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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

#291

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

zolbrek wrote: post #227
alerighi wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

>This means that the government cannot add taxes on electricity used in vehicles, as it does with gas. You don't think you'll be paying a significant electricity tax once ICE cars are fully phased out? Also, I don't know what you drive but my diesel has quite a bit more range than 350 km. Yours must be quite the guzzler.

No such tax can be effectively charged as part of an electricity bill, at least not for areas with enough insolation to have encouraged people to have their own PV arrays for charging.

Some sort of tax will be necessary to replace the fuel tax, but I'd be very surprisedby some attempt at a general electricity tax, or for that matter, a charging-station tax (since that won't affect the majority of EVs).

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

#292

Post by DiggyJohnson »

pie420 wrote: post #262
LtWorf wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't enough infrastructure to power all the eventual electric cars.

There wasn't enough silicon wafer manufacturing infrastructure in 2005 to meet global silicon wafer demand in 2023 either, yet somehow humans magically got together, invested money, built plants, and wow, a decade and a half later there is silicon wafer manufacturing infrastructure to meet global demand. Imagine not understanding the ability for humans to build things. Pretty sure the comment i'm responding to is a g…

It is both a violation of HN guidelines and reason to assume that the person you are simply disagreeing with is an industry shill rather than simply someone you disagree with.

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

#293

Post by jvolkman »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #236
LtWorf wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't enough infrastructure to power all the eventual electric cars.

You're right, we'll need about 20% more electricity if we replaced all our ICE cars with electric ones. If we stop selling gas cars in 2035 then by about 2045 we'll hit ~99% electric cars. Are you implying we can't increase our infrastructure by 20% in 20 years?

What's involved in increasing electricity infrastructure by 20%? Have you looked at the timeline of some large scale, coordinated effort public infrastructure projects?

One that's close to home for me is the Seattle area's light rail system. Voters approved a plan that includes an extension of the line from downtown Seattle to the neighborhood I live in sometime around 2016. Service is now scheduled to start in 2039, but there have already been multiple delays.

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

#294

Post by 8note »

actionfromafar wrote: post #186
xoa wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Steel production really needs hydrogen though. Hopefully the first test-production facilities will come online soon in Sweden. But I agree on for instance air travel. Don't faff around with hydrogen in planes. Convert the hydrogen to something liquid, like the Porsche e-fuel, then use it in regular jet turbofans.

What is the hydrogen doing chemically such that it is needed?

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

#295

Post by fomine3 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #112
tw04 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No? I'm not sure why you jumped to attack me when I was simply providing a counter-point to your claim that it's all "oil and gas". I drive an EV, I'm quite happy with it. As to the article: they fail to mention that Japan hasn't even begun to throw in the towel. The newest CEO of Toyota is doubling down on hydrogen powered vehicles. https://www.autonews.com/mobility-report/toyotas-bold-us-pla...

Japan has little traditional fossil fuels, but they were making a lot of noise about exploiting the methane hydrate in their seas: > Methane hydrate is confirmed to exist abundantly in the sea near Japan and is expected to become one of the domestic energy resources of the future https://www.japex.co.jp/en/technology/research/mh/ So in this case, they're really just a subset of the "oil and gass industry" boosting hy…

It has been just a dream for a long time.

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

#296

Post by fomine3 »

earthboundkid wrote: post #252
theshrike79 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a problem, because there's limited capacity to move electricity between the systems. You can just plug them together, they have essentially two separate grids.

I think it would be a problem if they had ten tiny grids, but is two decently sized grids that are in roughly the same time zone (so peak solar doesn’t need to go from A to B) a big deal?

It was a huge problem when earthquake stopped many power plants in east area.

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

#297

Post by xdennis »

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…

> Anyone who has followed hydrogen as a fuel for a while [...]. It really doesn't make sense to use renewables to make hydrogen fuel to then burn

Sorry, you say you're familiar with hydrogen fuel cells and you don't know it's not burning?

Hydrogen fuel cells use an electrochemical reaction to turn hydrogen and oxygen from the air into electricity and water. The byproduct is water, not fire.

I'm not rich enough to own either a battery-electric or hydrogen-electric car, but it's weird how the only people who hate hydrogen are the battery people. I don't hear any hate from fossil-fuel guys.

It seems they're more interested in protecting their investment than saving the environment through a process (which is more inefficient, but) that doesn't require rare earth minerals.

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

#298

Post by fomine3 »

Reason077 wrote: post #150
reducesuffering wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen was pushed by the Japanese government because BEV's aren't as ideally suited to the country's economy and resources. It's not a coincidence the only two companies making hydrogen cars were both the largest Japanese automakers, Toyota and Honda. And both of those models are economic failures atypical of their usual engineering prowess. Toyota Mirai sales have been flatlined at low ~1-2k since they started, fo…

> "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!

BEV is hit and miss for Japan. For vehicle usage, it's great that we don't need to import oil from mideast (that is a big reason for trade deficit) and of course it's great for commute and non-long commercial usage. But it's not suitable for a big personal car use case. Japanese family can't take holidays as what they want, so they tend to do long trip in the same specific long holidays (new year, Golden week, Obon, Silver week), that needs tremendous amount of fast charging equipment at highway or need to wait multiple hours after BEVs sold well. So theoretically PHEV should be good option but manufacturers hadn't sold it much (except Mitsubishi). It's hard to install slow charger for mechanical parking system that is common in dense cities.

For vehicle manufacturing, there's very less advantage to make BEVs in Japan, meanwhile China is too strong. Car manufacturing is a big industry so shrinking it causes Japan economy to be dead. Toyota cares Japan economy (cared in a bad way, hydrogen for car). IMO they should had promoted PHEV more in 2012-2015.

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

#299

Post by lurgburg »

bluGill wrote: post #192
xoa wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Wasn't Germany's WWII "synthetic fuel" just coal derived gasoline?

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

#300

Post by jbm »

Beached wrote: post #202
torginus wrote: post #178

People who are bullish for EVs I implore you to reconsider - current EVs containing a literal ton of batteries with limited lifespans belong in the green future, especially 80% of that doesn't get used for daily commute. It's obvious to me that considering the full-lifecycle costs (both manufacturing, usage and ownership), some sort of hybrid solution is the greenest, for the current crop of personal cars. But I beli…

in their current format no. but I think there is sufficient demand for long range personal vehicles, and as the world gets more electric, battery tech will get better. I can easily see a future where 1000 mile range on a single charge will be a norm. and I can easily see an America that requires that. range anxiety will decrease as charging gets faster and easier to access. but I just can't see an America household g…

I generally agree with you about 2 electric cars. That said, I don't see how a 1000 mile car is possible. You can't even get that with generally available gas cars (The Volkswagen XL1 only has a 650 km range for those curious.)

I own a used EV (a 2019 Model 3 that I picked up this year) with real-world 300km range. It's an amazing main car, except that it is too small for my family. Still, we use it for about 80% of our transportation now (the other 20% being handled by a minivan).

More saliently, the charge time at home from 5% to 80% was ~30 hours on my level 1 charger. The idea of getting 5 times as much range in 1/30th the time sounds dangerous, unless we are talking about much smaller vehicles.

I've heard Toyota talking about solid state batteries, and I hope someone eventually succeeds in bringing them to market. However, I assume it will be used to reduce the weight and cost of the vehicle, not drastically increase range (and cost and charge time)

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