The case for hydrogen-powered cars • Hacker News Board

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#31

Post by DubiousPusher » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

This seems kind of silly to me. I'm no expert but as far as I can tell, almost all the difficulties confronting electrics are known quantities that we make slow but steady progress on each year. Meanwhile this author is saying, that for hydrogen to be viable we just have to solve this one massive distribution system problem and we're good.

Isn't it kind of obvious which tech is more likely to overcome its impediments? Especially since problems that can be solved in small bitsized pieces is exactly the kind of thing big corporations are good at?

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#32

Post by mdekkers » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

_ph_ wrote: post #22

Things not so often mentioned in the Hydrogen vs batteries discussions: - just fueling hydrogen vehicles requires an substantial amount of electricity for the compressors. An electric vehicle could drive at least 10% of the distance on this electricity alone. That is not counting the compression work at any the production site and when filling the trucks. - distributing hydrogen requires trucks. In most places, the e…

distributing hydrogen requires trucks and you have to refuel them at fuel stations

The physical and mental infrastructure for both of these are already in place.

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#33

Post by mdekkers » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC

nimish wrote: post #25

Hydrogen has serious technical issues compared to batteries. It is very hard to store, easily flammable, can cause metal issues -- see hydrogen embrittlement and attack -- and is basically not present in nature except as a byproduct of fossil fuel extraction. So you need to dump a bunch of energy in creating a very difficult to handle material. In comparison, battery tech gets 7-10% better each year and has the immen…

Hydrogen [...] is basically not present in nature.

I am probably misunderstanding the whole "most abundant element in the universe" thing. Can you explain?

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#34

Post by Retric » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

bunderbunder wrote: post #29

_ph_ wrote: post #22

Things not so often mentioned in the Hydrogen vs batteries discussions: - just fueling hydrogen vehicles requires an substantial amount of electricity for the compressors. An electric vehicle could drive at least 10% of the distance on this electricity alone. That is not counting the compression work at any the production site and when filling the trucks. - distributing hydrogen requires trucks. In most places, the e…

The charge rate on electric vehicles is very slow, though, unless you're using one of Tesla's superchargers (which aren't everywhere). I think that, when people are worrying about charge time, they're really asking, "Will charge times mean that a 5-hour trip to visit Mom and Dad now turns into a 10-hour trip, or, worse, something that requires an overnight stay?"

Batteries are rapidly approaching the point most people will want to stop before their charge runs out.

~330 mile range is available today, which is pricy, but quickly dropping. The expected 50% battery price drop within 5 years is probably going to make 300+ mile ranges become standard and likely 600+ Mile ranges will start showing up. Further once you get into the 400+ mile range territory particularly charging say during lunch can significantly increase range without completely filling the battery.

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#35

Post by nimish » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

mdekkers wrote: post #33

nimish wrote: post #25

Hydrogen has serious technical issues compared to batteries. It is very hard to store, easily flammable, can cause metal issues -- see hydrogen embrittlement and attack -- and is basically not present in nature except as a byproduct of fossil fuel extraction. So you need to dump a bunch of energy in creating a very difficult to handle material. In comparison, battery tech gets 7-10% better each year and has the immen…

Hydrogen [...] is basically not present in nature. I am probably misunderstanding the whole "most abundant element in the universe" thing. Can you explain?

Hydrogen the atom is very common but what is needed is hydrogen the gas i.e. molecular hydrogen or H2. Hydrogen is very reactive so it's usually always bound up, for example in water. Stripping off the hydrogen atoms into H2 gas is energy intensive.

Since it's so reactive, it's both a pain to handle and to extract unless you have a lot of natural gas reserves, where it's relatively abundant.

Or you find it in the interstellar medium but I mean good luck mining a nebula.

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#36

Post by notaki » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 3:02 PM UTC

"This remains a categorical advantage over BEVs, which even under fast-charging conditions typically require several hours to fully recharge."

-That's BS. Should say 30 min. to 1 hour. Hydrogen is a dead end. Toyota and Hyundai are only making hydrogen cars for the ZEV credits.

https://youtu.be/UOt9KF2fsdw?t=128

https://youtu.be/zC3zM9rrUT0?t=609

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#37

Post by danans » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 3:04 PM UTC

endymi0n wrote: post #15

jk2323 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas) There are other options. You can producte H2 directly from sunlight. https://setis.ec.europa.eu/setis-reports/setis-magazine/fuel... And we might run out of Lithium. Or Cobalt. Or Vanadium. I doubt that we run out of Hydrogen.

The point is - it's neither one nor the other: Combining working fuel cell technology with batteries really gives the best of both worlds: - Batteries are the most efficient in the long run and very dynamic at power release, but they are heavy (more than half the weight of Tesla's truck is the batteries), use lots of rare resources and take pretty long to recharge. It's getting better, but if you really want to drive…

> if you really want to drive a few thousand miles with short fuel breaks in an emergency, you can't.

What kind of emergency would involve driving a few thousand miles quickly? I can only see a few hundred (hurricane evacuation).

At those distances, why wouldn't you fly?

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#38

Post by _ph_ » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 3:08 PM UTC

mdekkers wrote: post #32

_ph_ wrote: post #22

Things not so often mentioned in the Hydrogen vs batteries discussions: - just fueling hydrogen vehicles requires an substantial amount of electricity for the compressors. An electric vehicle could drive at least 10% of the distance on this electricity alone. That is not counting the compression work at any the production site and when filling the trucks. - distributing hydrogen requires trucks. In most places, the e…

distributing hydrogen requires trucks and you have to refuel them at fuel stations The physical and mental infrastructure for both of these are already in place.

The hydrogen infrastructure requires to be built from scratch. New fuel stations (of course they can reuse existing locations), the technology for fueling hydrogen is way more complex and very different to gasonly. New trucks. This is transporting very voilatile gas at about 1000 bar pressure. And it requires the trucks driving around, which was the main thing I was speaking about, while the elecricity flows over the existing networks. It also requires more truck loads of hydrogen than gasoline to supply the same amount of car mileage.

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#39

Post by taneq » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 3:10 PM UTC

stephengillie wrote: post #26

sharpercoder wrote: post #16

When discussing hydrogen cars, I particularly like the blog of Mux about this topic. Part 1: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11470/why-fuel-cell-ca... Part 2: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11493/why-fuel-cell-ca... Part 3: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11556/why-fuel-cell-ca... Part 4: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11572/why-fuel-cell-ca...

The first part is a 60-minute read. Could you summarize the thesis of the first part or 2 into a few bullet points?

It literally starts with a summary:

> This is an extremely long, in-depth blog series, so I'll start by giving you a summary.

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#40

Post by bunderbunder » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 3:22 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #34

bunderbunder wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The charge rate on electric vehicles is very slow, though, unless you're using one of Tesla's superchargers (which aren't everywhere). I think that, when people are worrying about charge time, they're really asking, "Will charge times mean that a 5-hour trip to visit Mom and Dad now turns into a 10-hour trip, or, worse, something that requires an overnight stay?"

Batteries are rapidly approaching the point most people will want to stop before their charge runs out. ~330 mile range is available today, which is pricy, but quickly dropping. The expected 50% battery price drop within 5 years is probably going to make 300+ mile ranges become standard and likely 600+ Mile ranges will start showing up. Further once you get into the 400+ mile range territory particularly charging say…

I can see it charging sufficiently over lunch if you use a supercharger. And that will be great if you've got superchargers installed in the parking lot at the place you stop for lunch. But I wouldn't fault anyone for feeling like that's a pretty big "if". Especially if truck stop food isn't your bag of peas.