Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)
bmw.comHydrogen almost certainly won't go anywhere, in my opinion.
* The efficiency compared to battery tech is horrendous.
* Hydrogen is effectively a storage technology -- we have to generate it and compress it. Which combined with the above means that charging a hydrogen car will always be more expensive than putting the same amount of usable energy into a battery powered car.
* Let's not forget that the cheapest way of generating hydrogen is from fossil fuels. Electrolysis is very inefficient.
* Any concern there might exist for the effect on the electrical grid coming battery powered cars multiplies for hydrogen due to the inefficiency.
* You need a large infrastructure to produce and distribute it.
* It's a huge chicken and egg problem -- a hydrogen car needs hydrogen, and there's nowhere convenient right now to get it from.
* In the end, a hydrogen car is ultimately electric. What is more convenient, having a car that can be plugged into an outlet, or a car that needs an extremely specialized hydrogen station?
IMO the only excitement from hydrogen is for fossil fuel companies, because that's what the vast majority of it is made from, and because it'd be a fairly natural fit into their existing infrastructure.
There may be some niches where hydrogen could be the better solution -- hydrogen trucks might be viable because there you can have well defined routes, and trucks have a weight limit which may not play well with batteries. But for normal cars I don't really see it.
While inefficiency is indeed a problem, I feel like a lot of people overlook the one huge pro hydrogen has over batteries, namely charging time. Of course this might not be important for the daily commute, or 99% of the vehicles' use. But for that remaining 1% it _is_ a huge deal. And most people buy cars to fulfill a 100% of their needs, not 99%.
Now I should say, I know basically nothing about battery tech. But unless full charging time can be greatly reduced, by which I mean under 5 or at most 10 minutes, I still feel hydrogen could have the upper hand even if it is more expensive and less efficient.
For passenger vehicle road trips charging time is already into "doesn't matter" territory for a number of models. I have taken a 1000 km+ trip in a BEV that I used to take in gas vehicles. We didn't have to stop more often or stay any longer than we would have with gasoline.
Really think about the time you spend stationary when stopping for fuel on a road trip. It's not just pumping fuel, you also go to the bathroom, get some food, and stretch your legs.
Extremely fast charging a Tesla trick, Hyundai Ionic 5 (starting around 45K before incentives) can charge 10-80% in 18 minutes, which is enough to travel around 330 km. That's roughly 3 hours of driving in most counties.
I could see hydrogen making sense for fleets with local operation that need to be operated nearly 24x7, like the support vehicles at an airport, city busses, and taxis in cities with strong night life. It also makes sense for heavy industry. Doesn't make sense for passenger vehicles; the cost of batteries has crashed too far and the power grid is way too ubiquitous.
>Extremely fast charging [...] can charge 10-80% in 18 minutes, which is enough to travel around 330 km. That's roughly 3 hours of driving in most counties.
This is not very impressive, and exactly where I see hydrogen have the upper hand. I suppose it's a matter of opinion, but _having_ to stop for 20 minutes every 3 hours isn't ideal at all for me.
Bloody hell, how much non-stop driving are you doing? If you're driving a solid 12 hours a day, that is only three 18-minute breaks, one of which is your lunch break.
>that is only three 18-minute breaks
Those are three _mandatory_ breaks, that add up to almost an hour, in ideal circumstances. To answer your question, not a whole lot, but in that 1% 6 hour drives aren't uncommon at all.
You are the outlier of the outlier. And if you plan it well, EV charge actually faster in the lower 50%.
So if you really want to optimize you can actually do it with shorter 10 min stops. Check out Kyle from inside EV.
And until you can seriously deploy Hydrogen vehicles, it would be a few years down the road. Until then the next generation of battery an charging will be significantly faster already.
Practically speaking most people simply don't drive like that, people need to eat, pie and so on. With an EV you simply stop at a charger do all the things and go back. That usually takes 10ish minutes.
And to be honest, every road trip with at least on other person usually means a break every 3h anyway.
And even more in a day to day application, most people charge over night, so never having to go to a station and having a short break every few hours is vastly preferable to having to constantly go to the hydrogen station.
Of course hydrogen would also be significantly more expensive.
All in all, it simply doesn't make practical sense to optimize everything for this one specific thing.
>You are the outlier of the outlier.
I don't think I am. Camping vacations in Europe are very common. 1500 km in two days really isn't as uncommon as you might think. For clarity, I'm not saying it can't be done with an EV, I'm just saying the relatively many, long, mandatory breaks aren't nearly as convenient as the relatively few short ones that regular cars, and perhaps in the future, hydrogen cars, offer.
And again, taking a quick break to stretch your legs a bit, is not the same as needing to take a 20 minute break in order to be able to continue your journey. This might seem like a small detail but I really don't think it is.
If you have children you need to stop more often period. Even most woman that I have traveled with actually want to stop far more often. Sure, with a bunch of guys driving to Italy we might go 3-4 hours non stop but that is as I pointed the exception.
I have traveled threw Europe all my life and the idea that 15-20min stops every few hours are a major deal-breaker is just nonsense. You want to pie, you want to eat, you want to go to the shop and get some drinks.
Simply stopping, plugging in, going to pie, get a drink in the shop and stretching your legs for 5min already adds enough to drive another couple hours.
And even if you are a case, where you really are driving like that, 1-2 times a year where you do journey like that the extra 30min you spend on the journey are really not the end of the world. I honestly can not describe it any other way then a small detail that wouldn't matter to the waste majority of people.
And even if that is still a problem, a few years from now batteries will be better, charging will be even faster and density will be higher. Hydrogen would not be the right answer.
If you're taking a family camping vacation every time you stop the car it's going to be a 15-20 minute minimum stop by the time everyone climbs out, goes to the bathroom, and gets loaded back in. I don't believe you can transport 3 or more people without needing to stop at least once every 3-4 hours.
Here in Canada things are way, way further apart than Europe and car travel to vacation is often many hours or days apart. I have taken a number of EV road trips and I have not had to stop more often or stay longer than I would have in a gas car. Charging speeds and range are only getting better, but they are already well into low/no impact territory.
> I don't believe you can transport 3 or more people without needing to stop at least once every 3-4 hours.
Okay. I can, and do so a few times a year. Also, the 3/4 hours people keep referring to, is that in a fully loaded car pulling a caravan while occasionally driving through mountain ranges with an average speed of 100 km/h?
And for the last time, wanting to take a 20 minute break is different from having to. We often postpone/skip planned breaks in order to stay ahead of rush hour, or to reach the campsite before closing time, just to name two common reasons. Mandatory 20 minute breaks greatly reduce your freedom while traveling. No matter how little of a problem this is for you personally.
Again you just keep adding more and more stuff to defend your concept and it applies to fewer and fewer people.
The waste majority, 99.9something people will never drive with a caravan and most don't go threw the mountains.
You simply need to accept that you are representing an expedition, this has been studded. Most cars only very, very rarely do long travel at all. And when they do they don't do it very often. And when they do they stop reasonably often anyway.
You can simply accept that an EV is not for you for the moment because you are apparently a special case. Most people don't stop wanting to pie so they can beat rush hour to a campsite. That is simply not the case for 99.9999% of miles driven.
>Most cars only very, very rarely do long travel at all. And when they do they don't do it very often.
I agree, and this is what I said in my first post. My entire point is that, for most people, a car needs to meet _all_ needs, not 99% of them. Don't get me wrong, EV's are a great step forward, but perhaps hydrogen can solve some problems EV's can not. They might very well introduce more problems than they solve, fair enough. But it seems silly to just brush off possible solutions in favour of an incomplete one. Yet this is what happens every time hydrogen gets mentioned.
>And when they do they stop reasonably often anyway.
You are ignoring the optional vs mandatory difference. Whether it's a problem for you or me personally is irrelevant, the fact is it limits your freedom considerably.
It definitely takes longer west of the Mississippi river in the US. Mountains with 80MPH (130 km/h) speed limits mean the range is far shorter than typical freeway diving, which makes the fact that you need to stop more often, and for longer (gas cars have a typical 330 mile range, 1 l.6 longer than that Ionic), really add up.
[edit]
I will soon be diving 1600km. Google suggests the route will take 14h. I expect to make it in 15. Friends with Teslas suggest it would take nearly 20.
> I will soon be diving 1600km. Google suggests the route will take 14h. I expect to make it in 15. Friends with Teslas suggest it would take nearly 20.
