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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

#281

Post by rad_gruchalski »

ninkendo wrote: post #279
rootusrootus wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They will definitely care collectively as the roads deteriorate faster and they have to pay more in tax dollars and wasted time spent in construction to repair them, but that will end up being a tragedy of the commons The difference in wear between a 3600 pound RAV4 and a 4400 pound Model Y is so minor that it'll disappear in the noise. Nobody will notice. The only time it'll even come close to mattering is on resi…

I mean, if we’re picking models to support our points, I’d counter with the Hummer EV which is 9,630 lbs. Road wear goes up with the 4th power of weight, so doubling the weight increases road wear 16x… it’s not something we should just ignore.

That car cannot be legally driven in Europe on a B license due to its weight. Phew.

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

#282

Post by dangus »

ninkendo wrote: post #146
dangus wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We don’t have the infrastructure” is a temporary problem. The same could have been said about gas stations and the electrical grid capacity needed for widespread air conditioning. Weight isn’t such a crazy thing either. The Tesla Model Y long range weighs 900 pounds more than a Honda CRV. It’s a lot, but the most popular car in America is the Ford F-150 which weighs about the same as a Model Y at the low end. The we…

> The weight efficiency can only improve from here I don’t think this is a given. I can imagine plenty of future battery tech that is much more physically dense, and also more energy-dense, but with an overall mass that’s heavier than what we have now. Consumers really want more range, and they don’t really care about their car’s weight so long as it isn’t prohibitive. (They will definitely care collectively as the r…

I’m already on board with the urbanist camp that believes car-focused infrastructure is economically and environmentally unsustainable. EVs don’t help the American addiction to stroads and strip malls.

I just happen to also believe that EVs are no worse than the status quo and are almost certainly at least marginally better than any other alternative on the table.

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

#283

Post by ninkendo »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #281
ninkendo wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if we’re picking models to support our points, I’d counter with the Hummer EV which is 9,630 lbs. Road wear goes up with the 4th power of weight, so doubling the weight increases road wear 16x… it’s not something we should just ignore.

That car cannot be legally driven in Europe on a B license due to its weight. Phew.

If only we had that kind of sanity in the US… the electric hummer is an absolute monstrosity and should never have been made IMO. I am a supporter of EV’s but, I am increasingly skeptical that legacy US automakers will ever “get it” when it comes to efficiency, and it’s not surprising at all to end up with monster vehicles like the EV hummer. But I do admit the American consumer shares as much of the blame by demanding such large (in size, if not necessarily weight) vehicles in the first place. It’s like GM said “we need an SUV at least this big, and we need at least this much range. Engineers said it’ll weigh 10,000 lbs? Fuck it, nobody will notice, ship it.”

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

#284

Post by rootusrootus »

elihu wrote: post #275
rootusrootus wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Putting two tons of highly toxic and flammable lithium Maybe cut back on the hyperbole a bit. Two tons is the entire car. The lithium content of the battery is 15-20 pounds. And it's not straight lithium metal that becomes flammable in the presence of water. It's the electrolytes that are flammable. And most EVs in the world use LFP, which doesn't have that flammability problem.

LFPs are flammable too, they just don't tend to ignite as easily. I suspect they're probably easier to put out, but I don't know for sure. (I'd be curious what the real-life vehicle fire statistics actually are so far for regular lithium ion versus LFP. LFP is promoted as being safer, but at this point there should be enough vehicle fire statistics to be able to quantify how much safer they are. The Tesla Model 3 mig…

The FAA has studied this. LFPs are an order of magnitude less prone to fire, and less intense when they do. There are some fun videos out there put together by fire departments testing various battery chemistries. It's fairly easy to make a regular modern lithium ion battery erupt in flame. It's hard to get LFP to do much more than release the magic smoke. And LTO batteries, which are another variety, don't even smoke.

EV fires are already significantly less common than ICEV fires. Factor in LFP, and maybe we should start kicking ICEVs out of garages because they're unsafe. And lest you think ICEVs don't spontaneously combust -- that's very much incorrect, there have been recent recalls of millions of ICEVs for exactly that.

