Article is from [2021]. But it might as well be from 2015 for all the relevance it has to today's automotive industry. Electric already won.
Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
131–140 of 387 posts
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#132The argumentation is flawed. 1. Just imagine the required charging infrastructure if all vehicles were suddenly battery powered. Charging electric vehicles requires quite some power. Can the power grid installations sustain that (power lines, Transformer stations...) ? What resources (financial and physical (e.g. Cooper)) are required in order to adapt the infrastructure ? Just an example: A supercharger station whic…
Source for either of these claims other than "just imagine?"
Of course infrastructure is a concern but I haven't seen any sources that claim we are unprepared to sustain significant EV deployment - and of course it will not ever happen overnight, so that's a strawman.
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#133Anyone who has followed hydrogen as a fuel for a while sees pretty easily that its a solution in search of a problem. It really doesn't make sense to use renewables to make hydrogen fuel to then burn: batteries are better for storage of energy in most cases (I will grant that there are edge cases where a liquid/gas fuel is a better technical solution than batteries, but I think that options like ethanol are probably…
Batteries are heavy, expensive and we don’t have infrastructure to charge them at the required scale. I don’t believe hydrogen is the answer but methane cells could be… liquid energy storage is just so much more practical compared to alternatives.
We (in the US) have very little hydrogen infrastructure but there's high voltage power lines basically everywhere - so it seems like hydrogen has the infrastructure and scaling issues.
Batteries are indeed heavy - but so are portable hydrogen storage cell that don't easily explode or require liquid cooling.
I agree with you that hydrogen isn't the answer but methane doesn't really seem to be either. Batteries and electric cars are already here - they just need to continue scaling the infrastructure and work on lightening up the vehicles.
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#134The electric car industry is spinning alternatives. Hydrogen is a much better alternative all around. You'll be able to convert existing cars much easier.
I doubt it would be economically feasible to convert existing cars to hydrogen. If you want to use a hydrogen fuel cell, you'd have to replace the gas engine with a hydrogen fuel cell and electric motor, then mate that to the existing transmission (though with an electric motor, things like a clutch and six gears wouldn't be very useful). Then you'd need another electric motor to run the accessory belt(s) for things like the power steering pump and the air conditioning compressor. If you want to warm the interior of the car, you'd have to replace the heater core with some sort of heat pump or resistive heating element.
If you want to modify the gasoline engine to run on hydrogen, you'd need to replace the entire top end and many components in the bottom such as the connecting rods. You'd also need different spark plugs, a higher voltage ignition coil, different fuel injectors, a stronger head gasket, and a modified ECU. Burning hydrogen at stoichiometric ratios causes lots of nitric oxide, so you'd probably have to run lean to get emissions down. This means the engine won't be as powerful.[1]
There are other modifications you'd have to do in either case. You'd have to replace the fuel tank with a hydrogen tank, replace the fuel lines, and replace the gas cap with a high pressure nozzle. Hydrogen is an odorless invisible gas, so you'd need to add some hydrogen sensors to the car to warn about leaks.
After solving all of these problems, your car would have less range and fewer ways to refuel.
1. See page 25 of https://web.archive.org/web/20110905043908/http://www1.eere....
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#135Anyone who has followed hydrogen as a fuel for a while sees pretty easily that its a solution in search of a problem. It really doesn't make sense to use renewables to make hydrogen fuel to then burn: batteries are better for storage of energy in most cases (I will grant that there are edge cases where a liquid/gas fuel is a better technical solution than batteries, but I think that options like ethanol are probably…
I don't blame you for being skeptical, but it isn't just the oil and gas industry. The Japanese government went all-in on hydrogen. https://thediplomat.com/2023/07/a-look-at-japans-latest-hydr...
Japan is clinging to hydrogen like a drowning man to driftwood.
About 80% of Japan's energy is imported coal and natural gas. Their electric grid is a bonkers mix of 50Hz and 60Hz single-phase.
Hydrogen is the only viable solution for them and even that's not going too well despite lofty goals. They can't build the tech and infrastructure alone and the rest of the world just isn't as enthusiastic on H2.
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#136Toyota was betting big on hydrogen. Were they being engineer-minded or where they being lobbied? I would like to think they were betting on Beta -- the superior technology -- in the Beta v VHS battle of our time. What am I missing here? Toyota's engineers have a great track record and the company isn't easily swayed by fads or Wall Street.