Google doesn't account for stops required for toilet breaks, eating and drinking. Of course, you can just not drink, so you don't have to pee. You can eat while driving even though that's isn't a good idea from a safety standpoint. You can skip taking any breaks and get tired, which is also a bad idea from a safety standpoint.
It also depends on the available charging infrastructure, of which I have no clue at your destination.
In my own experience with driving about 1200 km with regular breaks, it took about an hour longer than it did with my diesel. It just took more planning. Most times, a charging stop meant peeing, drinking a coffee and then the car would be finished charging. The biggest issue was that some chargers aren't near a rest stop.
1600 km in 15 hr is borderline irresponsible driving. Depending on speed limits as there simply isn't enough rest time to ensure you are focused on driving.
The EV cannonball record was set this winter in a Porsche Taycan at 44 hrs 26 minutes and that included some charger trouble and much less than ideal temperatures. Google's estimate for that route is 42 hours without any stops of any kind.
Here is a route plan for Lincoln, NB to Las Vegas NV. 1989 km with 17:43 driving and 2:29 charging for just over 20 hours total. That's an extra 400 km covered from your rough estimate and includes going up and over some pretty serious mountains.
https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=71dfd1e1-a134-46c...
> 1600 km in 15 hr is borderline irresponsible driving. Depending on speed limits as there simply isn't enough rest time to ensure you are focused on driving.
2 drivers.
Driving at the fastest allowed speed for long duration isn't a good bet with BEV. Usually you'll get shorter trip time by driving at 110km/h and skipping a charge.
It depends on the charge curve for the car. For the fastest charging cars it's better to keep the battery in the bottom half (where it charges faster) and charge more often in very short stints.
> We didn't have to stop more often or stay any longer than we would have with gasoline.
A serious question from someone who knows little about electric cars, and who still thought it would take anywhere between 30-240 minutes to charge, depending on charger type - can electric cars really now charge faster than the < 180 seconds I'd spend refilling with petrol/diesel?
If so, I think the industry needs to make more noise about this, to make it more know.
I own the 400km range model 3. I can tell you that you’re comparing apples and oranges.
Over the course of the 50 weeks of a year that I don’t take it on long trips I spend 0 seconds waiting for a charge. I plug it in at night and it’s always full in the morning. A typical errand running day for me is 200+ km and I have more than enough range for that.
The one or two times I take it on a road trip I usually time it with pee breaks and filling my self with coffee.
Net/net I spend less time over all waiting to refuel my car.
Yes, of course this depends on me having a place to plug it in at night.
I'm talking about total stop time. Pumping gas is an active task you have to be present for whereas charging isn't.
I roll into a charger and plug in, then immediately head to the bathroom. Grab food if it's a lunch or snack break. Walk around to stretch my legs. By the time I'm ready to go so is the car.
When pumping gas I can't leave the pump unattended, so bathroom time gets added on top of refuel time. With charging the car is adding range no matter what task I happen to be doing while the car is stationary.
The other charge need is daily use. Charging at home is a game changer that absolutely beats gas pumps. It takes me 10 seconds to plug in as I leave the garage. I wake up to a full "tank" every single morning. Daily errands cannot possibly use up my 400 km range, so I never have to think about charge unless I'm on a road trip.
> The other charge need is daily use. Charging at home...
Within reason, this seems like it would be a good tradeoff for many people.
Say you're on a rare long journey and need to stop and charge - minutes-wise how long are we talking about?
Not long. My most common road trip is about 720 km one way and doesn't have a lot of destination charging. I stop 3 times on the way up:
* 5 minutes to get synced up with the distance between chargers (it's a very rural route; on more major routes you have plenty of choice about where to stop)
* 20 minutes
* 15 minutes to make sure I can make it back to the charging network since my destination is super rural.
I have made that same journey to visit family many times in a gas car and we stop in the exact same places for pretty much exactly the same amount of time. The first one is in the town my grandmother lives in, so we'd have stopped to say hello anyway. The 2nd is where we have always stop for a meal. The 3rd stop is where we always take a bathroom break.
https://abetterrouteplanner.com
Select a car and enter a route. It will be a pretty accurate picture of the necessary charging. You can play with things like temperature, arrival and departure charge state, and load.
I don't think the difference between 10 and 15 minutes is enough to cause a huge problem in those 1% of situations. There are a lot of happy EV customers that go on multi-day road trips, just as they would in a gas car, without issue. I'm one of them, and will never go back to a fuel based car.
That extra five minutes on road trips is far far far less than the amount of extra time that has cars take day to day, needing to stop at gas stations rather than get plugged in at the garage. The tradeoff is hugely in EVs favor, IMHO.
I've taken multiple ~1000mi road trips in my Tesla. Charging typically adds ~2 hours to such a trip (14hrs -> 16+ hrs). I'm an "eat in the car and stop only for fuel" road tripper, so a ~30-40 minute stop every ~2-3 hours is far worse than an 3-5min stop every 4-5 hours.
What's especially frustrating is what happens when I arrive at my destination, where I don't have access to charging and the nearest Tesla supercharger is an "urban" charger with 72Kw max. I'll typically pull into that charger between 1 and 2am and spend nearly an hour there to get the car up to 80% so that I have a charge for trips during the week. The last thing I want to be doing then is sitting in an empty parking garage, waiting for my car to charge when I just want to get some sleep in my bed. I'd love to have a quick refueling option.
I know what you mean there. Destination charging is currently the biggest weakness in the EV world, IMO. I'd love for every hotel and tourist destination to have L2 charging.
The most frustrating thing is that my destination is a friend's urban condo. They share a parking garage and valet with a hotel. There are destination chargers, and the valet will charge your car for you. But only if you're a hotel guest; the chargers are not available to condo residents.
IMO, this is why it is important to make billing more common. It doesn't make sense to keep them from the condo users if they could generate revenue from them.
I feel like the risk of freeloaders keeps hotels from installing more of them too.
> I don't think the difference between 10 and 15 minutes is enough to cause a huge problem
"Charging" with gasoline is like 2 minutes. With electricity AFAIR it is more like 30 minutes (in case of fast charger or longer in case of ordinary one).
The time difference is huge (e.g. if you travel with kids, every minute counts).
E.g. vacation travel in Poland from south to north (very popular during vacation) takes ~8h (depending where you start), during that time I need to tank gas twice, EV would need at least 2-4 times, this would increase travel time by 1-2h.
I recently made a trip through Poland, and, starting with a full tank of gas, I only needed to refuel the car once. But we still made 3 stops on the way, each being longer than 30 minutes. That's plenty of time to recharge an electric car. I think the issue would be that we'd never make it if all of the cars on the road were electric - a petrol pump can service far more cars hour than a tesla super charger.
OK, it depends on how/why you travel.
E.g. I do cross-Poland travel only to get from the mountains to the sea. And I have two small children -> they best travel when they are asleep -> travel during night.
My car has small tank, so I have to tank twice on the ~700km trip, and in the night it takes literally up to 3 minutes to tank and pay for it.
If I would use an EV (which I would like, very much, but they are prohibitively expensive here, I mean they cost 2-3x normal car) I would probably need to tank every 200-300km, so it would make 2-3 stops that last 30 mins (and that is assuming given gas station has EV charging, if not then I would need to borrow power from someone else and do charging for ~8h from a normal wall socket).
And this is considering that I use teslas superchargers, all other last longer than 30 mins. Not to mention if there is a queue to the chargers (fortunately at night it is not likely), if you have bad luck you would need to wait 30mins for the person before you and 30mins for your own charging - that makes it completely unsable for anyone.
Because hydrogen has to be pumped at 700 bar there's a delay when the pump buffer has to be recompressed. This will happen after 1 or 2 cars have filled up, the third will have to wait for 20-30 minutes. Not that different from charging an EV...
Tesla did have quick (90s) battery swap capabilities, but it has been abandoned. I would imagine the logistics of managing the batteries would be a headache considering they degrade with use and represent ~1/3rd of the value of car. My best guess is that it was a precaution in case battery longevity was worse than expected. That, or it was solely a way to get several hundred million in tax credits from California.
If production ever hits a point where it is not battery supply constrained, I could see tesla offering a battery insurance pool system with swapping capabilities, were they pull any pack under ~85% capacity and turn it into a power wall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0-sHtlCZ7M
https://insideevs.com/news/329836/tesla-battery-swap-locatio...
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2015/0312/Tesla-b...
