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Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

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Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#101

Post by misswaterfairy »

m4rtink wrote: post #2

I'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…

> 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)

Australia kind-of already had 'hydrogen' infrastructure and supply chains already, in LPG or 'autogas'. LPG (or dual petrol/LPG) used to be a popular option for small vehicle fuel in Australia in the 2000s though has slowly declined due to petrol/electric hybrids coming along.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-19/lpg-cars-disappearing...

That said, it's possible to convert diesel engines to burn a 90% hydrogen/10% diesel mix, which could dramatically alter those numbers: https://www.unsw.edu.au/news/2024/08/converting-diesel-engin...

It shouldn't be too difficult to bring back 'autogas' infrastructure in Australia. And if we can, I don't see why others couldn't deploy it made sense to do so. Liquid/gas fuels make much more sense in very-low to moderate density areas with long distances between populated centres. Batteries make much more sense in high population density areas with relatively short trips.

Whilst I agree it's not as ideal as a true zero-emissions thing, it's certainly a stepping stone to greatly accelerate the decarbonisation of our fuels, by allowing many to convert internal combustion engines to use much cleaner fuels, without having to buy brand new vehicles.

Given that petrol and diesel these days are usually almost double the cost per litre of LPG in Australia, and that a lot of decently sized long range EVs are still very expensive in Australia, especially considering cost-of-living pressures and the distances many Aussies have to drive in rural and remote areas where EVs just aren't practical, I'm a little surprised LPG hasn't made a comeback.

Australia has since kicked off a project to construct a large green hydrogen generation plant in Western Australia, due to be producing by 2029 and fully operational by the end of 2031, so hydrogen could become a pretty big deal in by 2030.

https://research.csiro.au/hyresource/murchison-hydrogen-rene...

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#102

Post by m101 »

I think there's a risk of "it's too soon to say here" when deciding on fuel vs battery Vs hydrogen. The problem is that this is a highly complex dynamic system with different people experiencing different externalities.

Reasons answering this question is difficult are, for example:

- given the demands for highly valuable electricity and alternative use cases, why do we insist on using it in locomotion?

- given marginal electricity pricing, everyone is subsidising cleaner air in cities for the benefit of air quality of only those living in cities

- might electric buses be prevalent because of smaller up front costs to infrastructure, and not because it's the right thing longer term?

- if electrification of transport in general was a bad idea (first bullet) then how does this change the economics of hydrogen given the longer run access to SMR sourced hydrogen from longer term fossil fuel extraction?

- how sure are we that we are solving a co2 climate crisis with the actions we are taking?

This all in the context of "greening" our economies when all the dirty industry and carbon emissions are exported to China, out of sight but not out of the true equation. And then there's the destruction of industrial capacity in Europe carried out by green agendas, all in favour of the Chinese Communist Party longer term.

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#103

Post by ReptileMan »

mmooss wrote: post #85
kleiba wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has this recurring fixation on hydrogen for whatever reason. Even when Tesla had already long hit the mainstream market, German car manufacturers were still arguing against EVs in favor for hydrogen-powered cars that would theoretically be vastly superior. Well, we all know how that turned out for Mercedes, BMW, and the so on.

If people followed that reasoning, there would be few EVs now because EVs had been tried for decades without success; so were airplanes and AI. If people quit as easily as you say hydrogen car manufacturers should, we wouldn't have much of anything.

EV has been tried with great success since the moment the electric motor was invented. Trams, metros, trolleybuses. The bottleneck for free range was always the battery - which was solved by the mobile phones. The electronics industry had the money to invest into batteries because of the premium that people were willing to pay for even minor battery improvements. And the economy of scale pushed it down to where a battery pack was costing less than the GDP of Australia and so viable in a car.

Hydrogen cars will become available only when hydrogen is used as a temporary storage for renewable energy. But probably even there converting it to electricity in industrial scale fuel cell will make more sense.

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#104

Post by nopelynopington »

mmooss wrote: post #56
rsynnott wrote: post #4

I 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…

> The biggest hydrogen bus fleet seems to be 35 vehicles From the OP: Cologne is one of the few relatively good news stories for hydrogen bus fleets. 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.

There's a very large drop off after that one example

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#105

Post by bmicraft »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #37
martinald wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 15…

Lots of busses are split shift. i.e. they drive from ~6:30am to ~9:30am and ~4pm to 7pm. This means that a significant portion of your bus fleet will be able to charge during the middle of the day when energy demand is relatively low and there's a ton of solar power. As an aside, we have so far really dropped the ball on level 1 electric vehicle chargers at offices. As solar power and EV numbers increase, it's pretty…

Where do you live that buses aren't running during most of the day? That just seems absurd to me. Buses in my city run at only slightly reduced (from the rush hour peak) intervals for the whole day

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#106

Post by nopelynopington »

Ireland is investing heavily in green energy production at the moment, building two facilities to split water with excess wind energy. I guess the idea is to capture what can't be used at time of generation and make money from it.

The idea is for "heavy transport" and "aviation" sectors to use these. Are there any hydrogen planes?

Perhaps they mean turning it into ammonia through haber-bosch but that requires even further energy.

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#107

Post by XorNot »

m101 wrote: post #98
XorNot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The battery economy has had a lot of very not subtle backing from the government.

And this is serving the nefarious purpose of?

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#108

Post by ZeroGravitas »

m101 wrote: post #98
XorNot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The battery economy has had a lot of very not subtle backing from the government.

And they were right. Well done governments! Cheaper transport, cleaner air, less resource extraction, more flexible demand for electricity which allows more renewables (another government backed success story) which in turn means cheaper power and cleaner air.

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#109

Post by filmor »

philjohn wrote: post #92
mmooss wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people followed that reasoning, there would be few EVs now because EVs had been tried for decades without success; so were airplanes and AI. If people quit as easily as you say hydrogen car manufacturers should, we wouldn't have much of anything.

Yes - but Hydrogen vehicles have not proven to match or even beat EV's in a lot of key metrics that matter. The biggest one is efficiency. 40% efficient is one figure I saw, versus 80% for EV's. Yes, you can refill quicker, but time to "refuel" EV's is dropping precipitously as well, and it's just all around safer than tanking around highly combustible liquid gas.

How is that efficiency calculated, respectively?

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#110

Post by coderenegade »

chermi wrote: post #11

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 makes sense as a chemical feedstock for methanol and ammonia. It also scales well to grid energy storage, because you can add hundreds of GWhs at a time, and the technology is mature (Moss Bluff opened in 1983). You wouldn't use hydrogen in vehicles, because methanol is easy to make, and is a much better fuel for non-aero applications. Shipping is moving to methanol for that reason.
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