Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by alerighi » Tue, Oct 10, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #6

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #2

Not saying the oil sector is powerless by any means, and I guess maybe they're going for regulatory capture, but this is a non-starter from an economic reality perspective so I'm not too worried about it. The train is well out of the station for electric vehicles. I believe every car maker (save 1 that I know about) is fully committed to 100% electrified vehicles in the not-too-distant future. I feel like eventually…

All it takes is a new pump at existing gas stations and what becomes more compelling to the consumer flips overnight. Same cultural process of fueling up at the same place you've always fueled up in about the same amount of time as its always taken. It seems like there's a lot lot less inertia to get consumers over that hurdle than the EV hurdle, where charge times are long and convenient chargers not a guarantee in…

I have a diesel car. Every 3 weeks I have to fill my tank. This wastes me around 5/10 minutes, depending if the gas station is full of person that want to fill their tank. And this only thanks to the fact that I've one of the gas station with the cheapest price of my city 50 meters from where I work. Otherwise I would need to spend time (and gas) to get to the station with the cheapest price, because paying 2 euros for a liter of gas is not something I like to do.

With an electric car I can get home at evening, park my car and connect a plug, exactly as I connect my phone to the charger before going to bed. Time wasted? Probably less than a minute every couple of days. Also, I pay it in my electricity bill, the price of electricity doesn't go as high as the price of gas. Also... it's impossible to distinguish between the electricity used to charge a car than the one used for domestic purpose. This means that the government cannot add taxes on electricity used in vehicles, as it does with gas. Finally there is the possibility to install solar and produce the electricity myself.

> All it takes is a new pump at existing gas stations

Easy? We have natural gas cars since decades. Only recently (last 10 years) you find a sufficient number of stations that serve you natural gas. Still for nonsense rules in my country you can't fill your natural gas car by yourself but it has to be done by an operator, so good luck filling it in the weekend or at night. I imagine the same rules would apply for hydrogen.

Now, after decades of natural gas cars, they are mostly usable (my parents have one). Inconvenient, since you maybe have to drive 10km to get to a station, and you have the same range than an electric car (350km more or less). Will hydrogen be that better? I don't think so.

While all of this happens, electric car chargers are starting to appear everywhere. You go to a supermarket, there is a charger, you stop to eat on the highway, there is a charger, or more of them really, in the cities there are plenty of them (plus while the car is charging you don't pay for parking!).

It's nonsense to this day to not consider buying an electric car if buying a new car to me! I keep my diesel car since I already have it, it has more than 10 years, and works fairly well, and I don't like changing things that works, but when I will change it, I will buy an electric for sure.

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

#192

Post by bluGill » Tue, Oct 10, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

xoa wrote: post #171

_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> very difficult to find a carbon free alternative that isn’t hydrogen. The basic mistake you're making here is thinking that "carbon free" is key. It is not, what matters is that a given energy source is carbon NEUTRAL . Anthropogenic global warming is driven primarily by net increase in atmospheric CO2 on our timescale. When CO2 in consumed from the atmosphere, and then shortly released again (textbook example bein…

The processes to make synthetic fuels are well known have proven to scale to a countries needs for energy. Germany did it in WWII, South Africa did it for a while too.

The problem is it costs a lot of energy, and so it ends up 4-5 times more expensive than oil from a well.

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

#193

Post by p1mrx » Tue, Oct 10, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

beachy wrote: post #104

asdff wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All it takes is a new pump at existing gas stations and what becomes more compelling to the consumer flips overnight. Same cultural process of fueling up at the same place you've always fueled up in about the same amount of time as its always taken. It seems like there's a lot lot less inertia to get consumers over that hurdle than the EV hurdle, where charge times are long and convenient chargers not a guarantee in…

> Same cultural process of fueling up at the same place you've always fueled up in about the same amount of time as its always taken. I don't know that people's cultural attraction to fueling at the gas station is high at all. After we got an EV I realised how much I had actually disliked filling the car. Smelly, every time an in your face reminder of the fossil fuels you are burning. Having to go in an queue. Having…

> Unable to use cellphone and take calls.

Why are you unable to use your cellphone?

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

#194

Post by Reason077 » Tue, Oct 10, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

theshrike79 wrote: post #159

Reason077 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 som…

Most Japanese houses do not have parking garages or private parking spaces, so the ability to charge from home is irrelevant.