You aren't wrong, but it still leaves Hydrogen in a weird place in the market.
With gasoline, you have to go weekly for your regularly commute. It can be annoying, but the upside is that you only have to stop for 5 minutes on a long trip!
With EVs, you just charge at home or the office which is really convenient. But the downside, is that those 5 minute stops become 25+ minute stops and you typically have at least 1 more of them. On top of that, the locations aren't as prevalent which increases planning needs.
With Hydrogen, you get the negative of weekly stopping, the negative of fewer locations, and the only benefit is that it can be refilled... almost as well as a gasoline for about the same $$.
So why would I choose hydrogen over either other choice?
The Toyota Mirai consumes about 1kg of hydrogen per 100km. In Germany, the government subsidised price for hydrogen is 9.50€/kg.
That’s expensive as all hell.
With hydrogen you get: fast refuels (if the station has pressurized itself after the last customer), good range, but the cost is redonculous and the distribution is nonexistent in most countries.
There are more Teslas in space than there are publicly available hydrogen refueling stations in Finland :D
> Of course this might not be important for the daily commute, or 99% of the vehicles' use. But for that remaining 1% it _is_ a huge deal.
That 1% use case should be priced for the externalities.
I'd like to see electric vehicle purchases heavily subsidized by taxes on fossil fuel vehicles and taxes on gasoline. If you really need to pollute 100% of the time you're operating your vehicle just in case you need that extra 1%, it should be priced in a way that really makes you think hard about that 1% scenario and whether there are really no alternatives.
Have you seen a hydrogen pump in real life? While yes, it can be faster than a 20 minute fast charge, it is a significantly more complex process than gasoline - it doesn’t just pour out the end of a hose as a stable liquid.
I actually think a lot of people will prefer a 10-20 min fast charge on a BEV (I certainly do). Due to the volatile nature of hydrogen I can’t imagine many places will let you run to the toilet or get a coffee while pumping either; these are all just fine to do with fast charging.
For me the choice between BEV and the alternates is more about availability of home charging - if you can wake up each day with reliably ~250 miles of range already in the car, you virtually never need to fill up/charge on the road anyway!
By law you have to take 30minute break after 8 hours. And you cannot drive more than 14 hours per day. Iirc Tesla semi can get 400mi from 30 minute. If they can up that figure to 600, then fuel cells range and competitive advantages diminish greatly.
But when you have near autonomous truck that runs closer to 24 hours per day or have a co driver in cab splitting duty then fuel cell will have an edge
You forgot safety.
Hydrogen poses some serious dangers as it is odorless and colorless if it leaks. It is very easy to ignite and it is explosive at a wide range of mixtures with oxygen. [0]
An hydrogen leak in an underground parking garage will be a very dangerous situation.
Obviously any dense concentration of energy will be dangerous. The gasoline in a traditional car is also highly flammable (though less likely to be explosive), and lithium reactions also also very hard to extinguish. But with both gasoline and lithium fire, you have some time to get yourself to a safe distance, with hydrogen... not so much.
Odorless / colorless -- same as natural gas. Just drop in a tracer chemical.
Unfortunately, these tracer chemicals tend to poison the fuel cells in cars. So that is not an option
Surely there is a tracer chemical that could work.
The usual ones are sulfur based.
I don't really see hydrogen going anywhere for cars (except maybe as range extender there might be case). However, for certain applications batteries become to heavy to be practical, i.e. aviation, shipping, large trucks etc.
Hydrogen could be great for the power grid.
Yeah, I think seasonal storage with hydrogen makes more sense than hydrogen trucks. People often underestimate just how heavy hydrogen fuel tanks are and the required cells and especially the huge radiator you need to get rid of all the heat. I once heard that the prototype for a Nikola hydrogen truck had a heat rejection system that required just as much power as a Nissan Leaf.
Seasonal storage is a total fantasy that has no practical application in the real world if you do the math on it.
Building gigantic storage with 1 year cycle is a gigantic waste of resources and even if you assume electricity to be totally free to make it pay for itself the invest most per storage would have to be like 100x cheaper then current grid storage.
Hydrogen in no shape or form will every be used as seasonal storage.
Hydrogen is just another form of battery that would practically have to have a 6h to a few day cycle. And in that case there are better options.
Nah, that’s not true if you use a container with cheap enough cost per storage-kWh, for instance salt caverns. In fact we ALREADY use them for seasonal natural gas storage. The references to this toy model show how to get extremely low cost per storage-kWh, as cheap as 0.7 € per kWh. (So amortized over 20 years, that’s a pretty small addition to the energy cost). https://model.energy Details on the salt cavern hydrogen storage: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2018.05.059
Or think in context of this liquid air (or compressed air) battery.
If you can get liquid air or compressed air batteries to cost $300/kWh or so, hydrogen in the same container compressed to the same degree can store about 100 times the energy (especially if sub-cooled). So the storage cost (if dominated by the container structure) drops by a factor of ~100. That’s $3/kWh for storage, if you don’t use salt caverns. Not great if only amortized over 20 years (plus the bad round-trip efficiency), but also not terrible if it’s only used for like 5% of the electricity needs.
And that’s the real issue with seasonal storage: no one needs it really until you get to 95-100% decarbonization of the grid. Otherwise, best to use like a few gas turbines or something as backup/seasonal power. So investing a bunch of storage when you haven’t even built out a bunch of solar or wind, yet, is kind of suboptimal. Good to do demo plants, though, so you can get ready with the tech for when you DO need to decarbonize that last 5% or so.
Red Herring in that --> Green hydrogen + Solar + Wind + Energy Storage are all important components of the future energy portfolio as we deleverage traditional O&G.
They serve different functions and should all be targeted aggressively.
I agree a Hydrogen car is a long way away though. Many more viable options in the near term.
And electrolysis and plasma based hydrogen from renewable natural gas coupled with renewable energy are going to be cost-competitive with SMR based hydrogen very soon. Faster than anyone thinks.
"green" hydrogen is a greenwashing term being pushed heavily by oil and gas to make people think that hydrogen is currently low pollution, sustainable material/energy storage device.
Effectively all hydrogen currently produced, and this will be true for decades, is from splitting methane.
No that is factually untrue.
Green hydrogen is electrolysis based hydrogen that uses renewable electricity OR plasma based hydrogen that uses Renewable Natural Gas with or without renewable electricity.
Anything that is made from Natural Gas is by its very nature grey or blue (per ridiculous color definitions).
The better approach is to use Carbon Intensity values but that is too difficult for the general public (and most professionals) to understand the nuances.
What you are referring to is if it is possible to roll out electrolysis quickly enough using renewable electricity to ensure that our hydrogen portfolio is net zero or at least significantly better than oil and gas as current stands.
Diesel engines were built into trucks and taxis before they were used in passenger cars. Same thing will happen with hydrogen.
Efficiency is not really a concern if hydrogen is "produced" during peaks of some "sources" (mainly solar, wind): the surplus of energy, which today is a burden, will be used to obtain hydrogen. Producing hydrogen may solve the "intermittence" challenge.
Charging batteries with solar and wind is much more efficient than producing hydrogen. Why would you not charge batteries during peaks?
Because batteries are laughably costly for long term energy storage. It’s not even close; batteries will never be used for anything but short term storage.
Untrue - long-term energy storage options are being targeted by deep pocketed capital. E.g. Form Energy and Vanadium technologies.
LiON batteries can't do seasonal though - short term only.
Hydrogen is a good choice for storing peak power from renewables.
Distributing all that highly flammable high pressure blow-up juice around the world for consumer use is another matter.
Its a fantasy to believe that anybody would install such and absurd amount of access wind and solar that it could both cover the low production times and enough to export for use in vehicles.
That simply not economical.
In fact several technologies are more likely to be used then hydrogen for grid storage.
> Its a fantasy to believe that anybody would install such and absurd amount of access wind and solar
Fantasy becomes reality:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190327-the-tiny-islands...
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-56279...
This would indeed be ambitious, however when considering that it is possible (the primary sources potential is adequate), that it will solve problems related to fuel reserves, and also a fair part of challenges related to NIMBY, overcentralization, capital intensity, pollution, waste disposal, decommission... it may (overall) be our best approach.
I was writing about a less ambitious plan, which simply aims at storing the energy produced by solar/wind powerplants during peak production periods.
I know this article is from bmw but afaik people are interested in hydrogen for other types of vehicles than cars. Ships, for instance. Forklifts. Trains.
