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Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification

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Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification

#151

Post by OkayPhysicist »

dainiusse wrote: post #59

The problem is simple - EVs are overpriced and battery density is too low. It needs to be at least twice of current ones. EVs are Definitely going to be over hydrogen, but the tech is just not there yet for many markets. 200 kilometers in harsh conditions is wayyto small range

Why? Commuting 100 miles to work each day is ridiculous. For anything less than that, your 300 mile range is going to be plenty. There's an argument to be made that the tech isn't quite there yet for long haul trucking and the like, but 95+% of commuter vehicles could and should be replaced with EVs tomorrow.

Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification

#152

Post by lazide »

DriverDaily wrote: post #128
dieselgate wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am not well versed on these considerations but it appears one advantage of hydrogen is energy density compared to batteries. This may be less an issue for passenger vehicles but could be more relevant for air travel - as an example. No comments or opinions otherwise re: funding etc. Found the below article useful as a primer: https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/articles/fuel-cell-and...

Anybody who needs to run 24/7 and/or can't count on an electric grid could use hydrogen power: A logistics network, an army, public transportation, utility companies, forestry or mining...

Or they could just use the well known https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process to convert it the rest of the way to a hydrocarbon, not have the pesky raw hydrogen issues, and be able to use all their existing infrastructure to burn it? With the advantage of pulling carbon from the air in the process?

Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification

#153

Post by theshrike79 »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #110
gmane wrote: post #5

Anyone who has followed hydrogen as a fuel for a while sees pretty easily that its a solution in search of a problem. It really doesn't make sense to use renewables to make hydrogen fuel to then burn: batteries are better for storage of energy in most cases (I will grant that there are edge cases where a liquid/gas fuel is a better technical solution than batteries, but I think that options like ethanol are probably…

Batteries go bad over a rather short period of time and are incredibly expensive too. They’re basically currently infeasible as a mode of transport without _a lot_ of trade offs. Compare that to a tank for fuel, which is comparatively minuscule in cost and basically never goes bad. I don’t think electrical is as scalable as liquid fuel and I’m not convinced it ever will be, especially if it’s continued to be made by…

How long is a "rather short period of time"? There are decade old EV batteries still in use and over 80% SOH.

And fuel definitely goes bad. It doesn't work like in the movies where you can just find a 30 year old car in the desert and grab more fuel for your awesome roadwarrior vehicle. You can use additives to make it last longer and store better, but still.

As for "exotic materials" we're figuring out new battery chemistries at a record pace. Some are better for vehicles, that need a good kWh/kg ratio. Others are better for grid storage where kWh/€ is a more relevant measurement.

Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification

#154

Post by cracrecry »

meindnoch wrote: post #116
cracrecry wrote: post #113

There is an Oil Sector Lobby and there is an electric sector Lobby too. All Lobbies hate competition. The electric sector wants to destroy Hydrogen because it competes with them, of course, they want to destroy the seed so no tree comes out of it. Hydrogen disappearing is not going to happen, because it going to be necessary for some things, like heavy transportation. Just because clean Hydrogen is in the early stage…

>It is also toxic and difficult to handle, like oil Except oil is a liquid, while ammonia is a gas. You can put oil in an open container and it won't hurt anyone. Now try doing the same with ammonia...

Oil burns and CH3 explodes easily, but we use it anyway because it makes economic sense.

The same will happen with ammonia. There are risks, but the energy that you could store is immense at a very low price.

Don't get me wrong, I was working in batteries and solar panels research in the early days. I heard the same arguments against it( why we should spend money when batteries and solar panels are so expensive and work so badly? They were expensive and worked badly)

Now we work on fuel cells. They are expensive and there is room for improvement.

Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification

#155

Post by robertjpayne »

jacquesm wrote: post #88
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure that BEVs will reach anything close to 100% of all cars on the road. My primary reason is this: as long as you "only" have 10%, 20%, even 30% BEVs the electric charging infrastructure is mostly free, we already have it. But after that, BEVs will require expensive infrastructure to be built in the electricity transmission grid. Think "we need to dig up all of the roads". Because it's not just cars goin…

Yes, that's a good point. But: the grid can be expanded and probably will be expanded. I don't have a BEV but I've run the numbers and it would work very well for me today, it's just that I have an old, non-connected and fairly recently rebuilt car that I'll drive into the ground. But if I were younger and still in the market for a new vehicle I would definitely consider an electric one, though I'd make sure it had L…

This 100%, we're not done with batteries yet as a society and it's probably one of the most heavily funded industries because the opportunity to strike "gold" with good battery tech is too large to ignore.

Lithium wont be used forever and and downsides to batteries will slowly be eroded until we wonder why we ever used petrol in the first place.

