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Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

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Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#151

Post by nickik »

jackthezipper wrote: post #148
iamthemonster wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#152

Post by nickik »

Robotbeat wrote: post #110
oblio wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#153

Post by nickik »

natmaka wrote: post #127
dale_glass wrote: post #38

Hydrogen 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…

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.

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.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#154

Post by Black101 »

aillarra wrote: post #140
Black101 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

We need a photosynthesis-like process that creates pure hydrogen...

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#155

Post by theluketaylor »

aidenn0 wrote: post #113
theluketaylor wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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 m…

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...

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#156

Post by nickik »

_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #118
Robotbeat wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#157

Post by nickik »

pkphilip wrote: post #75
threeseed wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

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 exp…

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.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#158

Post by theluketaylor »

wazoox wrote: post #125
aidenn0 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

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.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#160

Post by timbit42 »

Transrapid wrote: post #14

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 particle…

So put an air filter in an EV and the motion of the car will also clean the air.
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