Planes will never work well due to hydrogens low energy-to-volume ratio, unfortunately.
Switching airplanes to hydrogen has a much higher cost than replacing fossil fuel with carbon-neutral biofuels in the existing planes and engines. This is by far the easiest way forward. Still tremendously difficult - it does need electrification of bio-fuel production, something which we haven't made outside of a lab setting.
But the same tech is necessary for carbon neutral food production anyway. Today's agriculture is fully dependant on fossil fuel energy, both for running the machines and for creating the many inputs like fertilizers and pesticides.
Tell that to Airbus. It will work well on 500 miles trips with 50 passengers, which is most air transportation.
500 mile trips are easily doable with battery-electric aircraft.
No way, not even close. Maybe for single seat or double seaters, but not for commercial airliners with 50 or so seats.
We already have the first 8 seater that can go around 400 miles in testing. And that is using pretty conservative battery tech.
And there is a significant amount of potential optimization left.
Using the batteries as load structures is just one of them, that significantly changes the simplified calculation people do on density. There are many other ideas. The problem is a lot of investment and engineering is needed and to get a passenger plane threw the regulatory process, specially something as new as E-Plane is a gigantic project.
In the future battery tech will get significantly better in the next 10 years and rethinking the plane from the ground up with that technology in mind will do the trick and beat hydrogen.
Yeah, it is possible to do long haul (5000km or more) electric aircraft. Difficult, but possible. 500 miles wouldn’t even be a big challenge. And “number of passengers” doesn’t even appear on the Breguet Range Equation (modified for electric flight).
One thing that matters that people don't consider is that with EV, the operating cost will be lower, so it might actually make sense to switch to somewhat smaller planes flying more different routes.
I think a 30 person plane that can cover the most common routes in populated regions would beat any jet fueled airline in terms of cost.
Hydrogen is guaranteed to be the future of energy storage. What we're seeing now is the normal "reaction" from established business that fear being disrupted. It's so predictable that it's embarrassing to even see people try to argue it away on a website like this.
Remember, people said the same thing about electric cars and they were wrong. This is just history repeating itself. In a decade, no one will seriously try to argue against hydrogen.
So hydrogen busses might be viable... As long as there are enough passengers in a day, that could be a good use-case, provided maintenance is good enough.
I rarely see this mentioned, but you don't have to compress hydrogen that much for transportation/storage. Ongoing research on metal hydrides is promising [1].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage#Metal_hydride...
You’re adding yet more weight and inefficiency.
> Hydrogen is effectively a storage technology
a lot like batteries and gas tanks
Hydrogen, like electricity and batteries, is an energy vector: you spend more energy producing that form than what you get from it.
Fossil fuels in general (maybe not shale oil) are sources, since you get more energy than what you spend. So, their energy return on energy invested (EROEI) is positive.
In this regard, we're facing diminishing returns, the low hanging fruit is long gone. This, plus resource scarcity, is going to be a huge limiting factor to growth…
We need a photosynthesis-like process that creates pure hydrogen...
I completely agree that hydrogen is fundamentally flawed, but from a commercial point of view it makes sense in the EU where the "Green deal" has allocated upwards of 500 billion euros for establishing a hydrogen economy over the next decade.
See e.g. https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-separating-hype-from-h...
Love this two part series. Hydrogen has an important role in a decarbonized economy, but it certainly isn't for cars. And it won't be ready ver soon. And hydrogen will likely be dwarfed by batteries as a storage mechanism.
How do we transmute those disadvantages into wins?
What will it take? What are the alternatives?
Electric cars weigh more and accelerate faster. Consequently tires and road sealing is worn more. Hydrogen cars do not weigh more.
I don't see that being generally true. For example, the Toyota Mirai weighs 4300 lbs to the Tesla Model 3 weighing 4000 pounds:
https://www.caranddriver.com/toyota/mirai/specs
https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-3/specs
As far as acceleration, that's just a design parameter, as both are driven by electric motors. I'm surprised the Mirai can't perform better given it's extra weight.
Mirai can't perform better because the fuel cell can't put out enough burst power, it needs a buffer battery as is for acceleration and regenerative braking and the buffer battery isn't big enough either for Tesla like acceleration due to size and weight constraints.
The Mirai offers more range; it’s not apples to apples. FCEVs do have some constant overheads around the fuel stack weight.
> cheapest way of generating hydrogen is from fossil fuels
Cheapest way of charging EVs is from fossil fuels.
> You need a large infrastructure to produce and distribute it
But you can reuse gas stations as the delivery mechanism. Versus EVs which require all new infrastructure since the charging time is so much longer.
> It's a huge chicken and egg problem
No different from EVs right now.
> What is more convenient, having a car that can be plugged into an outlet, or a car that needs an extremely specialized hydrogen station
Hydrogen charges a full tank in < 5 minutes which makes it the more convenient solution for most of the world who don't have access to outlets at home.
> Cheapest way of charging EVs is from fossil fuels.
Fossil fuel electricity is more expensive than wind and solar. Even the most expensive solar, residential, is cheaper than buying from a dirty grid for the vast majority of customers. And the intermittent nature of solar and wind is a perfect match for charging a fleet of EVs.
In contrast, green hydrogen is nowhere near as cheap as fossil fuel hydrogen from steam methane reformation. The dirty secret that no hydrogen fan talks about is that "blue hydrogen" the bridge to green hydrogen, requires carbon capture technology that does not currently exist at scale. And it requires transporting CO2 back to some sequestration site, doubling the amount of transportation of gasses.
Battery technology isn't very "green" either. Lithium and its alternatives require extensive, polluting mining operations while Hydrogen can be generated from water, water vapor, methane etc.
No energy is green. Not a single energy source does not require some mining / oil extracting at some point. We have to choose the solution which impact as little as possible the environment on global scale.
Beware of the Nirvana Fallacy! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy
And how does that hydrogen get transformed from water? Alkaline or PEM electrolyzers, but at what environmental cost? And all the fuel cell materials? Why selectively evaluate only one side of the equation? That seems rather biased.
> Battery technology isn't very "green" … while Hydrogen can be generated from … methane.
Methane steam reformation is now green?
You're right, it's not. And the only way to make it halfway palatable, the so-called "blue" hydrogen, is to do carbon capture and sequestration during steam methane reformation.
However, for more than a decade, fossil fuel companies have said carbon capture and sequestration will be easy, and then failed to execute on any of their industrial size projects. Plus, what is that captured carbon used for? Extracting more fossil fuels. Plus the sequestration requires transporting carbon long distances, and somehow making sure that the sequestration lasts on geological time scales.
So any mention of methane for hydrogen should raise huge red flags and discredit that path. There's only one path for hydrogen in the future, and that's electrolyzers, and making them go through exponential price drops over the next two decades.
Hydrogen fuel cells use platinum catalysts. Platinum also must be mined and unlike lithium is very rare.
There are existing ways of generating Hydrogen using coated Nickel electrodes
All valid points. A lot of the misconceptions about Hydrogen comes from the following ideas:
1. That it requires something energy consuming like cold-temperature electrolysis.
This is no longer true. We have ways of generating Hydrogen much cheaper from water vapor - which is a very common by product in many industrial processes and which is often simply vented. The new methods also use Nickel instead of the very expensive Platinum electrodes which reduces the cost drastically.
https://www.maritime-executive.com/features/norwegian-team-d...
UNSW Team has demonstrated ways of generating Hydrogen using very cheap metals (Nickel, again) using a catalytic coating which are orders of magniture cheaper than using Platinum electrodes.
https://phys.org/news/2019-12-scientists-cheaper-hydrogen-en...
2. Storage of hydrogen is very complicated and dangerous.
This is also being addressed by various teams - including the storage of Hydrogen in activated carbon etc instead of storing it in very high pressure in tanks.
https://phys.org/news/2011-09-method-inexpensive-carbon-mate...
Hydrogen's energy density gives it a big advantage over EV technologies - and if it is also stored using the newer technologies, it allows for much lighter vehicles.
You are talking about basically research stuff, EV are literally produce in the millions right now. Billions of private funds flow into battery tech and EV technology, while Hydrogen is basically massively government funded. Next generation EV and battery tech is getting closer and closer to beating hydrogen even in the few things it has an advantage.
And most of the costly infrastructure already exists. Its called the grid. Adding charge spots is incredibly cheap compared to adding hydrogen stations everywhere, even if gas stations already exist.
