261–270 of 387 posts
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Haven't we tried hydrogen for air travel before? ;-)
It's been used successfully for space travel, in liquid (cryogenic) form. The Space Shuttle's main engines ran on hydrogen fuel, for example. However the latest generation of rockets seems to have moved away from hydrogen back to things like RP-1 (kerosene) and liquid methane. The high cost and difficulties of working with hydrogen is a factor in this.
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We (in the US) have very little hydrogen infrastructure but there's high voltage power lines basically everywhere - so it seems like hydrogen has the infrastructure and scaling issues. Batteries are indeed heavy - but so are portable hydrogen storage cell that don't easily explode or require liquid cooling. I agree with you that hydrogen isn't the answer but methane doesn't really seem to be either. Batteries and ele…
There isn't enough infrastructure to power all the eventual electric cars.
Imagine not understanding the ability for humans to build things. Pretty sure the comment i'm responding to is a gas industry shill.
I wish them much good luck, but it's a bit like the dinosaurs complaining about those uppity mammals getting underfoot: their days are numbered. BEVs are here to stay, hydrogen is - as far as I can see - a non-starter except when it comes to heavy traffic and possibly rail or air but even there I have my doubts. Meanwhile BEVs are rapidly building momentum and coupled with solar and wind make very good sense. Even th…
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…
People imagine BEVs need to be charged every evening at some super high power. The reality is they need to be charged about once a week (median US commute is 1/10th of typical BEVs range at city speeds), and can charge overnight, or when parked at work, while using less electricity than your air conditioning unit.
The grid is designed to handle peak demand (see the "duck curve"), and there is a lot of spare capacity outside of the peak hours, especially at noon when there's more solar production than consumption.
BEVs are very flexible with their charging time, and scheduling charging in off-peak hours is a standard feature.
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We (in the US) have very little hydrogen infrastructure but there's high voltage power lines basically everywhere - so it seems like hydrogen has the infrastructure and scaling issues. Batteries are indeed heavy - but so are portable hydrogen storage cell that don't easily explode or require liquid cooling. I agree with you that hydrogen isn't the answer but methane doesn't really seem to be either. Batteries and ele…
There isn't enough infrastructure to power all the eventual electric cars.
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…
If the case for the battery was objectively better, oil companies would pull a phillip morris and buy out their antithesis to profit on both ends. The fact that they are doubling down on hydrogen itself I think its really interesting. To me, this shows that perhaps there is a true advantage, and also a high enough barrier to entry where only these oil companies at the scale they already exist can reap the most benefi…
I would encourage these "oil executives" to find creative solutions. Diverse market options drive costs down and promote innovative products. To say one technology is always better than another because "some oil executive" does or doesn't promote it, is FUD. In tech we hear enough FUD we should be immune to it. We are not.
It is a proven fact enough electricity is not produced to handle the charging of enough BEVs to replace the current number of ICE vehicles. We need more options not fewer.
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…
Not really. They do gradually lose capacity over a long time, but it's a slow process. The US Government requires EV batteries to have an 8 year / 100,000 mile warranty, and California requires 10 years and 150,000 miles. I expect most batteries will significantly exceed that.
LFP batteries generally have about 3x the longevity of other lithium ion types.
There are some examples of early battery failures, like the Nissan Leaf didn't use liquid cooling; now basically everyone else learned from their example and does it. Chevy Bolts had a battery recall due to bad manufacturing. Basically, if a battery fails early someone somewhere screwed up. Most EV batteries are fine and will continue to be fine for a very long time.
>> "I’m not convinced it ever will be, especially if it’s continued to be made by exotic materials."
Resource constraints are an issue, but there are workarounds. Nickel and cobalt can be avoided simply by using LFP cells. Permanent magnet motors are more efficient than induction, but the permanent magnets don't need to be based on rare-earth elements -- it's just that the non-rare-earth-magnet version would be less powerful and/or bulkier. Similarly you could wind the motors with aluminum instead of copper, and the motor would be less powerful and/or bulkier. But that's fine -- electric motors are already quite a bit smaller and more powerful than they need to be anyways.
Lithium is probably the hardest-to-get-around resource constraint with current technology, but lithium production is ramping up.
Also worth noting that the need for large batteries would be substantially reduced if were to invest heavily into charging infrastructure and even the electrification of roads so that cars don't even need to stop. (There are some projects in Sweden and Germany along those lines.)
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Ridiculous. You're conflating source and fuel. H2 can be produced in large quantities from green power. Part of the problem is, some people see everything as non-green. Dams? Oh, carbon and cement! Nuclear? Oh risk. Windmills? Oh birds. Solar? Short cell lift and manufacturing waste. So let's start with the snae assumption that a dam is green. Now you want to get power to cars. Guess what. You can make h2 on site, at…
"Existing gaslines" won't work because hydrogen leaks. It's literally the smallest molecule in the universe. Very different from natural gas. Also you need around 55kWh of electricity to get 11kWh of power out of a Toyota Mirai's wheels to the ground. It'd be more efficient just to send that 55kWh to a waiting plugged in EV using existing power lines. As for "slow charge", you're behind on tech. The current Hyundai/K…
It works just fine. The British did studies in the early 2000s, injecting h2 into Ng lines, and separating it back out at the other end with mebranes.
Also you need around 55kWh of electricity to get 11kWh of power out of a Toyota Mirai's wheels to the ground. It'd be more efficient just to send that 55kWh to a waiting plugged in EV using existing power lines.
Love how you ignored the power loss in transit, the power loss in charging, especially with fast charging, and didn't mention how inefficient batteries are as a comparison.
As for "slow charge", you're behind on tech. The current Hyundai/Kia platform supports 800V charging, meaning it can take in power at 350kW. It'll take under 10 minutes to fill it from 0 to ~80%.
We'll only need about 100 trillion dollars in new power lines, transfer stations, and on demand power generation, to enable people to charge like that.
Far better to build power plants, and when off peak load, generate h2 and ship through our existing pipelines.
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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…
> 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. Your other points hold, but I don't think this one is necessarily so (depending what you mean by "a while"): electrolysis is so incredibly trivial that I suspect it'll become green as fast as the grid in general,…
Just doing the simple math of the twh needed to produce the fuel for a major airport on a daily basis is kind of eye watering. Just a little back of the envelope math makes it really obvious that that's not going to be a thing any time soon even if we do get some magic laws of physics defying electrolysis technology (those pesky laws of thermodynamics are hard to beat though).
And even just shifting current hydrogen production, which is good for a few percent of carbon emissions today, is a huge undertaking. I agree that electrolysis improvements will actually make that cost effective to do at some point. Possibly even as soon as next decade. But right now it just isn't and most of those electrolysis companies still have a few things to prove. Like having working products or the ability to produce those cost effectively at scale. Either way, within now and a decade, we won't have nearly enough renewables in place to power any of this new hydrogen economy. We'd struggle to power the current one with that. As long as renewables remain scarce, hydrogen is not a great use case for wasting them.
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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 c…
I do agree that battery "problems" are exaggerated -- most will last a very long time, and batteries that don't use cobalt and nickel are available now. Sodium-ion might be relatively common in a few years for low-end applications.