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The case for hydrogen-powered cars

thedrive.com

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Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#11

Post by audunw »

jk2323 wrote: post #9
audunw wrote: post #4

I think hydrogen cars is a technology that kills itself. Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas), and that a BEV is cheaper to assemble (less parts, less piping), the market for hydrogen cars is completely dependent on the price of batteries. As batteries get cheaper, and rapid chargers get faster, the niche that hydrogen can o…

> Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas) There are other options. You can producte H2 directly from sunlight. https://setis.ec.europa.eu/setis-reports/setis-magazine/fuel... And we might run out of Lithium. Or Cobalt. Or Vanadium. I doubt that we run out of Hydrogen.

Yeah, thats an interesting option. Still remains to be seen if that’ll actually be cheaper. Sounds like something that is harder to decentralize than electrolysis, which can be a downside. With electrolysis you can make the hydrogen on-site.

Lithium-cobalt is not the only chemistry. I’m optimistic about alternate chemistries in the long term. Especially now that the battery market is growing so rapidly. There are massive investments in research.

I doubt we’ll run out though. They’re not that rare. Besides, it’s a renewable resource, not a combustible one.

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#12

Post by madez »

audunw wrote: post #4

I think hydrogen cars is a technology that kills itself. Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas), and that a BEV is cheaper to assemble (less parts, less piping), the market for hydrogen cars is completely dependent on the price of batteries. As batteries get cheaper, and rapid chargers get faster, the niche that hydrogen can o…

> The thing is, hydrogen cars are electric cars.

There are internal combustion engines that use hydrogen as fuel. A hydrogen powered car does not need to be electric.

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#13

Post by solarkraft »

madez wrote: post #12
audunw wrote: post #4

I think hydrogen cars is a technology that kills itself. Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas), and that a BEV is cheaper to assemble (less parts, less piping), the market for hydrogen cars is completely dependent on the price of batteries. As batteries get cheaper, and rapid chargers get faster, the niche that hydrogen can o…

> The thing is, hydrogen cars are electric cars. There are internal combustion engines that use hydrogen as fuel. A hydrogen powered car does not need to be electric.

This is true, but unlikely to matter, because they're even less efficient.

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#14

Post by imeron »

jk2323 wrote: post #9
audunw wrote: post #4

I think hydrogen cars is a technology that kills itself. Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas), and that a BEV is cheaper to assemble (less parts, less piping), the market for hydrogen cars is completely dependent on the price of batteries. As batteries get cheaper, and rapid chargers get faster, the niche that hydrogen can o…

> Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas) There are other options. You can producte H2 directly from sunlight. https://setis.ec.europa.eu/setis-reports/setis-magazine/fuel... And we might run out of Lithium. Or Cobalt. Or Vanadium. I doubt that we run out of Hydrogen.

Current hydrogen fuel cells contain platinum. The tech inside the Toyota Mirai contains about 30g if I remember correctly. So, which earth element do you prefer to run out of? :)

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#15

Post by endymi0n »

jk2323 wrote: post #9
audunw wrote: post #4

I think hydrogen cars is a technology that kills itself. Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas), and that a BEV is cheaper to assemble (less parts, less piping), the market for hydrogen cars is completely dependent on the price of batteries. As batteries get cheaper, and rapid chargers get faster, the niche that hydrogen can o…

> Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas) There are other options. You can producte H2 directly from sunlight. https://setis.ec.europa.eu/setis-reports/setis-magazine/fuel... And we might run out of Lithium. Or Cobalt. Or Vanadium. I doubt that we run out of Hydrogen.

The point is - it's neither one nor the other: Combining working fuel cell technology with batteries really gives the best of both worlds:

- Batteries are the most efficient in the long run and very dynamic at power release, but they are heavy (more than half the weight of Tesla's truck is the batteries), use lots of rare resources and take pretty long to recharge. It's getting better, but if you really want to drive a few thousand miles with short fuel breaks in an emergency, you can't.

- Hydrogen fuel cells suck at dynamic release, they really want to have a constant power draw. They're less efficient than batteries, but you can refuel quickly and don't have to carry the fuel weight with you all the time.

Taking all the technical challenges of storing hydrogen and making efficient fuel cells aside for the moment, combining the two technologies is really awesome in a way. You can get rid of two thirds of the batteries — and suddenly you have a car that's all of: easy to instantly refill, still dynamic to accelerate and overtake on the highway due to the batteries, but you also just have to dimension the fuel cell for average, not for peak power draw.

Considered the hydrogen is CO2 neutrally generated, it's really the optimum solution.

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#16

Post by sharpercoder »

When discussing hydrogen cars, I particularly like the blog of Mux about this topic.

Part 1: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11470/why-fuel-cell-ca...

Part 2: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11493/why-fuel-cell-ca...

Part 3: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11556/why-fuel-cell-ca...

Part 4: https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11572/why-fuel-cell-ca...

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#17

Post by unknown_apostle »

Not sure if hydrogen cars are the future. But at the least, for a few years, they will run side by side with BEVs. Definitely in the form of buses and garbage trucks.

That's why I'm currently quite fond of platinum as a speculative investment. Fuel cells require quite a bit of platinum. Yet platinum has rarely been cheaper relative to other commodities like gold. I think because the market is discounting a decline in diesel engines and maybe because of recycling. (Even though platinum has been more expensive than gold even before catalysts were common.)

In addition, platinum deserves to receive a geopolitical risk premium. 80% of the world's platinum is mined (at a loss!) in South Africa, which is prone to intense labor disputes and looking less attractive every day. And the next big producer is Russia. Yet above ground stock piles have declined in the past decade.

In the 1+ year that I've been in platinum, it hasn't been a success. The market just remains comatose. But we'll see :-)

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#19

Post by ianai »

unknown_apostle wrote: post #17

Not sure if hydrogen cars are the future. But at the least, for a few years, they will run side by side with BEVs. Definitely in the form of buses and garbage trucks. That's why I'm currently quite fond of platinum as a speculative investment. Fuel cells require quite a bit of platinum. Yet platinum has rarely been cheaper relative to other commodities like gold. I think because the market is discounting a decline in…

Platinum is also something like 3 orders of magnitude rarer in the crust than gold. What it’s value needs is a use case. Gold appears in many more places than the one or two places platinum does.

Re: The case for hydrogen-powered cars

#20

Post by pitaj »

madez wrote: post #12
audunw wrote: post #4

I think hydrogen cars is a technology that kills itself. Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas), and that a BEV is cheaper to assemble (less parts, less piping), the market for hydrogen cars is completely dependent on the price of batteries. As batteries get cheaper, and rapid chargers get faster, the niche that hydrogen can o…

> The thing is, hydrogen cars are electric cars. There are internal combustion engines that use hydrogen as fuel. A hydrogen powered car does not need to be electric.

Still had common emissions problems like NOx etc, unless they also run off pure oxygen.
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