We have yet to see these lighter vehicles. Batteries can be made as a structural part of the car and the weight compared the normal structure we have now is actually pretty damn low. I don't see how hydrogen can beat that.
BEV are currently and the distance between the two technologies will grow, not shrink if you look at all the improvements rolling into BEV over the next years.
> Cheapest way of charging EVs is from fossil fuels.
Solar is now cheaper to install than it costs to operate existing coal and oil power stations. That's a startling fact that really inverts some traditional intuition on carbon emissions.
> But you can reuse gas stations as the delivery mechanism. Versus EVs which require all new infrastructure since the charging time is so much longer.
The site perhaps, but the hardware is completely different.
>The efficiency compared to battery tech is horrendous.
nope
>Hydrogen is effectively a storage technology -- we have to generate it and compress it. Which combined with the above means that charging a hydrogen car will always be more expensive than putting the same amount of usable energy into a battery powered car.
Nope, 350kw charger -> loss
>Let's not forget that the cheapest way of generating hydrogen is from fossil fuels. Electrolysis is very inefficient.
no, newest one >95%
>Any concern there might exist for the effect on the electrical grid coming battery powered cars multiplies for hydrogen due to the inefficiency.
Nope you get more energy with less area used via pipeline than grid lines
> In the end, a hydrogen car is ultimately electric. What is more convenient, having a car that can be plugged into an outlet, or a car that needs an extremely specialized hydrogen station?
home hydrogen station exist
> IMO the only excitement from hydrogen is for fossil fuel companies, because that's what the vast majority of it is made from, and because it'd be a fairly natural fit into their existing infrastructure.
wrong fossil fuel companies still want to sell fossil fuels. we have to deal with emission inside cities. hydrogen cars cleaning the air while driving. battery cars still emit emissions.
Astroturfing account
There are some hydrogen boosters who are "good" in that it's honest boosting of good technology. They tend to share good information about PEM tech, for example. But in the last six months they have been drowned out by misinformation spreading accounts that carefully omit any mention of natural gas' role in the next few decades of the future of hydrogen...
That said, I'm not sure that calling out astroturf is appropriate on HN.
what? no!
The train has left that station 10 years ago, and it's all electric. No point staying in the trenches like the apocryphal Japanese soldier, fighting for the resurgence of Hydrogen. It's less efficient, more expensive for vehicles and infrastructure and more expensive to fuel, has lower range, it's more dangerous. The range record for a Hydrogen vehicle is less than the range of mass-produced commercial cars available today for purchase.
As an inferior technology, Hydrogen stood a chance if it was able to quickly deploy a network of charging stations, locking in customers with a strong network effect. The opposite is true now, electric charging points are popping up everywhere, because it's so damn easy to do, every shopping mall can accommodate at least a handful using its existing electric cabling. Most everybody has a 3.7KW power outlet at home that delivers significant range for an overnight or over-weekend charge.
Meanwhile, Hydrogen needs a completely new pipeline distribution system, using special metals and seals because it's so agile and leaky. There is no point in investing in such a system, because battery electric has already won the race. And without this network, Hydrogen remains an oddity fuel relegated to specialty applications.
It was a dead-end anyway. You either get Hydrogen form natural gas, which is an environmental killer, or you get it from green energy with a 20-30% whole cycle efficiency. Why not use the energy directly with a 80-90% efficiency, and use that vehicle fleet to regulate the whole electric grid?
I don't think it has left the station per se. I agree we should get as driving battery EV as possible, but at some point the current grid will not sustain more charging stations at the mall through existing cabling. At that point it makes sense to look to hydrogen. It should be possible to drive it to existing gas stations for refueling, reusing existing infrastructure on that front.
> the current grid will not sustain more charging stations at the mall through existing cabling. At that point it makes sense to look to hydrogen
Is the assertion laying new hydrogen pipes would be cheaper than expanding electrical lines?
> It should be possible to drive it to existing gas stations for refueling, reusing existing infrastructure on that front.
Building pipes instead of wires is already 3 times less efficient per unit of energy. Moving around huge bombs that weigh more than their load is ridiculously ineficient. It's just unfathomable for the same reasons we don't move around compressed methane gas in tanker trucks - and hydrogen is even less dense. Gasoline, diesel and propane are very special cases of compact hydrocarbon fuel, you cannot replicate that for Hydrogen.
We do liquify natural gas, but that's not an option for Hydrogen, and even for gas, it's only an economic option where there are no pipes and when the energy to do it (gas price) is basically free. As an energy storage solution, it's abysmal.
The future has always been H2.
Li-ion is a bridge to H2, an enabler.
H2 fuel pellets will be passed around like hard candy.
H2 production will be just as distributed, decentralized as our future energy generation.
Li-ion will peak ~2032, hitting yearly (battery) production of ~8T gw/h, and state of the art attaining a large fraction of theoretical max energy density.
Assuming H2 today is ~= Li-ion 2006, peak H2 would be ~2050. Assuming civilization lasts that long.
"H2 pellets" could be the name of a street drug that makes people believe absurd things. But, unless you live on Neptune, it is certainly not an effective form of energy distribution.
Hydrogen solidifies at an insanely low 14 Kelvin. Using an ideal Linde liquefaction cycle will waste you 30% of the energy contained in the fuel simply to perform this deep freeze. You get a relatively low density fuel, about 5 times less energy dense than gasoline, that you will need to protect with massive thermal insulation (think Space Shuttle external tank) otherwise it will outgas like crazy and be an imminent explosion risk. When you add the electrolysis and fuel cell loses, you get a bulky but inefficient vehicle.
Sorry, this will never happen, regardless of what some hard SF author converted to futurologist may have led you to believe.
There is nothing in your link about "pellets". I clearly assumed you were talking about frozen H2 since this is the standard term in the energy industry, see for example fusion research where solid fuel pellets are used.
High absorbency materials have been around for a while, but they failed commercially, they are typically more trouble then the equivalent high pressure COPV tank. Maybe a hype laden Wordpress template website will change it, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Ok, good. Upgraded from impossible to impractical. Progress! In two more days, you'll think it was your idea.
What else am I wrong about?
My understanding from the article is that Hydrogen vehicles will not be competitive with BEVs in terms of cost per mile for the next 10-20 years. The article states:
"An FCEV can drive about 28 miles (45 km) on 1 lb (0.45 kg) of hydrogen"
and
"If the demand for hydrogen increases, the price could drop to around USD 2.50/lb (USD 5.60/kg) by 2030"
Therefore 28 miles will cost 2.5 USD.
However, according to ev-database.uk the most efficient Model 3 uses 235 Wh/mile. If we assume that most EVs will be charged using a cheap EV tariff by 2030 (see https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/0v0-dr1v3-fl3x-3n3rg...) with a cost per kWh of 0.06 GBP, it will cost 0.39 GBP to drive 28 miles. Even if the most expensive average UK electricity cost for today is used (15.60p - https://www.ukpower.co.uk/home_energy/tariffs-per-unit-kwh), it's still on 1.06 GBP, meaning the price per mile for a BEV today in the UK, is cheaper than a FCEV in 2030.
Have I miscalculated or am I missing something?
One thing. What happens to the power grid, if power needs double?
Certainly, new power plant construction, even if green, will be financed by additional cost to the consumer.
The UK's national grid predicts that an overnight switch to EVs would only increase demand by "around 10 per cent" (https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/5-m...).
On the other hand the low-voltage network may need to be upgraded to cope with the increased energy demand. Here smart charging can reduce the load, and associated costs, for a number of years (https://www.kaluza.com/blog-busting-the-myth-ev-smart-chargi...).
Assuming that the intially purchase price of EVs reach parity with ICE vehicles, the consumer should save money, in an EV only world IF the consumer is able to use smart charging to take advantage of fluctuations in energy prices.
In addition to this Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology (that allows the consumer to sell energy to the grid during times of high demand + low generation) will generate income (https://www.edie.net/news/8/-World-s-largest--V2G-trial-find...) further increasing the affordability of EVs in comparison to hydrogen vehicles.
In the UK the grid has published a few white papers on this, and even had to issue corrections because newspapers keep misinterpreting what they say.
Summary, no big deal and in fact smart EV charging tech can actively help the grid and make it easier to use all the cheap power we generate.
In Ontario, 6 successive government of all political stripes, one after another did nothing, leaving the grid burning coal and ng.
