Car manufacturers are working on hydrogen combustion engine. Existing combustion cars have been modified to hydrogen in decades.
Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)
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Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)
#42Hydrogen 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…
>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.
Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)
#43There'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…
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 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.
Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)
#44There'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…
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...
Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)
#45China has 118 hydrogen gas stations
Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)
#46Hydrogen 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
Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)
#47Anyone wo works with elements in a practical capacity will tell you; HYDROGEN IS TERRIFYING.
It's very unstable, and difficult to control.
Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)
#48Hydrogen 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…
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.
Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)
#49Hydrogen 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…
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...
Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)
#50Hydrogen 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…
Electric cars weigh more and accelerate faster. Consequently tires and road sealing is worn more. Hydrogen cars do not weigh more.