But in any case, single phase is fine for home charging and it's the default in many parts of the world. Three phase charging is a nice luxury, but far from a necessity.

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

#195

Post by Joel_Mckay » Tue, Oct 10, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

Hydrogen systems have zero advantage over GMO biodiesel (short-cycle carbon neutral) for energy capture, storage, and distribution.

The local Ballard H2 bus test platforms were reverted to diesel after 6 years.

Mostly, people see Hydrogen as a way to green-wash catalyzed natural gas (30000 years to reach carbon neutral).

The Battery people seem to think $7000/Kg for global lithium deployment is feasible. Look, a EV/pollution-relocation device is impressive, but is still unsustainable.

I retain the opinion goat-carts are the future. =)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFTyJDjfjG0

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

#196

Post by jfengel » Tue, Oct 10, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #99

mohaine wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it an excellent large-scale stationary energy store though? I mean, it seems like it should be but * Hydrogen really likes to leak. * Hydrogen breaks down the container holding it over time. * Hydrogen is very low density. This means you need either a very large container or very high pressure. Combined with 1 and 2 this is going to be expensive. I'm really asking the question. I would love to know the full cost d…

> * Hydrogen really likes to leak. Yes, but the rate of leakage is tiny enough that for any reasonable sized tank it's going to be years till it's all leaked away. The real risk is the leakage causing explosions if you ever put a tank in a confined space.

It leaks a lot faster if it corrodes a hole in the container. Hydrogen is fairly reactive.

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

#197

Post by jillesvangurp » Tue, Oct 10, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

_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.

For long haul flight, hydrogen's main use is going to be producing fuels that can actually go that distance. Hydrogen has a volumetric problem and it just isn't a great fuel for that reason. Even over short distances this is problematic. It just takes up too much space. It's about 2.5 x that of lng in both liquid and gas form. In liquid form, you need to cool it to a few degrees above 0 degrees kelvin, which makes it very impractical in a plane. And of course lng even in liquid form does not compare that favorably to things like kerosene.

Green steel you can do without hydrogen. Basically you need lots of heat and some carbon to produce steel. Generating heat with electricity is not that hard. You can use induction, plasma heating, resistive heating, etc. And doing that is a lot more efficient than using that same electricity to first create hydrogen and then burn it.

Hydrogen has its place, mostly as a chemical half product that is used to create other stuff. It doesn't store very well; it doesn't travel very well. It's mostly used close to where it is generated. Which as of yet is done almost exclusively by expending large amounts of fossil methane or coal. Green hydrogen production is minuscule and relatively inefficient and costly. Most uses of hydrogen today are neither green nor sustainable. Or carbon free. And that's going to stay like this for a while. Even just shifting current hydrogen production to being green is going to take a massive investment and take decades.

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

#198

Post by VBprogrammer » Tue, Oct 10, 2023, 9:57 PM UTC

jbm wrote: post #156

theshrike79 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Their domestic voltage is also 100v. I've never thought about it before but it does seem like that might pose some challenges in electrifying their road transportation. 240v is considerably more useful when you are trying to suck down 7kw or more.

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

#199

Post by bryanlarsen » Tue, Oct 10, 2023, 9:58 PM UTC

Pxtl wrote: post #175

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...

Once you're already committed to green hydrogen (electrolysis-made hydrogen) you may as well go whole hog and do green methane (methane made through the Sabatier process, which consumes Hydrogen and CO2). Making a methane-powered jetliner is far more practical than a hydrogen-powered one.

That's right, but there's an even better option: making synthetic kerosene from green H2 and CO2 so it can be used in existing jetliners.

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

#200

Post by _ea1k » Tue, Oct 10, 2023, 9:58 PM UTC

idontpost wrote: post #13

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…

> My gut is that the majority of hydrogen proponents are oil and gas lobbyists or funded by them I don't understand how any one looks at the electric car charging situation and thinks it makes sense to scale that out to 100% of vehicles. A 2 hour wait to get a charger spot isn't a workable transport system.

I don't see why you'd look at a 2 hour wait somewhere and extrapolate that out as an impossible problem. Show an EV nerd a video of a 2 hour wait and they can probably tell you where it happened and maybe even when, because that is really unusual.

This is a solvable problem.