I would assume they were maintaining a visible (and subsidized) presence in a non-fossil technology, while ensuring their profitable ICE business faced no immediate threat.
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#137The argumentation is flawed. 1. Just imagine the required charging infrastructure if all vehicles were suddenly battery powered. Charging electric vehicles requires quite some power. Can the power grid installations sustain that (power lines, Transformer stations...) ? What resources (financial and physical (e.g. Cooper)) are required in order to adapt the infrastructure ? Just an example: A supercharger station whic…
> The argumentation is flawed.
Which argumentation are you referring to? You're re-iterating an anti-electric talking point that is explicitly debunked in the article.
> “That's nonsense,” says Liebreich. “[In] 1995, [people said] ‘we'll never use the internet because there are not enough modems’. [In] 2000, ‘we'll never do online video because there isn't enough bandwidth’, then, ‘you can't do multiple streams of video because you will never get fibre to the home’. We’ve got 30 years between now and 2050 [when countries plan to reach net-zero emissions] and we will simply have more and more investment. We’ve dug up the streets for cable, phone, gas, cable, fibre, electricity. It's a thing we do. We know how to just build slowly over time. This is not rocket science.
> “Plus, there's smart charging. And of course, we know we're going to be doing this because we're also going to be having to add capacity because of electric heating. And so the idea that you'll say, ‘no, no, we mustn't do that extension of existing infrastructure, we must build a completely new one [for hydrogen refuelling], it's nonsense, frankly.”
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Am not well versed on these considerations but it appears one advantage of hydrogen is energy density compared to batteries. This may be less an issue for passenger vehicles but could be more relevant for air travel - as an example. No comments or opinions otherwise re: funding etc. Found the below article useful as a primer: https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/articles/fuel-cell-and...
What kind of energy density? There is energy density by volume (where it matches batteries, when you ignore all the stuff you need to keep hydrogen at 700bar safe), and energy density by weight (where it wins pretty handily against pretty much everything).
Am not historically familiar with this topic though the attached paper above shows a comparative figure of Specific Energy in terms of Wh/Kg at both 5k and 10k psi
Edit: interesting to do the conversion and realize 700bar is just over 10k psi - misunderstood the parent comment regarding "700bar safe"
Edit2: further interesting to note how the 5k compression of the hydrogen has _higher_ Specific Energy density than 10k due to _decreased_ pressure vessel requirements
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
More to the point, currently only 1% (edit: some articles I've seen put it less than 0.1%[1]) of hydrogen is "green". The rest is mostly made out of natural gas, a process that releases just as much CO2 as if you'd burned it. H2 isn't a way to save the Earth, it's a way to save the Natural Gas industry. [1] https://cleantechnica.com/2021/12/22/0-03-of-hydrogen-is-gre...
Ridiculous. You're conflating source and fuel. H2 can be produced in large quantities from green power. Part of the problem is, some people see everything as non-green. Dams? Oh, carbon and cement! Nuclear? Oh risk. Windmills? Oh birds. Solar? Short cell lift and manufacturing waste. So let's start with the snae assumption that a dam is green. Now you want to get power to cars. Guess what. You can make h2 on site, at…
> Dedicated hydrogen production today is primarily based on fossil fuel technologies, with around a sixth of the global hydrogen supply coming from “by-product” hydrogen, mainly in the petrochemical industry. In 2022, 70% of the energy requirement for dedicated hydrogen production was met with natural gas and around 30% with coal (mostly used in China, which alone accounted for 90% of global coal consumption for hydrogen production).
https://www.iea.org/energy-system/low-emission-fuels/hydroge...
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#140The argumentation is flawed. 1. Just imagine the required charging infrastructure if all vehicles were suddenly battery powered. Charging electric vehicles requires quite some power. Can the power grid installations sustain that (power lines, Transformer stations...) ? What resources (financial and physical (e.g. Cooper)) are required in order to adapt the infrastructure ? Just an example: A supercharger station whic…
1. Yeah, we upgrade the grid over time as demand increases, exactly as we have been doing. Nobody gets bent out of shape when a grocery store or something goes in and it requires power. This is only a problem if vehicles are "suddenly" battery powered, which is not a thing.
2. Yes they are.