Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth? • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by globular-toast » Sun, Mar 16, 2025, 11:07 AM UTC

defrost wrote: post #288

jimnotgym wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are we going to drive earth moving machinery then? Stick with diesel?

The greatest tonnages are dug out with bench mining excavators. These work 24/7/365 round the clock to fill trucks from bench faces and empty into trains. An area such as the Pilbara region moves a billion tonne of raw material a year and ships most of that. These excavators are electric with cables that drag behind them .. they move very slowly across bench faces and then move back across the face again, it's not li…

If you could solve the problem of running electrical cables to mobile equipment that is used in farming, road building, forestry etc. then you'd change the world and put entire industries out of business.

Your example is not very different from how they did mining at the beginning of the industrial revolution: the equipment is tethered to the mine. Electric railways have been thing for almost 150 years now, but the vehicles are still tethered to the rails.

If we could start from scratch we probably would choose your solution and not worry about mobile energy storage at all. We'd just build stuff around that constraint that equipment has to be tethered. But unfortunately a world has already been built that involves mobile equipment and you won't find much support for tearing it all down and starting again (alas). Greenfield development is engineering on easy mode. The real challenge is figuring out how to move forward given the current world.

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

#472

Post by defrost » Sun, Mar 16, 2025, 11:34 AM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #471

defrost wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The greatest tonnages are dug out with bench mining excavators. These work 24/7/365 round the clock to fill trucks from bench faces and empty into trains. An area such as the Pilbara region moves a billion tonne of raw material a year and ships most of that. These excavators are electric with cables that drag behind them .. they move very slowly across bench faces and then move back across the face again, it's not li…

If you could solve the problem of running electrical cables to mobile equipment that is used in farming, road building, forestry etc. then you'd change the world and put entire industries out of business. Your example is not very different from how they did mining at the beginning of the industrial revolution: the equipment is tethered to the mine. Electric railways have been thing for almost 150 years now, but the v…

I've got a mixed old school capital 'E' Engineering and applied math bachground coupled with a lot of exposure to mining, cattle stations, and wheat farms.

For forty odd years I've been involved in or tangential to projects related to exploration, cost cutting, new technology, optimised processing, etc.

> If we could start from scratch we probably would choose your solution

Not my solution, I first saw electric powered heavy earth moving equipment in th early 1970s.

The greatest savings to companies and greatest benefits to the environment (aside from somehow getting people across the globe to consume less) come from making the greatest consumption areas more efficient.

Mining equipment runs 24/7/365 continuosly, idealy every hour of every day of the year at near maximum capacity allowing for maintainance.

It's a sector that consumes extremely large amounts of transport energy, more than agriculture.

It's open to innovations such as "infinity trains" and massive dedicated solar farms to generate direct power in sunlight and generate on site hydrogen derivitives for generating power at night.

Farming equipment works "hard" (heavy earth turning plowing, harvesting) for a few weeks a year. Other farm activities (seeding, spraying) happens at other times in the year and doesn't require quite the same horsepower.

There's scope to split ag activity between heavy high horsepower peak usage and lighter continuous pass work.

Already we see consumer ready (but not yet widespread) Agri-bots for weeding and spraying - solar charged, battery powered, no human on board, vision enabled self driving devices that can run near continuously (half the night on battery charged during day) that can minimise spraying to "just the weeds".

Here's a big one: https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023-08-25/crop-spraying-r...

Smaller one from 10 years ago: https://research.qut.edu.au/qcr/Projects/agbot-ii-robotic-si...

There's some quite good ones coming from one of the Scandi country, the model name escapes me for the moment.

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

#473

Post by esjeon » Sun, Mar 16, 2025, 12:12 PM UTC

I don't get why Americans are hating on hydrogen fuel cells so much, but in Korea, half of the eco-friendly bus market is basically on hydrogen (note: the gov uses all kinds of weird terms and stats, so I really can't nail down the actual number). There are lots of electric buses, but they're too heavy and not great for the tight corners and hills that are everywhere in Seoul. FCEVs are lighter and more powerful, so bus drivers seem to prefer them over BEVs. However, hydrogen buses are about twice as expensive as battery buses from China.

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

#474

Post by pornel » Sun, Mar 16, 2025, 12:27 PM UTC

ThinkBeat wrote: post #384

Toyota is testing a hydrogen combustion engine. https://www.toyota-europe.com/news/2022/prototype-corolla-cr...

This is a dead-end.

Like all ICE engines, it still emits NOx pollution that cities want to get rid of.

It is even less efficient than hydrogen fuel cells. It combines energy-inefficiency of ICE with the energy-inefficiency of hydrogen generation and distribution.

Hydrogen is a worse fuel than gasoline, so these engines are more complex and deliver less power.

Such engines in busses would be more expensive to run, more expensive to maintain, and still have tail-pipe emissions.

