of converting it to H2 and then back to electricity. Especially now that wo don't usually have a huge oversupply of green energy. We can think of ways to use the oversupply when it really becomes a problem. But I'd assume then BEV will be so dominant the no one will go through the hassle of supporting H2.
Tade0 8mo ago
There's no point. EVs go 50% further on the same amount of energy, are easier to charge and are, of course, cheaper.
- b112 7mo ago
  EVs take forever to charge, rendering long trips unrealistic. They are not cheaper long term, for they rely upon thousands of pounds of heavy batteries. If they go further now, that is not a given down the road. Were you to employ this logic when electric cars first came out, there wouldn't be a single one on the road. It's only through trillions of research dollars, that current battery tech is where it is. But sure, let's not work on multiple paths. Let's discount other attempts at clean tech. Even if they're older, cost less to the environment to build (batteries are terrible, environmentally), and so on.
  - Tade0 7mo ago
    > EVs take forever to charge, rendering long trips unrealistic. You'll find EVs that will go 700km+ with just one, 15min stop, as they charge at over 350kW in this day and age: https://ev-database.org/#group=vehicle-group&av-1=1&rs-pr=10000_100000&rs-er=0_1000&rs-ld=700_1000&rs-ac=2_23&rs-dcfc=0_400&rs-ub=10_200&rs-tw=0_3000&rs-ef=100_350&rs-sa=-1_5&rs-w=1000_3500&rs-c=0_5000&rs-y=2010_2030&s=1&p=0-10 https://ev-database.org/#group=vehicle-group&av-1=1&rs-pr=10... You'd want to make that 15min stop at least once on such a trip. Or fly instead. > It's only through trillions of research dollars, that current battery tech is where it is. Problem is that while batteries only needed scale and improvements in manufacturing processes to become cheaper, there's no such path with hydrogen. The tank and the fuel cell are inherently expensive. The fueling station costs literally 10x that of a fast charger and in this day and age doesn't even charge faster as while the first customer will be done in less than 15min, the next needs to wait for the system to repressurize and that takes time. Also it goes kaboom if it fails, which is something we know, because it already happened. The fuel itself cannot be cheaper than electricity unless you want to make it from natural gas, in which case you better just use that instead. > (batteries are terrible, environmentally) The sheer energy that's wasted by a hydrogen car vs EV over its life cycle is enough to produce and safely dispose of a battery. And this is what it really boils down to: hydrogen is not energetically efficient, therefore you can't make it cheaper unless you use fossil fuels. We already have fossil fuel cars.
    - b112 7mo ago
      There is only one car in that database that has even close to a 700km range on long trips, and that is only under perfect conditions. As with any car, you don't wait until out of fuel to recharge. Instead, you seek to do so well before. These pages at least understand a little of that, and cite a real-world range under perfect conditions of 450km before recharging, with a range of 300km afterwards. Yet these figures are with no heat or AC, with it not below -10C, and with an incredibly slow speed of 110km/hr, which is illegal on some freeways in the US and Canada (yes, too slow on a freeway is illegal). At least, according to this page. And yes, this is a "long trip" after all. I often have circumstances where I drive 1600km a day. For current situations, although the future can be different, if you click on the details, it's actually 22 minutes to get an 80% charge, and of course with 400kw thrown at it. You have to get to the charger, hope one is free, then start this business. Just the on/off plus charging would realistically be 30 minutes, and taking 1 1/2 hours off to charge is ridiculous. The current real world problems are, you'll never find that level of charging anywhere along the route of your long trip. Not with assurances it actually works, and that you don't have to redirect 100s of kms out of the path you wish to take. I cite current, because the future is just that. However, you'll literally have to spend trillions on infra just to do anything more than that, because if you're having literal parking lots full of cars charging at turn-offs on interstates, that's going to require massive, new long-haul electricity infra. Which is really the point. Very slow to charge, hard to get charged, and once the infra is in place, there's still issues. Like recycling. And weight of car. And peak demand vs storage (such as with h2). And more. Each tech stands poorly against gas cars, in terms of usability, reliability, range, fueling issues, and so on. That's to be expected though, with over 100 years of relentless development of carbon beasts, in planes, ships, cars, engines of all sorts. It will take decades at the very least to get as good with electric in any form. Yet what do I hear and see? What madness do I see relentlessly spouted? That one tech is the only answer, that R&D will change nothing, that even though range is an issue, the person is the problem, not the range, and so on. Like the crass "use an airplane" comment. Ah well.
matthewdgreen 8mo ago
H2 from electrolysis is wildly expensive. H2 from natural gas is more affordable. Both are alternatives to BEVs, which are the better approach to electrifying transport. If Toyota had gone all in on BEVs when it began its H2 strategy, it would be selling more EVs than Tesla. Instead it entirely ceded the field to others, first Tesla and BYD.
- b112 7mo ago
