Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#171

Post by sagarm » Sat, Mar 15, 2025, 12:55 AM UTC

bell-cot wrote: post #53

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #23

Because people are allergic to hybrids and I don't know why "Electric is short range, fuel is expensive, guess I have to pick one" The ideal drivetrain was invented over 20 years ago by Toyota and apparently nobody but me and Honda noticed it!

Here in SE Michigan, one local transit authority ditched its new hybrid busses and returned to diesel ~15 years ago - because the TCO for the hybrid busses was so much higher that fixing the hole in their budget proved impossible.

What drove the TCO so high that ditching already paid for hybrid busses made sense?

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#172

Post by emchammer » Sat, Mar 15, 2025, 12:55 AM UTC

How are these buses refueled? Is it just like pouring gasoline into a normal car with a handle from the pump? Or is it an airtight pump like filling a scuba tank?

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#173

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Mar 15, 2025, 12:57 AM UTC

mystified5016 wrote: post #48

WalterBright wrote: post #8

The electric airplane is another myth. There is no known battery technology, or one on the horizon, that can provide a large enough power/weight to make them practical. The investors are getting bilked.

The plane, of course, flies anyway becuase planes don't care what humans think is impossible /j

I didn't say it was impossible. I said there was no known technology that would make it work.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#174

Post by somat » Sat, Mar 15, 2025, 1:03 AM UTC

askvictor wrote: post #129

neves wrote: post #125

Why? Because Oil Companies are lobbying for inefficient hydrogen to delay a green revolution: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/carbon-notes-5-green-hydrog... > The members of the hydrogen coalition are all obviously incumbent fossil fuel and petrochemical interests looking for a bridge to the new era. If realized, their ambitious hydrogen projects may overload the available supply of green power, for little real bene…

Not just to delay, but they're hope is that they'll be able to control it when it happens. Oil companies move fluids, using pipes and tankers. Hydrogen is a fluid. They want to keep doing what they've been doing. Electricity doesn't fit into their M.O.

I don't know what you are talking about, electricity is a fluid.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#175

Post by formerly_proven » Sat, Mar 15, 2025, 1:20 AM UTC

fraserharris wrote: post #154

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to dispute your numbers with diesel versus EV reliability, but I have to think the simplicity of an EV drivetrain will win that battle in the next version or two.

The reliability speaks to the technology immaturity. I agree with the inevitability of the EV drivetrain + charging off the existing distribution network being more reliable than competing technologies.

idk these sound like very specific problems they had. The chargers had an availability of only 23% because of a recurring issue with the power modules failing. In a later volume they also again attribute a lot of unavailability to the same chargers:

> The BEB fleet operated at 66% availability with more than half of the total days related to retrofit of the charger cabling and programming by the OEM.

I guess you could say this is due to immature technology but honestly I don't see 75% of HPC chargers being offline for maintenance at any given time. This is probably just bad luck with a vendor.

If you look at the road calls the BEB is by far the most reliable one, causing one road call out of 45. It was also the cheapest per mile by a long stretch.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#176

Post by boplicity » Sat, Mar 15, 2025, 1:22 AM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #67

That goes for anything hydrogen and wheels pretty much. It's actually pretty simple to figure out. Making hydrogen takes energy. You lose some of the energy making the hydrogen. This is not a fixable problem. At least not unless you break the laws of thermodynamics. When you have created hydrogen, you lose more energy compressing the energy. Then you have to transport it to wherever it's going to be pumped into the v…

The argument for hydrogen has to do with energy density. There are certain use cases where batteries are just too heavy, but hydrogen, with its higher energy density, is not. Maybe that will change in the future, but as it stands now, energy density is a significant barrier to adoption of battery/electric in certain areas. The cost of energy doesn't matter if it can't be used due to batteries being too heavy.

It's possible to imagine a future where both fuel sources have found their place, depending on context. Doesn't have to be an either/or.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#177

Post by frollogaston » Sat, Mar 15, 2025, 1:22 AM UTC

adamanonymous wrote: post #138

why_at wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow I had no idea this existed >Disadvantages >Weight: a bus which can carry 20 persons and has a range of 2 km (1.2 mi) requires a flywheel weighing about 3 tons. >The flywheel, which turns at 3000 revolutions per minute, requires special attachment and security—because the external speed of the disk is 900 km/h (560 mph). It's truly a mystery why they never caught on

You missed the last and most funny one >Driving a gyrobus has the added complexity that the flywheel acts as a gyroscope that will resist changes in orientation, for example when a bus tilts while making a turn, assuming that the flywheel has a horizontal rotation axis. So you have a giant blender than can travel one mile in a straight line before needing to be recharged

Shouldn't it still be able to turn, just not tilt?

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#178

Post by bluGill » Sat, Mar 15, 2025, 1:22 AM UTC

busthrowaway23 wrote: post #142

bluGill wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No bus route should be more than 15 minutes between full and empty. That is you start at some station, go 15 minutes, then turn around and go back. There are many systems that attempt to do more, but there is no point: people have places to be: on the bus is not on that list. That 15 minutes means an average of 7 minutes, now they walk to some other express bus that gets them nonstop (at faster speeds) to someplace,…

Am I misunderstanding you about the 15 minutes interval? Every workday I take a one-seat King County Metro bus ride that lasts about 1 hr. The bus starts at a layover facility and ends at a different layover facility. I don’t see how this 15 minute interval maps to my actual commute?

Very few people will accept commutes that long and so they are not something to optimize for.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#179

Post by isametry » Sat, Mar 15, 2025, 1:23 AM UTC

calibas wrote: post #109

Back in 2003, President George W. Bush announced the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative. At the time, people criticized the effort as an attempt by the oil industry to shift attention away from electric cars. The oil industry knew that hydrogen power wasn't going to be viable anytime soon, while electric cars were already a direct threat to their profits, so they pushed the US government towards hydrogen power. Not to disparag…

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#180

Post by bluGill » Sat, Mar 15, 2025, 1:23 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #158

bluGill wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You put in a different depot for the 20 minute trip. With express buses the trip between the two depots may only be 5 minutes. People through history have always considered about half an hour a reasonable daily commute. Doesn't matter if it is a hunter-gatherer going to their gathering grounds (if they follow herds they will move camp if the herd moves more than half an hour), or "modern man" going to the office, hal…

You would then be subjecting people to indirect paths with multiple transfers. Instead of going from A to B you'd have to go from A to the first bus depot to the second bus depot to B, waiting for another bus at each transfer. If the trip was 30 minutes to begin with, now you've made it 45 (at best).

True for that trip. However in return I've made a large number of other trips possible that couldn't have been done.