Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#21

Post by tonyedgecombe » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 10:54 AM UTC

isoprophlex wrote: post #12

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #3

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 th…

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 han…

>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.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#22

Post by marvin » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 10:54 AM UTC

LightG wrote: post #5

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 t…

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.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#23

Post by radicalbyte » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 10:55 AM UTC

Ma8ee wrote: post #10

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #3

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 th…

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.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#24

Post by tonyedgecombe » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 10:55 AM UTC

Ma8ee wrote: post #10

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #3

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 th…

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.

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.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#25

Post by tonyedgecombe » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 10:56 AM UTC

timthorn wrote: post #13

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #3

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 th…

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.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#26

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 10:58 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#27

Post by RobertoG » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 10:59 AM UTC

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #3

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 th…

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?

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#28

Post by Causality1 » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 10:59 AM UTC

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.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#29

Post by sunstone » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 11:00 AM UTC

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.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#30

Post by k4lk » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 11:00 AM UTC

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.