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Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

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Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#11

Post by jeeeb »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #3

There's a lot of discussion about hydrogen as an energy source for cars in Germany. 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. However, it looks like that outside of Germany, electric cars just won, and Germany itself will not be able to reverse th…

FWIW. I’ve seen a lot of interest in Japan and Australia as well.

Toyota in particular seems to be betting big on hydrogen with a PHEV -> BEV transition as backup.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#12

Post by isoprophlex »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #3

There's a lot of discussion about hydrogen as an energy source for cars in Germany. 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. However, it looks like that outside of Germany, electric cars just won, and Germany itself will not be able to reverse th…

We're not at the level of, say, > 50% market adoption of EVs.

Getting electricity to a battery EV at scale is somewhat of a "last mile" problem, and I'm not sure if upgrading our grids to handle this will be cheaper than rolling out hydrogen infra.

Consider that you can ship hydrogen on a truck to existing pump stations (maybe not as efficient) as we do with gas right now.

I have no data to back this up, just the handwavy arguments above...

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#13

Post by timthorn »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #3

There's a lot of discussion about hydrogen as an energy source for cars in Germany. 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. However, it looks like that outside of Germany, electric cars just won, and Germany itself will not be able to reverse th…

The UK Government is also looking hard at H2 and there's a lot of industrial activity in the area. Just today, Centrica announced a £1.6Bn investment in Hydrogen storage.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#14

Post by Transrapid »

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 particles which harm your health. https://youtu.be/ormfLJmWGC8

People complained about the emission cheating regarding volkswagen. So everybody who did has to be pro hydrogen car. Because its real emission free. not like a battery car

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#15

Post by varjag »

epistasis wrote: post #6
tut-urut-utut wrote: post #3

There's a lot of discussion about hydrogen as an energy source for cars in Germany. 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. However, it looks like that outside of Germany, electric cars just won, and Germany itself will not be able to reverse th…

>because of much lesser environmental footprint than required for producing batteries. I'm very concerned about this, but have found basically zero impact for batteries, in that if one is concerned about batteries, then all that iron mining to build the rest of the car should probably be a bigger concern. After doing research, I'm 99% sure that lithium battery environmental concerns are just concern trolling from fos…

Here is a rather detailed study on total emission effects of EV lifecyle: https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EV-life...

"An electric vehicle’s higher emissions during the manufacturing stage are paid off after only 2 years compared to driving an average conventional vehicle, a time frame that drops to about one and a half years if the car is charged using renewable energy."

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#16

Post by epistasis »

LightG wrote: post #5

As someone with little knowledge of this domain except a few articles and this link, it appears that hydrogen is better enviromentally, but the electric-car lobby disagree. If there is a chicken and egg problem, as mentioned in the article, where mass adoption of a "better" technology is only held back due to the the number of hydrogen pumps - that seems like an appropriate point for government to step in to bridge t…

Even the most hydrogen positive environmentalists don't think hydrogen makes sense for cars. Those pushing h2 cars either have natural gas interests, or an extreme attachment to fueling.

By far the best current assessment of how we will use hydrogen as energy transport I have found:

https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-separating-hype-from-h...

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#17

Post by jokoon »

Hydrogen will always leak from any container.

Clean hydrogen is difficult to make, giving an opportunity to the oil industry to easily make cheap hydrogen from refineries, which is not carbon neutral.

I'm not sure there is enough platinum in the world to make all those cars. Mining platinum might cause additional carbon emissions.

Hydrogen is very dangerous because it's highly explosive. Gas is safer in that regard.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#18

Post by phicoh »

Datagenerator wrote: post #7
tut-urut-utut wrote: post #3

There's a lot of discussion about hydrogen as an energy source for cars in Germany. 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. However, it looks like that outside of Germany, electric cars just won, and Germany itself will not be able to reverse th…

Smaller batteries, faster cars. In Germany one can really use all the available power in stark contrast to neighboring countries. Lighter cars and fast refueling for long distance travelling are very beneficial, not only to Germany.

I assume that the vast majority of car owners is quite sensitive to cost. If all things considered the cost of hydrogen is similar to that of an BEV then it make sense that both will exist next to each other.

On the other hand, if hydrogen proves to be a lot more expensive than a BEV, then you expect fewer hydrogen refueling stations, which makes hydrogen less attractive.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#19

Post by varjag »

Ma8ee wrote: post #10
tut-urut-utut wrote: post #3

There's a lot of discussion about hydrogen as an energy source for cars in Germany. 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. However, it looks like that outside of Germany, electric cars just won, and Germany itself will not be able to reverse th…

They are betting on them in Japan, and they are using the olympic village as some kind of proof of concepts with both vehicles, but also residential energy production from hydrogen. And of course the Olympic torch will use hydrogen. Toyota are also betting on hydrogen. This is the reason why, even though they were early with hybrids, they still haven't released any purely electric cars.

They did release BEV series.
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