The hydrogen economy hasn't made since to me from when I first heard about it 15+years ago. It's one of the clearest examples of academics not understanding how business works.
Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check
11–20 of 193 posts
Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check
#12I think battery buses have comprehensively won this one, to be honest. The biggest hydrogen bus fleet seems to be 35 vehicles; there are many BEV bus fleets in the hundreds and some in the thousands. As a certified old person, I'm having trouble getting used to them. It is unnatural for a double-decker bus to pull up near-silently, and then move off smoothly when you get on. They are _supposed_ to vibrate violently a…
>Regionalverkehr Köln (RVK) has become the largest operator of hydrogen fuel cell buses in Europe, with a fleet that reached 101 vehicles by late 2024 and is expected to grow to 160 by the end of 2025.
I mean, right from the second section of the article.
Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check
#13I think battery buses have comprehensively won this one, to be honest. The biggest hydrogen bus fleet seems to be 35 vehicles; there are many BEV bus fleets in the hundreds and some in the thousands. As a certified old person, I'm having trouble getting used to them. It is unnatural for a double-decker bus to pull up near-silently, and then move off smoothly when you get on. They are _supposed_ to vibrate violently a…
Where I live in the US my kids still take “cheese buses” to school that haven’t changed a bit. They’re diesel and you can hear them blocks away. When they pull up with their air brakes going off and their diesel shifting to idle it sounds like one of those spice miner things from Dune going to work.
If they ever go electric I’m not sure how we’ll know it’s time to take the kids out. Won’t be able to hear them coming.
Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check
#14I think battery buses have comprehensively won this one, to be honest. The biggest hydrogen bus fleet seems to be 35 vehicles; there are many BEV bus fleets in the hundreds and some in the thousands. As a certified old person, I'm having trouble getting used to them. It is unnatural for a double-decker bus to pull up near-silently, and then move off smoothly when you get on. They are _supposed_ to vibrate violently a…
Where I live in the US my kids still take “cheese buses” to school that haven’t changed a bit. They’re diesel and you can hear them blocks away. When they pull up with their air brakes going off and their diesel shifting to idle it sounds like one of those spice miner things from Dune going to work. If they ever go electric I’m not sure how we’ll know it’s time to take the kids out. Won’t be able to hear them coming.
> If they ever go electric I’m not sure how we’ll know it’s time to take the kids out. Won’t be able to hear them coming.
I'm sure they'll just have an app.
Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check
#15I'm not really sure there is any place for a discussion - you would need a whole new infrastructure for hydrogen powered buses, while keeping a lot of the downsides of fossil fueled air breathing vehicles (eq. air filters filters regardless of if you burn the hydrogen or use it in fuel cells). With battery buses - you might need to slightly beef up the local transformer and installs some new wires and that's it. Or e…
While I agree with you; just to be clear it's not "slightly" beef up the local transformer. If you imagine a medium sized depot with 50 buses stabled at any one time, and 300kW chargers (I believe you could go higher), that's 15MW peak which is not trivial to add in many cities overnight. You really need some sort of HV connection for that kind of load, the existing local LV distribution grid isn't going to handle it…
Any decent sized installation will use current clamps at the local transformers to scale the charging rate up and down depending on other users in the local area.
Ie. in the evening whilst everyone has their ovens on, charging might only be 3 kW per bus, but then at 1am when everyone has gone to bed, it can be 30 kW per bus.
Using that approach, you can get far more capacity out of old infrastructure.
Unfortunately, some utility companies aren't amenable to that approach, and instead insist you pay to upgrade the infra, since to them it's a free upgrade.
Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check
#16Fundamentally battery buses are going to be cheaper to run. Regardless of initial outlay costs electricity that goes directly in with no conversion is achieving near 100% efficiency. Whereas with hydrogen that same electricity is being used to do electrolysis to get the hydrogen to begin with, compressing into fuel containers, travelling the fuel around the country and then pumping the fuel back in and then all the c…
> same electricity is being used to do electrolysis
Nowhere in the world is electrolysis done at scale. Industrial hydrogen almost exclusively comes from steam methane reforming (SMR).
Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check
#17The hydrogen economy hasn't made since to me from when I first heard about it 15+years ago. It's one of the clearest examples of academics not understanding how business works.
The hydrogen economy has had a lot of not very subtle backing from the gas industry, which is fully aware that they would have no problem selling hydrogen cracked out of natural gas if it ever took off.
Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check
#18Busses currently have big engines and fuel tanks (or motors and batteries).
That intuitively makes sense - obviously a big vehicle needs more energy than a small one like a car.
However, typical city bus routes spend most of their time under 30 mph, cutting aerodynamic drag by a whopping 90% compared to 70 mph highway cruising that a car does.
With more work on rolling resistance (buying super-good bearings and fancy tyre designs), regen round trip efficiency, and energy use of the passenger cabin (heat pump heating, double glazing), I could see busses needing similar size batteries to electric cars and still being able to do a full days city work.
In turn, that makes the energy source fairly irrelevant from both an economic and a social perspective.
Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree with you; just to be clear it's not "slightly" beef up the local transformer. If you imagine a medium sized depot with 50 buses stabled at any one time, and 300kW chargers (I believe you could go higher), that's 15MW peak which is not trivial to add in many cities overnight. You really need some sort of HV connection for that kind of load, the existing local LV distribution grid isn't going to handle it…
Any decent sized installation will use current clamps at the local transformers to scale the charging rate up and down depending on other users in the local area. Ie. in the evening whilst everyone has their ovens on, charging might only be 3 kW per bus, but then at 1am when everyone has gone to bed, it can be 30 kW per bus. Using that approach, you can get far more capacity out of old infrastructure. Unfortunately,…
Not really. Buses need to be charged whenever, not just overnight (it creates enormous logistical problems otherwise). A typical bus route running 5am to midnight say is not going to last with one charge, depending on length.
Also, if it is a cold night and everyone leaves electric heating/heat pumps on, what happens then? Noone can get to work the next day?
Regardless most urban transformers are not going to have 15MW of overnight capacity spare even on a good day. The largest LV substations might be 30MVA in the UK at least - they won't just have half capacity suddenly free.
Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check
#20Electric buses in the form of trolleybuses seems like the better option than either of these, although I do agree that battery buses beat hydrogen every day of the week.