  H2 from electrolysis is wildly expensive. H2 from natural gas is more affordable. Irrelevant. It seems like everyone who argues against H2 is stuck on "now". Had that been the case with battery powered cars, they'd have never got off of the ground. Batteries were terrible, wildly expensive, extremely unreliable. It's only been the immense research poured into them, that has brought their costs down. Meanwhile, the cost of storage on an H2 car is nothing, compared to the immense and exorbitant cost of all those batteries. Batteries which make a car extremely heavy. Batteries which cannot be charged below -20C, and require heaters. Batteries which are incredibly dangerous in car accidents. Batteries which are costly, and damaging to the environment to create, difficult to recycle, and damaging to the environment to recycle. Compared to battery tech of any type, H2 is a dream from the gods. Yet because there hasn't been 17 trillion dollars of cash thrown into h2 generation tech, people prattle on about how expensive h2 generation is. And it doesn't matter where h2 comes from now. It matters where it can and will come from. The goal isn't to make sources of power to generate h2 clean, the goal is to get end-polluters, cars, clean. If the only goal was "clean", then most electric batteries charging right now, would fail that very goal. After all, there are still coal and gas power plants this very moment, and if we pulled all electric cars off the road, those would close. No, the goal is to work towards more and more solar power, wind, etc. And in parallel, get cars ready for the day when power they're charged from isn't polluting. The myopic view of what I deem hyper-environmentalists, is disturbing to me. It is paramount that we don't let short sighted views fog the reality around us. Anyone arguing 1000lbs of batteries, all environmentally damaging in their construction, recycling cost, and disposal, is superior to h2, is arguing from a pedestal of sandy, earthquake prone, unstable support.
  - fragmede 7mo ago
blibble 8mo ago
say you're Shell you are vertically integrated, you have billions invested in oilfields, refineries, distribution, and the retail channel ("gas stations") if transport switches to electric, what's your role? answer: there isn't one, you are completely redundant but what if hydrogen took off instead? if you produce via electrolysis, you only keep the retail channel but if you can get H2 established, then you can do a switcheroo and feed in H2 produced from your existing natural gas infrastructure, and massively undercut everyone's electrolysis business at which point you're back to the old days, just instead of selling gasoline from your oilfields, you're supplying hydrogen produced from their gas ... and that's exactly what they're trying to do
constantcrying 8mo ago
>We should embrace any way to get a clean running car on the road. No. We should embrace the technically most feasible, which opens up new technology to the most people. EVs are the clear winners. Every cent spent on hydrogen infrastructure is a cent wasted, because it could go to making the one feasible technology better. Arbitrary openness to technology long after it has been clearly established that the technology is inferior is not a good thing, it is a path to stay on ICEs forever. Hydrogen is a bad idea. The only way to defend it is by pretending modern EVs do not exist, since they solved all the existing problems and offer numerous benefits over hydrogen. Additionally the customer has already chosen and he has chosen the right technology, because the value proposition of an EV is far greater than that of a hydrogen car.
Dylan16807 8mo ago
> We should embrace any way to get a clean running car on the road. Only if it's also feasible to fuel that car in a clean way. And looking at where the hydrogen would come from is not "made up" or "paranoia".
- b112 7mo ago
  It is entirely feasible. And it is made up to claim that "Well, this second it looks like there's no infra for green h2, so it can never happen! So there!" If that was the case, we'd still have electric cars with 50km range, and 1000lbs of batteries.
  - Dylan16807 7mo ago
    I haven't seen any cost models where green hydrogen is feasible without a lot of super cheap excess electricity. And those situations also boost batteries. Do you have one you can show me? It's not just lack of infrastructure, even if you solved the problem of building everything out green hydrogen is still not worth it under conditions close to the present day. And I didn't say it could never under any circumstances be feasible. > If that was the case, we'd still have electric cars with 50km range, and 1000lbs of batteries. I don't follow your logic here. Nobody went out and built tons of lithium ion batteries for cars until they were actually feasible. We're living in the world where companies wait, and it worked out for electric cars.
    - b112 7mo ago
      Research. Battery tech was terrible. Horrible. It was only through endless research, trillions spent, that battery tech can do what it does today. Now apply the same logic to h2.
      - Dylan16807 7mo ago
        I didn't suggest stopping research. But while research and scaling up made batteries 50x cheaper, batteries are mostly about material costs and technique. For hydrogen there's a huge per-unit energy cost and that limits how much research helps.

toast0 8mo ago

Natural gas vehicles make way more sense than hydrogen. But they didn't survive in the (US) market outside specific fleet applications. Turns out compressed gas fuel is a big PITA.

seanmcdirmid 8mo ago
They were popular in Thailand and Cambodia for awhile due to domestic natural gas reserves. But after those wells began to dry up Thailand at least decided EVs were the future instead.