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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

#371

Post by ninkendo »

rootusrootus wrote: post #359
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.

> if we’re picking models to support our points, I’d counter with the Hummer EV I picked the Model Y, which has outsold every other non-pickup vehicle except the RAV4, and it's really close to the RAV4 numbers. It's a good comparison. How many Hummers has GM sold this year? Couple hundred? That's three orders of magnitude fewer than the Model Y, the Hummer is irrelevant .

You’re absolutely right and I don’t disagree at all, but what worries me is the mindset that produced the Hummer. It feels a lot like GM started with a constraint of “Americans like larger vehicles”, then added “Americans want long range”, then told the engineers to make it happen, and the result is something that weighs 4.35 metric tons. The fact that weight itself didn’t seem to be a constraint guiding the design is worrisome to me, and is a sign that we can expect more superheavy vehicles like these in the future.

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

#372

Post by ben_w »

freedude wrote: post #124
parker_mountain wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: per mile driven, there are about 1/10th to 1/5th as many EV fires, as there are gas car fires. Putting ten gallons of highly toxic and flammable fuel into a car-shaped object just to commute one person a few dozen miles is quite literally insane from all practical points of view. Electric tech is marginally less crazy, and also a step forward.

That fun fact may be true, but ask any firefighter that has had to put out a lithium based car fire how fun that fact is. The lithium based fires require 12-15 times the amount of water to extinguish.

Why is water being used for either? One's an electricity-rich fire, the other's an oil-rich fire, water's an unwise response to both for different reasons.

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

#373

Post by tooltalk »

elihu wrote: post #267
dclowd9901 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "Batteries go bad over a rather short period of time" 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…

According to Recurrent's recent report, most EVs lose only about 10% of SOH (or battery capacity/range) after 100,000 miles.

>> LFP batteries generally have about 3x the longevity of other lithium ion types This is not true at all. All LFPs in EVs degrade much faster than other lithium ion batteries:

  Tesla LFP Battery 10% RANGE LOSS PROBLEM? | Model 3 RWD  (Cleanwatt citing Tessie's data) 
  The brand new LFP batteries will degrade substantially quicker.  There's not long-term retention data for LFP batteries on the market yet, but the trend tends to be substantially faster degradation.  Trends show them stabilizing around that 10% degradation mark in about half the time as non-LFP batteries - around 50,000 miles instead of 100,000 miles."
Even in ideal environment, such as ESS, LFPs would degrade substantially faster under high SOC/high c-rates (eg, EV).

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

#374

Post by OkayPhysicist »

dainiusse wrote: post #368
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

How often are you making that specific 240 mile drive that adding 45 minutes to it is a dealbreaker on the vehicle?

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

#375

Post by wilg »

alexfromapex wrote: post #305
wilg wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we have a power grid and not a hydrogen grid.

Hydrogen can be created from water and electricity

Obviously. But if you already have the electricity it's more efficient to use it directly.

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

#376

Post by tekknik »

pornel wrote: post #365
tekknik wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Ah so it is variable. Ok glad that’s clear. I also only fill my gas vehicle once a week. Sitting at a pump (charging station) for 30 mins a week is still too long. Not every person will be able to have a charger at home (think apartments, condos, hotels, homeless, etc)

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

#377

Post by dainiusse »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #374
dainiusse wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

How often are you making that specific 240 mile drive that adding 45 minutes to it is a dealbreaker on the vehicle?

That is a dealbreaker - my parents live that far and I do this drive at least twice a month. And I can't afford stopping in between - that is just too small distance and I want to make it as fast as I safellly can.

On the bright side - I like how silent EVs are and definitely would like one. Considering a PHEV as it seems that better batteries are quite far away now

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

#378

Post by pornel »

tekknik wrote: post #376
pornel wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ah so it is variable. Ok glad that’s clear. I also only fill my gas vehicle once a week. Sitting at a pump (charging station) for 30 mins a week is still too long. Not every person will be able to have a charger at home (think apartments, condos, hotels, homeless, etc)

You don't need to be near the car while it's charging, so usually EVs are charged while they're parked.

There could be a charger at your work, or in a shopping mall, at a hotel. You keep the car plugged while it's parked, and it doesn't take more of your time than 30 seconds it takes to plug and unplug. You can be elsewhere working/shopping/sleeping.

In some countries there are already laws that require new parking lots to have chargers. I know the infrastructure isn't there yet, but if we imagine 100% people having EVs, there will be enormous demand for it, and having plugs in parking lots will be the standard.

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

#379

Post by Cthulhu_ »

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…

It's posited as a "dump" for excess electricity; while batteries may be good for storage and balancing out the grid, hydrogen is suitable to put everything else in, that is, what if the batteries are full, or there's still more electricity in the grid that has nowhere to go? Hydrogen generation - as far as I'm aware - can scale to schlurp up any excess to a huge amount in the same plant.

The other one - in my country - is that they want to wind down natural gas entirely, but then want to reuse the pipes for hydrogen; I suspect this may be to continue making use of the huge infrastructure investments made in the gas pipelines.

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

#380

Post by rovolo »

jvolkman wrote: post #293
bryanlarsen wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

2016 means you're talking about ST3, and 2039 means you're talking about Ballard [1]. It looks like the date in ST3 for Ballard was originally 2038 [2], so it doesn't seem delayed that much *yet*.

That said, I'm not sure large-scale transit projects are too comparable to electric infrastructure. The ST1 project had a lot of delays due to disagreements about where the rail line would go, and the cost of purchasing land [3]. It's a system designed to move people to places, so a lot of people have opinions on which places the system should go. By contrast, people mostly care that enough electricity is getting delivered to where they live, and don't really care how it gets there.

[1] https://www.soundtransit.org/system-expansion/west-seattle-b...

[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/sou...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Link_light_rail

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