Plants planned and canceled, one mess up after another, again all political parties the same mess.
It is indeed easy, until it is time to execute. And it takes a decade at least, with zoning, environmental checks, just to get a plan planned and construction off the ground.
This means that everyone should already have new plants in the planning stages.
Not a report, but buying land, regulation hurdles, and when state owned, approved.
Does the UK already have 3 or 4 new plants in these initial stages?
And if so, how many may fall through?
The UK has 5 wind farms under construction with a capacity of 5125 MW and 4 proposed wind farms with a capacity of 5454 MW (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in...). There has also been an increase in solar farm applications (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/28/solar-farm-...).
On the flipside a number of UK nuclear plants are reaching EOL with only 1 currently under construction.
I think a nuclear plant decommissioning was the start of Ontario's problems.
I hope yours go better, but each government blamed the prior, yet helpfully fixed nothing.
Democracy is the way to go, yet sucks for long term projects. Especially expensive ones. The currwnt government gets all the complaints (new taxes or debt), someone else gets the reward.
Car maker's attraction for fuel cells is that they neatly replace the internal combustion engine with another large, heavy, hot mechanism that continues to require about the same amount of ongoing maintenance. So the automaker's balance sheet remains about the same but now it's green.
As Musk pointed out some years ago, hydrogen is not so much a fuel as it is an energy storage medium. Right out of the gate creating the hydrogen reduces the system efficiency by about 50% because of the electricity required.
In essence then hydrogen fuel cells are just a less efficient form of electricity that require a complex and expensive mechanism to turn into motive force. Possibly useful for shipping or trains but not the way to bet for cars.
Because batteries are not a storage medium and they are not filled by using electricity... ? of course gasoline is better because you get it out of the ground, but I have a feeling that we will discover an efficient way to produce hydrogen ...
People talk about hooking cars up to the grid, and charging them during times of excess power, and then selling that power back during peak.
Yet, that shorten battery lifespan a lot (imagine a car charged weekly to get around town, now discharged/charged daily... battery life is now 1/7th).
There is also loss during charging, and discharge, loss in power lines too.
Meanwhile, you could create h2 right at the power plant during time of excess. Like at a dam.
Then just send all that stored energy via pipelines, just a with natural gas.
Cycling batteries small percentages around mid level charges does almost nothing to battery life. Already, it's expected that we will soon have car batteries that outlast the rest of the car, with million miles lifetimes.
Plus, there's a specific cost to the battery life, that can be calculated, and evaluated against the gains from arbitraging electricity prices.
If batteries are economical on the grid, and they are increasingly replacing natural gas peakers for cost reasons, then car batteries will be a huge resource that is an economic win for car owners and for electricity rate payers.
Hydrogen will always leak from any container.
Clean hydrogen is difficult to make, giving an opportunity to the oil industry to easily make cheap hydrogen from refineries, which is not carbon neutral.
I'm not sure there is enough platinum in the world to make all those cars. Mining platinum might cause additional carbon emissions.
Hydrogen is very dangerous because it's highly explosive. Gas is safer in that regard.
> Hydrogen will always leak from any container.
not anymore
> Clean hydrogen is difficult to make, giving an opportunity to the oil industry to easily make cheap hydrogen from refineries, which is not carbon neutral.
It's not and everybody is talking about GREEN hydrogen
> I'm not sure there is enough platinum in the world to make all those cars. Mining platinum might cause additional carbon emissions.
you don't need it to create fuel cells
> Hydrogen is very dangerous because it's highly explosive. Gas is safer in that regard.
Nope industry is using it since decades
I think generally your comments would be more well received if you provide links backing up your statements. Currently your posts just seem to be going through criticisms and simply stating "No, reverse of above statement".
This doesn't lead to a discussion, or informative comment threads.
You can ask for the same in return from those you're interacting with, but considering you're a brand new account seemingly created to provide a counterpoint; it felt worth calling out (with your declining Karma).
Yes, going to answer the same thing, you don't provide sources.
Green hydrogen is difficult to make because of low energy efficiency, which I agree, would be solved with nuclear since nuclear provides a lot of green energy.
Platinum is required for fuel cells, please do a research or provide sources or explain.
Industry doesn't pump it around in pipelines though, it makes it on-site.
There's a lot of discussion about hydrogen as an energy source for cars in Germany.
It is generally considered more ecological than electric, because of much lesser environmental footprint than required for producing batteries.
Another advantage would be bigger driving range and faster refuelling.
However, it looks like that outside of Germany, electric cars just won, and Germany itself will not be able to reverse the trend.
>because of much lesser environmental footprint than required for producing batteries.
I'm very concerned about this, but have found basically zero impact for batteries, in that if one is concerned about batteries, then all that iron mining to build the rest of the car should probably be a bigger concern.
After doing research, I'm 99% sure that lithium battery environmental concerns are just concern trolling from fossil fuel interests. But I am very open to concrete new information.
Here is a rather detailed study on total emission effects of EV lifecyle: https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EV-life...
"An electric vehicle’s higher emissions during the manufacturing stage are paid off after only 2 years compared to driving an average conventional vehicle, a time frame that drops to about one and a half years if the car is charged using renewable energy."
That covers only the energy spent on mining etc but not the environmental impact of digging up entire country sides.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environmen...
This seems to be a rather selective concern, when, as the article states, there's only 12kg of lithium in the batteries of a Tesla, which is one of the larger batteries out there.
Are you also concerned about the steel, which is on the order of thousands of pounds per vehicle, and requires not only digging for iron, but also the coking coal?
And speaking of digging, iron and coal do actually dig up landscapes, whereas most lithium is actually brine mined rather than dug out.
Steel is reused, car wreckers strip cars, crush the steel, and off it goes to be made into girders or something.
What's more worrying is battery recycling. Toxoc batteries. So far, The West's plan has been to ship them to poor countries, which tend to just bury them.
This can be resolved, but will it be? I say this to anyone claiming to be green, unless you know 100% how your product can be recycled, with concrete, in place processes and recyclers, you're a liar, and not green.
Shipping lithium ion batteries is expensive, because they weigh so much. And no, there's no plan to ship them to poor countries, that's just a fabrication, based on nothing. It's quite likely that battery production will be performed very close to fins assembly, because of the low price of batteries per pound, especially compared to something that does get supped a lot, like solar PV panels. Long distance shipping of batteries would add significantly to their cost.
In reality, lithium ion battery recycling is baked into this supply chain from the start. There are many startups eager to recycle batteries, the biggest challenge is that there isn't any substantial amount to recycle at the moment. Manufacturing rejects are one of the prime inputs to current battery recyclers.
It seems like there is a push for hydrogen in Europe in the last months, and a lot of it seems coming from the big energy companies.
Could be they are trying to find a way to get a piece of the European pandemic recovery funds, which are going mainly to "green" projects?
There is a huge effort from natural gas companies to make hydrogen acceptable.
In my opinion any fossil fuel hydrogen should be banned, or at least taxed at far higher rates than current carbon taxes.
We need electrolyzed hydrogen for industry, and we should make sure it's the cheapest option so that we don't have a market failure again.
According to James May, Only Japan and Germany can support Hydrogen Fuel Cell decently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XytYTxQEq_Y
Pity he didn't get to drive it properly that day. Follow-up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v99AthjW78U
Ah! Thanks for linking this. I linked to the wrong one.
We're not at the level of, say, > 50% market adoption of EVs.
Getting electricity to a battery EV at scale is somewhat of a "last mile" problem, and I'm not sure if upgrading our grids to handle this will be cheaper than rolling out hydrogen infra.
Consider that you can ship hydrogen on a truck to existing pump stations (maybe not as efficient) as we do with gas right now.
I have no data to back this up, just the handwavy arguments above...
Hydrogen is super hard to store and transport. Electrolyzers are prohibitively expensive, and probably won't be cost competitive until 2050: https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-separating-hype-from-h...
However EV's last mile problem is solved, at least for people with garages. 220v is more than enough for daily charging. A 120v 15amp circuit is almost trickle charging at <5mph, but most car are idle >90% of the time and that slow charging is enough to replenish a typical days driving in 8 hours.
As far as the transmission and distribution grid, shiftable load like car charging has the potential to drastically reduce grid costs, by shaving off peak capacity, and utilizing the times of Los grid usage. Chris Clack is a leading grid modeler, and his latest grid models tor decarbonization show massive savings by putting batteries and solar at electrical meters. Car charging is half of the function of home batteries, and it's likely that in the near future, many cars will allow vehicle to grid discharge, like the new f150 truck.