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

#475

Post by blablabla123 » Sun, Mar 16, 2025, 12:54 PM UTC

esjeon wrote: post #473

I don't get why Americans are hating on hydrogen fuel cells so much, but in Korea, half of the eco-friendly bus market is basically on hydrogen (note: the gov uses all kinds of weird terms and stats, so I really can't nail down the actual number). There are lots of electric buses, but they're too heavy and not great for the tight corners and hills that are everywhere in Seoul. FCEVs are lighter and more powerful, so…

Somehow the technology "stack" seems to have way more sharp edges, from hydrogen diffusing out of the storage tanks up to inefficient generation. However I think a lot of those have been solved and cars are already in the 3rd generation.

IMHO hydrogen is the most foolproof way to store cheap solar energy.

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

#476

Post by bluGill » Sun, Mar 16, 2025, 2:09 PM UTC

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #117

bluGill wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm coming from a different perspective: regardless of all else (all those issues you raised are very real), people need to get where they are going in a reasonable amount of time. Most bus service fails to account for that, but if you can't get people there in a reasonable amount of time there is no point in trying.

I agree that a system that does not deliver is going to fail. Transit systems can have improved scheduling in two ways: (1) Better scheduling system. My opinion is that most real world systems are not too far away from the optimal trade-off curves. There is always room for improvements, or choosing better trade-offs, but it will rarely drastically improve things. (2) More ridership: Most problems with speed just disa…

No transit system has the money needed to provide great transit to their entire city even though if they did it would save all residents a large pile of money. They compromise on only the densist areas which are easy but mean that you can't get anywhere else reasonably. Of course some areas will always be easier than others to get to, but far too much of any city is not reasonably reachable without a car and that is a problem.

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

#477

Post by bluGill » Sun, Mar 16, 2025, 2:12 PM UTC

busthrowaway23 wrote: post #143

bluGill wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a reason people complain about buses and prefer to drive in so many cases. Operators try to compromise on cheap and end up with service for those who after 5 DWIs can't get their friends to drive them anymore.

This is highly regional - any major city with a decent transit system will have excellent bus routes in dense areas. Also, “operators” usually means bus drivers, not transit agencies

Only dense areas. Some cities are ignoring dense areas that other cities have proven can support great service because they are not the densest there. People have places to be, and large parts of any city do not have reasonable transit options even though the density is there. Too often you are foced to take the long trip downtown and then back out even though your destination is just barely beyond walking distance.

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

#478

Post by vel0city » Sun, Mar 16, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #449

vel0city wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not necessarily making more destinations available. You're potentially just requiring more changes to go to the same destinations. Imagine a metro area with somewhat grid-like streets (or at least common paths) that go on for an hour+ in each direction. People still generally cluster to 20-30min from the destinations they care to go to, so it doesn't break that standard. Breaking it up into four 15-minute stre…

Your system makes destinations on only one line easy. Mine brings in many more lines.

It doesn't inherently make more lines. You might (you probably will) just have the same lines more broken up.

You could also just have more lines even if they're long. The length of the lines doesn't change the number of them. It's just a question of how many busses and drivers do you really have and what service interval are you trying to hit.

If you're arguing they should have like a 15 minute hub and spoke model, you might also be forcing some really inefficient routes and once again force people to change busses more when one bus route could have better served the community.

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

#479

Post by cbmuser » Sun, Mar 16, 2025, 3:05 PM UTC

progbits wrote: post #344

Smithalicious wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me like green fundamentalist see nothing but enemies and subterfuge everywhere. Hydrogen, biofuel, nuclear, switching from oil to natural gas where possible, the list goes on. I don't have enough of an opinion to comment on anyone of them individually, but I notice a really striking pattern where every time the idea of alternative energy sources are brought up that are not wind or solar, whoever brings it…

Maybe because there is evidence of fossil companies doing exactly that since the sixties? Benefit of doubt has it's place but this is just naivety or outright trolling.

Fossil companies hugely profit from the anti-nuclear green movement that solely focuses on wind and solar.

Because no matter how many wind and solar plants you build, they will never be able to provide baseload and hence you need fossil backup power plants.

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

#480

Post by cbmuser » Sun, Mar 16, 2025, 3:07 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #389

Smithalicious wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me like green fundamentalist see nothing but enemies and subterfuge everywhere. Hydrogen, biofuel, nuclear, switching from oil to natural gas where possible, the list goes on. I don't have enough of an opinion to comment on anyone of them individually, but I notice a really striking pattern where every time the idea of alternative energy sources are brought up that are not wind or solar, whoever brings it…

I mean, read the current top sibling comment to yours. Someone who worked at an oil & gas company confirmed that this was their strategy. Now, I don't think these people are sitting in their carved-out mountain lair, scheming to destroy the world; I'm sure they don't see themselves as villains. But they are making deliberate decisions to protect their business models and bottom line by adopting -- and, importantly, l…

Wind and solar power heavily depend on fossil backup plants which is why oil companies have long been proponents of the energy transition.

The only technology that is actually able to get rid of fossil technology is nuclear power.