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Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

cleantechnica.com

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Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#261

Post by Retric »

jimnotgym wrote: post #257
Retric wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen is also a byproduct of some source of energy, it doesn’t just materialize. The difference is batteries are vastly more efficient at storage and doing useful work with that stored energy. There’s use cases where that’s fine like rocketry, but efficiency or energy density is usually a dealbreaker.

Vastly more efficient at storing electricity. Vastly more expensive to construct, using rare materials. Have a Vastly shorter lifespan than a hydrogen tank and much lower energy density. Everything is a compromise

Many batteries actually last significantly longer than common hydrogen storage tanks, hydrogen embrittlement is a major issue. Type III and IV tanks have a life cycle of 10 years. https://www.awoe.net/Hydrogen-Storage-LCA.html

Hydrogen has also terrible volumetric energy density. It’s also really heavy until you scale to huge tanks.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#262

Post by jimnotgym »

jandrese wrote: post #202
manquer wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The maintenance costs are only marginally higher per the report at $1.33 FCEB vs $1.15 BEB , $2.37 for Hybrids and $1.28 for Diesel (with additional public health costs for respiratory illnesses), the sample size(5x5) is too small to draw any meaningful conclusion on infrastructure costs or even reliability given the limited experience in operating anything not diesel. Economics of hydrogen in CA are also complicated…

If I'm reading that right the Battery Electric busses had the lowest maintenance costs? The need to charge is a potential issue, but at the same time busses do lots of low speed stop and go where battery systems are most efficient. As long as the bus has enough capacity for an entire day and can be recharged overnight it seems like an ideal solution, minus of course the up-front cost of the bus. Lower fuel costs, no…

Lowest short term maintenence cost. Until the battery is destroyed in a couple of years.

Charging a fleet of 100 buses overnight looks like a huge infrastructure issue to me. 100 charging ports, huge grid connection, substation etc. That is if the local grid even has capacity. Anyone who has tried to open a factory will know that is not always the case.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#263

Post by globular-toast »

jimnotgym wrote: post #255

I can't agree with the underlying idea of this article at all. 1) hydrogen buses must be more expensive than electric. I don't see how that is true. Hydrogen uses an ICE that is much cheaper to purchase than batteries + motor. Of course early stage niche designs might be more expensive, but that doesn't mean that it will be more expensive at scale 2) somehow the hydrogen fuel must be a long way from the bus depot, be…

The neat thing with JCB is the hydrogen engines are very similar to the diesel engines, and everything else (transmission etc) is the same. In fact, the engines use the exact same block but with a slightly different head. That means all the expertise and parts required to service these machines in the field is already there. If a battery bus breaks down it'll be on the back of a diesel lorry and back to the depot.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#264

Post by jonp888 »

jimnotgym wrote: post #255

I can't agree with the underlying idea of this article at all. 1) hydrogen buses must be more expensive than electric. I don't see how that is true. Hydrogen uses an ICE that is much cheaper to purchase than batteries + motor. Of course early stage niche designs might be more expensive, but that doesn't mean that it will be more expensive at scale 2) somehow the hydrogen fuel must be a long way from the bus depot, be…

1) Hydrogen combustion engines exist, but are extremely inefficent. For this reason all Hydrogen buses currently in use use fuel cells, which are expensive and complicated. That you were unaware of this makes me doubt the rest of your commentary.

2) There is a huge existing logistics network which conveys diesel to all corners of the world. The same, in a sense for electricity. For Hydrogen this doesn't exist.

5) The chairman of JCB wrote to all his employees before the Brexit referendum to say how he was absolutely convinced it would be a brilliant success and would lead to great prosperity for Britain. So probably not the best people to take strategy advice from.

In Europe at least, battery powered trains and commercial vehicles have been in use for decades simply because they were the best solution for certain use cases, before anyone thought about the climate or subsidies related to it. Hydrogen only came along once subsidies did.

In every single case I am aware in my country Hydrogen vehicles were only purchased because politicians insisted that Hydrogen MUST be used, and these projects have pretty much all been disastrous.

Recent in my city a number of diesel trains were replaced with battery and hydrogen. The Hydrogen trains lasted two weeks before they gave up and went back to Diesel. The battery ones are running perfectly.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#265

Post by numpad0 »

jimnotgym wrote: post #255

I can't agree with the underlying idea of this article at all. 1) hydrogen buses must be more expensive than electric. I don't see how that is true. Hydrogen uses an ICE that is much cheaper to purchase than batteries + motor. Of course early stage niche designs might be more expensive, but that doesn't mean that it will be more expensive at scale 2) somehow the hydrogen fuel must be a long way from the bus depot, be…

Hydrogen vehicles are EVs too. They don't run H2 through a piston engine, it goes through a catalytic converter that generates electricity, aka Fuel Cell.