As far as the grid goes, in my eyes rooftop solar is going to provide a huge amount of the power generation required for EVs. We're not there yet but the price of solar keeps dropping rapidly and you'll see a shift in messaging from "discounts and charge overnight when demand is low" to "discounts and charge during the day because generation is high".

Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification

#156

Post by jbm »

theshrike79 wrote: post #135
tw04 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't blame you for being skeptical, but it isn't just the oil and gas industry. The Japanese government went all-in on hydrogen. https://thediplomat.com/2023/07/a-look-at-japans-latest-hydr...

Japan is clinging to hydrogen like a drowning man to driftwood. About 80% of Japan's energy is imported coal and natural gas. Their electric grid is a bonkers mix of 50Hz and 60Hz single-phase. Hydrogen is the only viable solution for them and even that's not going too well despite lofty goals. They can't build the tech and infrastructure alone and the rest of the world just isn't as enthusiastic on H2.

The 50Hz and 60Hz is an accident of history and neatly splits the country in half. It's not a problem.

Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification

#157

Post by toss1 »

_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #73
gmane wrote: post #5

Anyone who has followed hydrogen as a fuel for a while sees pretty easily that its a solution in search of a problem. It really doesn't make sense to use renewables to make hydrogen fuel to then burn: batteries are better for storage of energy in most cases (I will grant that there are edge cases where a liquid/gas fuel is a better technical solution than batteries, but I think that options like ethanol are probably…

Hydrogen for cars is dead. However long haul flights, fertilizer, green steel, etc. very difficult to find a carbon free alternative that isn’t hydrogen.

Yup. Even Toyota, a big H2 promoter is bailing and announcing high-range. solid-state, fast charging batteries [0, 1, 2]. Makes me wonder if the H2 promotion was just a ruse to misdirect the rest of the industry while it caught up, and possibly even leapfrogged (we'll see if their announcements play out), on battery tech?

[0] Toyota Teases Solid-State Batteries in 2027

https://spectrum.ieee.org/toyota-solid-state-battery

[1] Toyota reveals its plan to catch up on EV battery technology Three liquid chemistries, solid state cells, and flatter battery packs.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/toyota-reveals-its-plan...

[2] LGES to supply Toyota with batteries, invest $3 billion in US plant

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/toyota...

Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification

#158

Post by [deleted] »

dieselgate wrote: post #78
gmane wrote: post #5

Anyone who has followed hydrogen as a fuel for a while sees pretty easily that its a solution in search of a problem. It really doesn't make sense to use renewables to make hydrogen fuel to then burn: batteries are better for storage of energy in most cases (I will grant that there are edge cases where a liquid/gas fuel is a better technical solution than batteries, but I think that options like ethanol are probably…

Am not well versed on these considerations but it appears one advantage of hydrogen is energy density compared to batteries. This may be less an issue for passenger vehicles but could be more relevant for air travel - as an example. No comments or opinions otherwise re: funding etc. Found the below article useful as a primer: https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/articles/fuel-cell-and...

[deleted]

Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification

#159

Post by theshrike79 »

Reason077 wrote: post #150
reducesuffering wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen was pushed by the Japanese government because BEV's aren't as ideally suited to the country's economy and resources. It's not a coincidence the only two companies making hydrogen cars were both the largest Japanese automakers, Toyota and Honda. And both of those models are economic failures atypical of their usual engineering prowess. Toyota Mirai sales have been flatlined at low ~1-2k since they started, fo…

> "BEV's aren't as ideally suited to the country's economy and resources." BEVs are better suited to Japan's economy and resources than any other fuel, the vast majority of which is imported (including natural gas). It's just that it's taken Japan's government a long time to realise this. But it seems like they're finally coming around!

The Japanese electric grid is even worse than the one in the US.

Their grid is a mix of 60Hz and 50Hz networks because of weird historical reasons. It's also single-phase, which isn't the best for mass EV charging.

Compare that to, say, Finland where every single apartment and house has three-phase power. 3x16A or 3x32A usually. It's completely trivial to install a 11kW home charger for example, it's just running some cables and maybe adding a load balancer - all 100yo tech.

Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification

#160

Post by vel0city »

baq wrote: post #48
gmane wrote: post #5

Anyone who has followed hydrogen as a fuel for a while sees pretty easily that its a solution in search of a problem. It really doesn't make sense to use renewables to make hydrogen fuel to then burn: batteries are better for storage of energy in most cases (I will grant that there are edge cases where a liquid/gas fuel is a better technical solution than batteries, but I think that options like ethanol are probably…

Batteries are heavy, expensive and we don’t have infrastructure to charge them at the required scale. I don’t believe hydrogen is the answer but methane cells could be… liquid energy storage is just so much more practical compared to alternatives.

About the infrastructure. I've got many ways to recharge my car available today. I've got zero places to fill hydrogen. I don't even have many CNG options.
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