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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

#361

Post by Pxtl »

malchow wrote: post #287
Pxtl wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

99.9% of all hydrogen currently on the market is not "green". It is either captured by products from dirty industrial processes, or more commonly it is made from gas or coal and the CO2 is released into the atmosphere.

If you're championing a tech that based on the one form of it that's basically a rounding-error in the overall prevalence? Yes, that's vapourware.

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

#362

Post by OkayPhysicist »

dainiusse wrote: post #332
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Commuting 100 miles to work each day is ridiculous. For anything less than that, your 300 mile range is going to be plenty. There's an argument to be made that the tech isn't quite there yet for long haul trucking and the like, but 95+% of commuter vehicles could and should be replaced with EVs tomorrow.

I think this implies that a family has multiple cars. It is good enough to be a second car (yet IMO to expensive still and while Tesla gets on the cheap side, its interior is not for everyone). However, my point is - I don't want 2 cars and EVs don't yet tick all boxes.

How so? What I'm implying is that most families don't need a car that can drive more than 300 miles a day. And on the rare occasion that a family that doesn't drive more than 300 miles in a day has to do so, charging for 45 minutes every 270 miles or so isn't such a huge inconvenience that it justifies burning hydrocarbons the other 364 days of the year.

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

#363

Post by downrightmike »

justapassenger wrote: post #189
downrightmike wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the hydrogen made today is made from fossil fuels, so they of course love that idea.

So is most of electricity. None of that matters for the future.

It actually matters more, because the fossil industry is just gaslighting

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

#364

Post by dangus »

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.

I would counter that by saying that the Hummer EV is an exotic car that is not going to be widely available and isn’t intended to be sold in high volume.

GM sold 272 of them last year and only 47 this year.

It’s basically a halo car and technological showcase.

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

#365

Post by pornel »

tekknik wrote: post #350
pornel wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this has been debunked over and over. 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 curv…

> 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 Wouldn’t you say this is based on usage? Or do EVs run for a week regardless of distance traveled?

EV energy use is mostly proportional to distance traveled, except they're more efficient at lower speeds (typical values are 4-5miles per kWh in city traffic, and 2.4-3.5mi/kWh at highway speeds).

I've noted it's based on median commute, which is around 35-40 miles a day (median means that half people travel less than this, half of people travel more). WLTP range of Telsa Model 3 is 370 miles.

There will obviously be some users who need to charge often, but my point is that it's closer to once a week for at least half of the US population. And I'm using US stats, because the country is particularly car-centric, so if the US can do it, rest of the world can manage too.

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

#366

Post by malchow »

Pxtl wrote: post #361
malchow wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

99.9% of all hydrogen currently on the market is not "green". It is either captured by products from dirty industrial processes, or more commonly it is made from gas or coal and the CO2 is released into the atmosphere. If you're championing a tech that based on the one form of it that's basically a rounding-error in the overall prevalence? Yes, that's vapourware.

No, that isn't what vaporware means. Vaporware means a technology promised, but not delivered. What it doesn't mean is a technology promised, and successfully delivered, and at the beginning of its growth curve as supply of the enabling products ramp.

By your definition, solar was vaporware in 2001 because less than 1 gigawatt per year was built. But it wasn't. It was simply early in its lifecycle. Today, 1 gigawatt of solar is installed in the world every day. Next year China will likely reach 1 TW of annual solar production capacity.

This is perhaps why software people shouldn't throw around the word "vaporware" –- a useful software-industry term –– in hardware-based industries with well developed and well understood generational patterns.

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

#367

Post by [deleted] »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #313
elihu wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was aware that internal combustion cars catch fire more often. There's a bit of a compensatory difference in severity: EVs don't catch fire as often, but it's especially bad when they do. But hopefully we can quickly move past the era of super-flammable EV batteries even if actual EV fires are rare. I look forward to kicking fossil fuel based cars out of everywhere for reasons unrelated to safety. Or you could say…

The negative externalities of the large-scale strip-mining and fossil-fuel-burning effort to convert all cars to electric will not improve the collective safety of life on Earth. Also, remember that lithium is also a fossil fuel. Electicity is not magic, you're just replacing one fossil fuel with another.

[deleted]

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

#368

Post by dainiusse »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #362
dainiusse wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this implies that a family has multiple cars. It is good enough to be a second car (yet IMO to expensive still and while Tesla gets on the cheap side, its interior is not for everyone). However, my point is - I don't want 2 cars and EVs don't yet tick all boxes.

How so? What I'm implying is that most families don't need a car that can drive more than 300 miles a day. And on the rare occasion that a family that doesn't drive more than 300 miles in a day has to do so, charging for 45 minutes every 270 miles or so isn't such a huge inconvenience that it justifies burning hydrocarbons the other 364 days of the year.

The problem is that in reality it is not every 270 miles :) Take it a a normal winter with -20 celsius and it is impossible to drive 270 miles on one charge in a motorway.

My parents live 240 miles away and yet it is almost impossible to get there on a single charge in winter (not talking about super expensive cars).

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

#369

Post by LtWorf »

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?

We can't even provide for the current needs on a cold or hot day… I'm not "implying" anything, I just notice the continuous blackouts in summer and in cold winter days.

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

#370

Post by LtWorf »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #334
LtWorf wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But there isn’t any infrastructure for fueling the hydrogen cars. A move towards hydrogen means 3-5x more energy requirements (which also cost money) as well as a transmission and distribution network for the gas. At home charging and on street parking charging will be an easier retrofit than the construction of new refueling stations.

Well the whole powergrid needs to be basically re-made to handle all the extra load… although I agree that it's probably cheaper than distributing hydrogen.

Anyway we should go towards trains IMHO, we should absolutely not even have long distance trucks.

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