>Getting electricity to a battery EV at scale is somewhat of a "last mile" problem, and I'm not sure if upgrading our grids to handle this will be cheaper than rolling out hydrogen infra.
I read recently that the UK just needs to go back to 2002 levels of electricity generation to cover the whole fleet switching to electric.
There are some problem areas, generally people who live in dense urban areas without an allocated parking space but I don't think that is insurmountable.
I have no data here just my personal experience.
In my area (in Norway) there are probably 50% EVs on the road now, closer to Oslo I bet the proportion is higher. In my street alone with 10 houses the cars are about 80% EVs and I just heard another neighbour has ordered an ID.4.
The local bus is also electric and it has a pantograph that draws 450 kW from a charger just 50 meters from my house in it's "down time" as I am at the end of the route.
No problem with the grid so far, but they have put a capacity charge on how much max capacity you use divided into 50 NOK ($5) monthly tiers. The tiers so far are 5, 10 and 15 kW, I'm unusually in the 5-10 bracket since I turned my cars down to 3.4 kW charging. In addition they lower the grid price during night to encourage people to charge when not much else is in use.
But so far it has not required a massive grid build-out. It might be since the grid itself is well maintained being critical infrastructure.
Since we are in the subject of hydrogen cars and pumps, there is also no tax on hydrogen cars here so there have been a few, but not nearly in the number of EVs. The pumps will sometimes require more time to refill than a charge since if you have many filling in a row the pump itself tends to freeze up and requires quite some time to thaw.
The requirements of a hydrogen pump station is far higher than a gas station, it's not just the matter of shipping it on a truck to an existing one. You need compressors and decompressors (why it's freezing up) and it does take quite a bit of energy.
There is also the issue of leaking since hydrogen atoms are so small, we did have one blow up not that far from here a couple years back.
After living with only EVs for over two years now I think it's the way to go for personal cars and buses, but for ships and perhaps aircraft hydrogen makes more sense.
It's also easier to store excess grid power on sunny or windy days using hydrogen, but right now the issue is also that most hydrogen is produced using steam-methane reforming [1] which emits CO2. Way better than petrol though.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/hydrogen/production-of-h...
They are betting on them in Japan, and they are using the olympic village as some kind of proof of concepts with both vehicles, but also residential energy production from hydrogen. And of course the Olympic torch will use hydrogen.
Toyota are also betting on hydrogen. This is the reason why, even though they were early with hybrids, they still haven't released any purely electric cars.
Japan are building on Methane Hydrate as a strategic energy supply.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/japan-china-combu...
We really are the most short sighted and stupid species, and only have ourselves to blame for what is to come.
Yeah wow, let's melt more ice to power stuff.
For Toyota, the representative company of Japan, it's not easy decision to all in to BEV because of energy situation. Japan is going to be stuck for global decarbonize campaign because the land/grid is too small to make stable distributed renewables, and obviously nuclear is no longer future option. Making BEV (or Li-ON battery) is energy intensive so it won't competitive with other decarbonated countries for future carbon tax era. That's why they must investigating hydrogen, solid state battery, xEV, and so on rather than just BEV. Other companies investigating other techs like co2 collector.
Investigating hydrogen for other uses like truck, ship, storage, emergency generator looks reasonable (Toyota also sell fuel cell system for various use), but still I doubt is they serious for hydrogen car like Mirai, or it's just a demo or for special case.
It feels like Toyota has made a massive miscalculation on this. They should have had a huge lead with all their experience of hybrids but now look like the are scrambling to catch up.
Time will. I think hydrogen has huge advantages for e.g. long haul trucks, for which batteries don’t seem to be reasonable. And they will drive the infrastructure.
They did release BEV series.
There is a lot of talk about hydrogen in Slovakia - it's promoted by the head of Mistry of Trade and Industry (Richard Sulik), but not many actual steps towards hydrogen cars are being done so far.
The UK Government is also looking hard at H2 and there's a lot of industrial activity in the area. Just today, Centrica announced a £1.6Bn investment in Hydrogen storage.
I think that is mainly for heating homes, they want to switch gas boilers out for hydrogen.
FWIW. I’ve seen a lot of interest in Japan and Australia as well.
Toyota in particular seems to be betting big on hydrogen with a PHEV -> BEV transition as backup.
Smaller batteries, faster cars. In Germany one can really use all the available power in stark contrast to neighboring countries. Lighter cars and fast refueling for long distance travelling are very beneficial, not only to Germany.
Let's say Germany has a decent hydrogen infrastructure. You go on vacation in say Croatia or Spain, you suddenly can't use your car. Every country has electric sockets everywhere so you can charge over night and building fast chargers is trivial compared to storing hydrogen.
Hydrogen sounds useful for commercial vehicles where you can plan routes and stay close to pumps (eg. delivery, bus, etc.) Sounds horrible for personal vehicles.
I can see Japan investing in it - you are unlikely to travel out of country with your car.
I assume that the vast majority of car owners is quite sensitive to cost. If all things considered the cost of hydrogen is similar to that of an BEV then it make sense that both will exist next to each other.
On the other hand, if hydrogen proves to be a lot more expensive than a BEV, then you expect fewer hydrogen refueling stations, which makes hydrogen less attractive.
>However, one disadvantage of producing hydrogen is the losses during electrolysis. The overall efficiency in the “power to vehicle drive” energy chain is therefore only half the level of a BEV
That seems to be more optimistic that what I've heard in the past. What's the efficiency of electrolysis+compression (or whatever step is necessary from bubbles to fuel in a tank)? Isn't that already well below 50%? How efficient are fuel cells in converting Hydrogen back to electricity? I thought I remembered that this too was a bit worse than batteries.
HFCs are a scam designed to make oil investors think that Shell and Exxon will have a role in the electric transportation future. The notion that we are better off turning 3x the CNG into hydrogen fuel than burning 1x the CNG to charge a battery is absurd.
At this stage - I don't see wide spread adoption happening outside of Japan or somewhere where a country really pushes for it.
Battery/recharging tech is improving year on year. For their latest model S plaid they've claimed: Tesla says that 15 minutes should be enough to replenish 187 miles (301 km) of range.[1]
In 2-3 years when the rest of the worlds car companies/ fast chargers have caught on I just don't see how Hydrogen can compete with all the downsides it has.
1. https://insideevs.com/news/515641/tesla-models-plaid-chargin...
Sandy Munro thinks Plasma Kinetics has a breakthrough technology that will, at some point in the future, allow hydrogen powered cars to dominate the auto industry.
https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/e0f655f1-c51d-4fe6-9383-1ff...
Here's where Sandy Munro mentions Plasma Kinetics:
H2GO Power is another company working on solid-state Hydrogen storage. It looks like they are targeting drones rather than cars though.
Electric cars has an advantage now, but there is more energy consumption than passenger cars. Planes will never fly on batteries, Paris Airports are preparing for hydrogen planes delivered by Airbus. Trains already run on hydrogen. Ships will use ammonium. Steel plants plan to convert to hydrogen.
Energy storage is a big issue to reach the goal line. In Nordic countries there is very little solar power in the winter. Energy can be stored in hydrogen. An extra bonus is that excessive heat from hydrolysis can be used in district heating.
> electrical energy is used to break water down into its constituent elements, hydrogen and oxygen, via the process of electrolysis
is this actually the process to get hydrogen on industrial scale?
from wiki: As of 2020, the majority of hydrogen (∼95%) is produced from fossil fuels by steam reforming of natural gas, partial oxidation of methane, and coal gasification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
Yet experts believe that hydrogen fuel cell cars will catch up in the future
This is the same shtick they've been feeding us for thirty years. Fuel cell cars as a realistic choice for consumers has been five years away for decades now. At this point I'm tired of hearing about it. Battery electric vehicles have been making steady gains in terms of innovation and energy density for long time now. Battery electric has an enormous lead as well as fundamental efficiency advantages.
https://i.imgur.com/SZFM97f.jpg
Until someone comes up with groundbreaking new ways to do electrolysis and hydrogen storage, the fuel cell economy is dead in the water.
Given that history often rhymes, is there any energy technology that never went anywhere?
I can only really think of successful ones (human power, draught animals, fossile fuels, electricity, etc).
I guess nuclear maybe, in that it never reached the potential people thought it would?