Toyota FC stack costs ~$11k, about the same if not cheaper than a 100kWh worth of Li-ion cells.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#266

Post by jimnotgym »

elric wrote: post #259
jimnotgym wrote: post #255

I can't agree with the underlying idea of this article at all. 1) hydrogen buses must be more expensive than electric. I don't see how that is true. Hydrogen uses an ICE that is much cheaper to purchase than batteries + motor. Of course early stage niche designs might be more expensive, but that doesn't mean that it will be more expensive at scale 2) somehow the hydrogen fuel must be a long way from the bus depot, be…

> hydrogen buses must be more expensive than electric Fuel cells are presumably more expensive than battery packs. The former are barely produced, while the latter are made in gigafactories. You can't just fill up the gas tank with hydrogen, it will leak out and/or cause a violent reaction with oxygen. > somehow the hydrogen fuel must be a long way from the bus depot You can't just store hydrogen in a tank and call i…

> Fuel cells are presumably more expensive than battery packs.

Maybe, but a tank of hydrogen burnt through an ICE is much cheaper than either

For your storage and production concerns, here it is working in practice

https://youtu.be/5rk1RsT64o4?si=LLmX51kT2_YeRp2g

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#267

Post by xbmcuser »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #216
tonyhart7 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Because Oil Companies are lobbying for inefficient hydrogen to delay a green revolution" well NO, contrary to popular belief. there is no such things because 1. Oil is scarce resource that not every country have 2. since not every country has, they must import it with expensive trade deficit meaning that Oil alternative or replacement is very much needed since country like china,south korea and japan that has massi…

that's why china is leading an EV revolution, government seeing that as very much important geopolitic and economic wise if hydrogen is feasible in mass scale, trust me someone in Asia would already make it

I think a lot of people miss the fact that China did not get to electric out of the blue it invested heavily in all these techs Hydrogen, Nuclear, Wind, Solar and batteries the cheapest and easiest to scale turned out to be Solar, Wind and then batteries.

Even today China is still building more hydrogen and nuclear plants than most of the world combined but those technologies have not scaled or gotten cheaper at the same rate as solar, wind and batteries so are not growing where as solar and wind are. China is close to reaching the point where it could start replacing its coal electricity with solar, wind and battery as it is cheaper.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#269

Post by cheema33 »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #23

Because people are allergic to hybrids and I don't know why "Electric is short range, fuel is expensive, guess I have to pick one" The ideal drivetrain was invented over 20 years ago by Toyota and apparently nobody but me and Honda noticed it!

> The ideal drivetrain was invented over 20 years ago by Toyota and apparently nobody but me and Honda noticed it!

I bought and drove a 2005 Prius for about 10 years. Loved it. But I would never buy another hybrid. My family now owns 3 EVs. Hybrids are better than pure ICE vehicles. But EVs are much much better than both of them. I could tell you about all the benefits of EVs, but until you own one, it may not sink in.

Hybrids are good for some people. Apartment dwellers without a place to charge an EV.

Re: Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

#270

Post by ZeroGravitas »

giantrobot wrote: post #200
kaibee wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the same lie as EVs claiming to be "green" in places where fossil fuel sources dominate electricity production. This is just anti-ev propaganda. First, its kind of a chicken-egg situation: 'its not worth going green for the power grid, all the cars are still ICE' 'oh its not worth building EV cars, the power grid is dirty anyway'. Second, there are lifecycle analyses that show that even if your powergrid is en…

> This is just anti-ev propaganda. It's not. I'm not in any was opposed to EVs. Assuming so is a bit ridiculous on your part. There's a marketing push to cast EVs as green no matter the prevailing sources of utility power. EVs can be green (like hydrogen) if they're charged from renewables. They also get greener over time since they're as green as their charging source. In the short term EVs are just moving their emi…

The UCS has been regularly publishing data on whether grid charged EVs or ICE had lower CO2 in the USA. Even their oldest data in 2012 shows a clear improvement, based on the assumption of grids not getting cleaner with non-hybrids being worse everywhere in the US, and hybrids only competitive with EVs in the worst grid areas:

https://www.ucs.org/resources/state-charge

Their updates obviously showed continual progress from there as the grid cleaned up, a process which continues, as does lower carbon footprint batteries (LFP is half the carbon of NCM) and higher efficiency EVs.

https://blog.ucs.org/dave-reichmuth/driving-on-electricity-i...

It would be interesting for them to revisit the old projections with the 12 years of newer grid data and calculate the real numbers and compare them with their conservative estimates.

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