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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

#181

Post by robocat »

atoav wrote: post #95
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.

Reasons I can think of for that fixation are: 1. Germany's existing industrial capacity in terms of machining is a much closer match to hydrogen than to EVs. So in short it is wishful thinking mixed with a kind of self-preservation. 2. There seems to be a (somewhat unfounded) worry about energy storage when it comes to EVs, that many German technologists think is easier to handle and solve with hydrogen. 3. Germans c…

Toyota had a hydrogen fixation too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai

A more complete theory would encompass the Japanese drives as well.

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

#182

Post by [deleted] »

fluidcruft wrote: post #135
linedgolyi wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe? Problem is either that it can be and is always disabled by driver, or it's very quiet, because I as a healthy man in their 20s, hear the pavement tire noise before any other noise, and the car is already really close at that point

Most pedestrians have airpods in nowadays and probably couldn't hear an ambulance.

[deleted]

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

#184

Post by addicted »

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.

This is true but this analysis fails to consider why hydrogen receives so much interest, because similar reasoning could indicate we should be spending more on every other potential fuel source, including biofuels, and maybe running engines on cellulose.

And the fact that hydrogen is most popular in Germany and Japan should provide a clue.

These are countries with well established ICE car industries and therefore shifting to hydrogen provides the least disruption when it comes to their car manufacturing as well as infrastructure.

The disproportionately high interest in hydrogen is likely not being driven because of a belief in its future success, but likely more as a hope to continuing the status quo.

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

#185

Post by petertodd »

praseodym wrote: post #162
petertodd wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just a minor problem, not a fatal flaw. Obviously you can fix that with a small heater for negligible energy cost.

Commercially available solutions seem to use a flow of nitrogen to purge condensation from the nozzle, which is quite a bit more complicated: https://www.weh.com/en_us/general-news/preventing-the-fuelin...

Yes, to comply with paranoid hydrogen safety regulations cheaply. Also, note how the nitrogen is also being used to purge the entire line. Not just keep condensation away.

With more engineering work an intrinsically safe PTC heater could be certified and used just fine.

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

#186

Post by philjohn »

lesuorac wrote: post #173
philjohn wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. I always think of I, Robot where the protagonist gets on a motorcycle and immediately their passenger complains about how dangerous gasoline is. While not for everybody, EVs have a really great property of being rechargable without much effort on…

And much cheaper to fill as well.

On a pretty efficienct ICE that I had I was averaging about 20p per mile driven. On my EV I'm averaging 2.5p per mile driven.

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

#187

Post by philjohn »

philwelch wrote: post #159
philjohn wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not really fair to compare the efficiency numbers directly that way. The efficiency for hydrogen is measured from the hydrogen fuel directly, but the efficiency of the EV is measured from the wall. In reality, generating electricity is about 40% efficient at best. Yes, there's also an efficiency cost to refining the hydrogen, but if we compare apples to apples and take a ton of LNG and use it to power an EV vers…

Hydrogen that doesn't come from the natural gas industry requires that very same electricity to be extracted from water - so they're operating from the same baseline in my efficiency calculations.

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

#188

Post by philwelch »

philjohn wrote: post #187
philwelch wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really fair to compare the efficiency numbers directly that way. The efficiency for hydrogen is measured from the hydrogen fuel directly, but the efficiency of the EV is measured from the wall. In reality, generating electricity is about 40% efficient at best. Yes, there's also an efficiency cost to refining the hydrogen, but if we compare apples to apples and take a ton of LNG and use it to power an EV vers…

Hydrogen that doesn't come from the natural gas industry requires that very same electricity to be extracted from water - so they're operating from the same baseline in my efficiency calculations.

But the electricity is generated by burning natural gas.

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

#189

Post by philjohn »

mmooss wrote: post #165
philjohn wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Hydrogen vehicles have not proven to match or even beat EV's in a lot of key metrics that matter Not yet. That is the nature of technological R&D - if we had the answers, we wouldn't be doing R&D. AI before the last decade or so didn't beat other computer technologies in key metrics; should they have stopped developing it? Fusion power doesn't beat fission and other options in key metrics; solar didn't beat other s…

Toyota have been researching hydrogen cars since the early 90's.

Unless you can find a way to double their efficiency, and also get hydrogen down to close to 1:1 energy input to output it's just not an efficienct use of electricity.

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

#190

Post by philjohn »

pipodeclown wrote: post #169
nautilius wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Efficiency is the standard red herring of the battery crowd - if efficiency was the prime motivation, we would all be driving bicycles and SUV or sportscars would not exist. What are your other metrics? It’s an electric drivetrain with all advantages, but with the range of a gasoline car. Refueling cNG or LNG is standard in Europe, LH2 works just fine. Google “burning Tesla” for that ridiculous take on why batteries…

Efficiency doesn't matter when you're literally pumping energetic liquid from the ground. It does matter when you need to build 150% more solar panels to produce the energy to create your energetic liquid/gas.

Try 2-300%.
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