Fusion I suppose.
In Denmark we could split water through hydrolyse whenever there is over-production from windmills. This over-production is something that we currently pay our neighbours to receive. In addition the heat produced can be used as district heating, making it less of an issue that it is less efficient to produce hydrogen.
From what I've heard, the capital costs of electrolyzers are currently far too high to make intermittent hydrogen production economical. Hopefully that will change, and intermittent usage will eventually be about the same cost as running continuously.
Newer wind turbine contracts make the turbine owners turn off their engines.
And it is only very few hours of the year that the prices turn negative anyway. You can't base anything off that. It's just not worth it.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the cost as a major downside of hydrogen fuel cell cars. The Honda clarity was set to be priced at roughly $350,000 for something that looks very much like a civic.
If an EV charging station has solar or wind generation and has excess power to contain in its battery bank, use the spill over to generate and store hydrogen and oxygen?
A British company is making a Hydrogen powered hypercar.
I think this makes a lot more sense for trucks, where the size, range, weight, cost & charging time of batteries are more impactful
Car manufacturers are working on hydrogen combustion engine. Existing combustion cars have been modified to hydrogen in decades.
I don't think there's much to work on, it just works. But then you have another combustion powered car, so why bother?
Anyone wo works with elements in a practical capacity will tell you; HYDROGEN IS TERRIFYING.
It's very unstable, and difficult to control.
OH! The humanity!
What if all cars on roads will be emitting vapor? Can it influence on the weather, I mean more rains for example?
China has 118 hydrogen gas stations
There is also the option of using a methane fuel cell that is ignored by everyone.
reality: They dont work.
Honda has been trying to make it happen for 20 years now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_FCX its all a huge failure https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-cars/a36751587/honda-cla...
Whats fascinating is the realization Honda toyed with EVs even longer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_EV_Plus and still managed to fail miserably.
Of course they work. Hyundai's fuel cell trucks are running well:
https://www.thedrive.com/news/41389/hyundai-clocks-1-million...
I dont mean the technology, it obviously works as evidenced by prototypes 20 years ago. I mean the concept and energy generation/storage, it doesnt make sense as soon as you take more than cursory glance. Hydrogen embrittlement, electrolysis energy loss, ranges, it all falls apart.
Hydrogen production is only going to go up because there are many uses for it. If you want green steel you need to use hydrogen. It will also make sense to use that hydrogen for transportation.
You're in some strange mindset of it being batteries versus hydrogen. It isn't one or the other. It's both.
Here is James May driving a Toyota Mirari which is available today: https://youtu.be/v99AthjW78U
I'll just leave this take on hydrogen fuel cells by our lord and saviour Mr. Musk here:
Musk calls them "fool cells" for a reason.
These hydrogen cells is just the oil and gas industry trying to stay relevant: they can modify their processes to produce hydrogen, but they can't produce lithium.
Is the reason marketing?
No, engineering and economics.
And let's not let any embarrassing examples of real world fuel cell use get in the way:
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/41389/hyundai-clocks-1-million...
The average US truck driver goes about 20,000 km in 11 months, so 1 million km would be 50 trucks. That is hardly a sign of a thriving large scale market. It looks more like a demonstration scale money pit, and doesn't contradict Musk's negative assessment.
TLDR: Li-ion is bridge to H2 future, will settle into niche use cases.
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I'm very bullish on hydrogen for transportation. Maybe more. Think forward 10-20 years out.
Here's my current and partial and wild guess hot take on ICE vs EV vs H2:
EV is great for cars and smaller. EV also good for energy storage, eg homes, utilities.
H2 is great for trucks, delivery, heavy gear, buses, etc. Basically cars and bigger, or needing more range.
~2032 we'll hit peak yearly Li-ion production at ~8t gw/h. Market saturated, most materials recovered from recycling instead of mining.
2022 produces ~40m ICE, ~1m EVs cars per year.
I don't know how many ICE vehicles (trucks, vans, etc) are made yearly.
Installed base of automobiles is 1.2b to grow to 1.8b by 2030. Average ICE lifespan is ~30 years. Crunch the numbers. We cannot get passenger automobile sector to carbon zero fast enough on our current trend lines. We'd need to retire ICE early and produce enough replacements.
I have NO IDEA how many EVs we'll produce yearly. Consider the yearly Li-ion production and kwh used per car. We'll have to make cars smaller. What Horace Dediu calls "micromobility". (eg The battery pack of the popular, cute, functional Chinese EV is 1/10th of a Tesla.)
There's still no clear game plan for carbon zero for the other half of transportation, meaning trucks and buses and bigger.
H2 today ~= Li-ion 2006. Think of how we might mature H2 even faster than Li-ion matured.
H2 will be completely safe. As in solid state storage. Plasma Kinetics and such. https://plasmakinetics.com
H2 production will be (must be) completely off fossil fuels. In a few years, we'll have excess energy capacity looking for applications. Like producing H2, ammonia, etc.
BMW, Toyota, others completely missed (biffed) the Li-ion technology wave. And will suffer for it. I think it's wise of them to look towards the next disruption.
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One wild card is ammonia NH3. It may prove a useful transition step. Helping us retire ICE faster, while EV and then H2 ramp up.
I'm certain there are other wild cards.
As someone with little knowledge of this domain except a few articles and this link, it appears that hydrogen is better enviromentally, but the electric-car lobby disagree.
If there is a chicken and egg problem, as mentioned in the article, where mass adoption of a "better" technology is only held back due to the the number of hydrogen pumps - that seems like an appropriate point for government to step in to bridge the gap.
1) Is hydrogen the better solution?
2) Why wouldn't government recognise this and bridge the gap?
3) As the article is by BMW, what is their agenda? Why wouldn't they just accept and hop on board the prevailing EV trend?
(edit: For the Elon cult downvotes, lol, note the word "appears" above, feel free to challenge it).
As for 3: BMW, like most of the transportation industry, is unwilling to make the massive investment in battery production required to profitably be able to switch their production from fossil to renewable. This reluctance obviously extends to hydrogen-electric drivetrains as well, if that option was even competitive.
Since they're stuck in a classic Innovator's Dilemma situation, they vainly hope that the rest of the world will stand still until their subcontractors are magically able to produce all components required (at prices that leave them competitive!) to switch their entire production to renewable energy. Some hand-waving around technologies that are promising but "not quite there yet" is a central part of this strategy, as it allows them to sell their reluctance to investors. Just sitting there obviously doing nothing would make it too obvious.
They've been doing this for 10 years now, so there's really nothing new to see. Meanwhile, the "electric-car lobby" keeps profitably producing mass-market vehicles and exponentially increasing production capacity, doing the hard work of actually building things in volume that haven't been built before.
The market cap of Tesla implies that this is hardly a controversial stance today, although there is obviously still significant uncertainty.
> keeps profitably producing mass-market vehicles
For certain definitions of mass-market.
Even the most hydrogen positive environmentalists don't think hydrogen makes sense for cars. Those pushing h2 cars either have natural gas interests, or an extreme attachment to fueling.
By far the best current assessment of how we will use hydrogen as energy transport I have found:
https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-separating-hype-from-h...
My impression is that BEVs are much easier to improve incrementally on many fronts while hydrogen faces a lot steeper hurdles.
With hydrogen the fuel cell stack, tank, refueling mechanism and distribution are all things you need to solve. With BEVs some of those points collapse into just one component (the battery), we already have a distribution network and at low charging rates any wall plug will do. The technology baseline for electric cars is so low that they're about as old gasoline ones. The same can't be said about hydrogen.
Yeah Germany, Japan, South Korea, UK, China, Australia, France, India, California and so on seeing it as the future of cars.
"It is generally considered more ecological than electric, because of much lesser environmental footprint than required for producing batteries. Another advantage would be bigger driving range and faster refuelling."
And the biggest advantage: you're cleaning the air while driving from particles which harm your health. <- This reason alone is a key factor. Have a look here: https://youtu.be/ormfLJmWGC8
People complained about the emission cheating regarding volkswagen. So everybody who did has to be pro hydrogen car. Because its real emission free. not like a battery car
It is cleaning air from pollution, but it is also removing lots of oxygen. You don't want to breathe hydrogen car exhaust.
Wrong. have a look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibo5fN727Rg
Notice the car is standing still, most probably having minimal consumption of oxygen.
So put an air filter in an EV and the motion of the car will also clean the air.