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

#285

Post by senectus1 »

_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.

absolutely.

but the interesting thought experiment to have is... once you have converters all over the place for those uses... would that make it more attractive to cars?

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

#286

Post by malchow »

lbourdages wrote: post #66
malchow wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Green hydrogen is developing now, and is very real, and is based on polysilicon solar advancements and PEM electrolyzer advancements, both of which provide ~3 decadal cost-down paths. See these two companies of ours: [1] https://ohmium.com [2] https://novohydrogen.com

Suspiciously missing are efficiency numbers. How many "joules of hydrogen" do you get from one joule of electricity? We already know electric cars are on the order of 80% efficiency overall.

Without telling you anything groundbreaking, around 80% for PEM. It's more than acceptable when you look at how much excess solar production is being built.

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

#287

Post by malchow »

Pxtl wrote: post #52
malchow wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Green hydrogen is developing now, and is very real, and is based on polysilicon solar advancements and PEM electrolyzer advancements, both of which provide ~3 decadal cost-down paths. See these two companies of ours: [1] https://ohmium.com [2] https://novohydrogen.com

At present, the amount of green hydrogen in the total hydrogen economy is less than 1%. (edit: possibly less than 0.1% [1]) Green hydrogen is vapourware. [1] https://cleantechnica.com/2021/12/22/0-03-of-hydrogen-is-gre...

I don't think you know what the word "vaporware" means.

1 GW per day of new solar is being installed globally. Where do you think the excess mid-day production is going to go? It doesn't have to go anywhere, actually. But it will go somewhere.

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

#288

Post by g-b-r »

parineum wrote: post #238
g-b-r wrote: post #8

They've been doing it for twenty years, hydrogen allows maintaining a distribution network and *most of all* to keep using fossil fuels to generate it

This is true and is contrary to this headline/quote. The oil sector is lobby for hydrogen but the attribution of motive is off. They are lobbying _for_ hydrogen, not against EVs.

EVs happen to not need their oil, I have the feeling that they have and are still lobbying the sh*t against EVs; lobbying for hydrogen is one way to lobby against EVs, and if hydrogen were (or had been) successful it's potentially infinitely more profitable than EVs for oil companies.

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

#289

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

redox99 wrote: post #181
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still believe there is potential for hydrogen/ammonia/methane fuel to be a seasonal storage mechanism. Battery technology does not seem capable of offering grid scale storage for the entirety of Winter. While the solar->fuel->electricity conversion takes huge efficiency hits, for “free” renewable energy, it can still pencil out as economical. Plus, it is feasible today without unobtanium (but not currently cost com…

> seasonal storage mechanism Is this even needed? With solar, wind, etc storing more than a few days worth of energy seems very wasteful.

Available solar energy is significantly lower in winter. Additionally, heating typically requires more energy than cooling, so it is a double whammy. Solar alone cannot generate sufficient power without ludicrous over provisioning which would be wasted the majority of the year.

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

#290

Post by reducesuffering »

nomel wrote: post #166
reducesuffering wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Electrification for millions and millions of cars will never work 26+ million BEV already running in the world... Like 2 million driving around the US. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2023/trends-in...

Less that 1% of the cars in the US are electric [1]. The majority of those are powered by natural gas, at night [2]. With 5% in CA, we already have "do not charge" notifications on hot days, here in California. What does 100% look like in California (definitely unrealistic, but can be scaled)? California uses 13 billion gallons of gasoline, per year [3]. Let's say electric is 50% more efficient than gas, so we'll nee…

> What does 100% look like in California

It looks like 30 years of infrastructure upgrades, as ICE cars are still sold by 2035 and will last like 20 years.

It looks like 1TW of solar going to be deployed annually[0]

CA has a lot of solar potential, and market incentives will cause people to charge many of their cars during the day, acting as excess batteries for the grid.

[0]https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/05/16/a-fate-realized-1-tw-...

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/09/13/a-terawatt-of-solar-m...

https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1698496805162353029

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