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Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

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Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#71

Post by epistasis »

RobertoG wrote: post #27
tut-urut-utut wrote: post #3

There's a lot of discussion about hydrogen as an energy source for cars in Germany. It is generally considered more ecological than electric, because of much lesser environmental footprint than required for producing batteries. Another advantage would be bigger driving range and faster refuelling. However, it looks like that outside of Germany, electric cars just won, and Germany itself will not be able to reverse th…

It seems like there is a push for hydrogen in Europe in the last months, and a lot of it seems coming from the big energy companies. Could be they are trying to find a way to get a piece of the European pandemic recovery funds, which are going mainly to "green" projects?

There is a huge effort from natural gas companies to make hydrogen acceptable.

In my opinion any fossil fuel hydrogen should be banned, or at least taxed at far higher rates than current carbon taxes.

We need electrolyzed hydrogen for industry, and we should make sure it's the cheapest option so that we don't have a market failure again.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#73

Post by epistasis »

dabeeeenster wrote: post #52
Transrapid wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The efficiency compared to battery tech is horrendous. nope >Hydrogen is effectively a storage technology -- we have to generate it and compress it. Which combined with the above means that charging a hydrogen car will always be more expensive than putting the same amount of usable energy into a battery powered car. Nope, 350kw charger -> loss >Let's not forget that the cheapest way of generating hydrogen is from fo…

Astroturfing account

There are some hydrogen boosters who are "good" in that it's honest boosting of good technology. They tend to share good information about PEM tech, for example. But in the last six months they have been drowned out by misinformation spreading accounts that carefully omit any mention of natural gas' role in the next few decades of the future of hydrogen...

That said, I'm not sure that calling out astroturf is appropriate on HN.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#74

Post by Transrapid »

effie wrote: post #62
Transrapid wrote: post #14

Yeah Germany, Japan, South Korea, UK, China, Australia, France, India, California and so on seeing it as the future of cars. "It is generally considered more ecological than electric, because of much lesser environmental footprint than required for producing batteries. Another advantage would be bigger driving range and faster refuelling." And the biggest advantage: you're cleaning the air while driving from particle…

It is cleaning air from pollution, but it is also removing lots of oxygen. You don't want to breathe hydrogen car exhaust.

Wrong. have a look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibo5fN727Rg

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#75

Post by pkphilip »

threeseed wrote: post #54
dale_glass wrote: post #38

Hydrogen almost certainly won't go anywhere, in my opinion. * The efficiency compared to battery tech is horrendous. * Hydrogen is effectively a storage technology -- we have to generate it and compress it. Which combined with the above means that charging a hydrogen car will always be more expensive than putting the same amount of usable energy into a battery powered car. * Let's not forget that the cheapest way of…

> cheapest way of generating hydrogen is from fossil fuels Cheapest way of charging EVs is from fossil fuels. > You need a large infrastructure to produce and distribute it But you can reuse gas stations as the delivery mechanism. Versus EVs which require all new infrastructure since the charging time is so much longer. > It's a huge chicken and egg problem No different from EVs right now. > What is more convenient,…

All valid points. A lot of the misconceptions about Hydrogen comes from the following ideas:

1. That it requires something energy consuming like cold-temperature electrolysis.

This is no longer true. We have ways of generating Hydrogen much cheaper from water vapor - which is a very common by product in many industrial processes and which is often simply vented. The new methods also use Nickel instead of the very expensive Platinum electrodes which reduces the cost drastically.

https://www.maritime-executive.com/features/norwegian-team-d...

UNSW Team has demonstrated ways of generating Hydrogen using very cheap metals (Nickel, again) using a catalytic coating which are orders of magniture cheaper than using Platinum electrodes.

https://phys.org/news/2019-12-scientists-cheaper-hydrogen-en...

2. Storage of hydrogen is very complicated and dangerous.

This is also being addressed by various teams - including the storage of Hydrogen in activated carbon etc instead of storing it in very high pressure in tanks.

https://phys.org/news/2011-09-method-inexpensive-carbon-mate...

Hydrogen's energy density gives it a big advantage over EV technologies - and if it is also stored using the newer technologies, it allows for much lighter vehicles.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#76

Post by pkphilip »

epistasis wrote: post #66
threeseed wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cheapest way of generating hydrogen is from fossil fuels Cheapest way of charging EVs is from fossil fuels. > You need a large infrastructure to produce and distribute it But you can reuse gas stations as the delivery mechanism. Versus EVs which require all new infrastructure since the charging time is so much longer. > It's a huge chicken and egg problem No different from EVs right now. > What is more convenient,…

> Cheapest way of charging EVs is from fossil fuels. Fossil fuel electricity is more expensive than wind and solar. Even the most expensive solar, residential, is cheaper than buying from a dirty grid for the vast majority of customers. And the intermittent nature of solar and wind is a perfect match for charging a fleet of EVs. In contrast, green hydrogen is nowhere near as cheap as fossil fuel hydrogen from steam m…

Battery technology isn't very "green" either. Lithium and its alternatives require extensive, polluting mining operations while Hydrogen can be generated from water, water vapor, methane etc.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#77

Post by pkphilip »

varjag wrote: post #15
epistasis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>because of much lesser environmental footprint than required for producing batteries. I'm very concerned about this, but have found basically zero impact for batteries, in that if one is concerned about batteries, then all that iron mining to build the rest of the car should probably be a bigger concern. After doing research, I'm 99% sure that lithium battery environmental concerns are just concern trolling from fos…

Here is a rather detailed study on total emission effects of EV lifecyle: https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EV-life... "An electric vehicle’s higher emissions during the manufacturing stage are paid off after only 2 years compared to driving an average conventional vehicle, a time frame that drops to about one and a half years if the car is charged using renewable energy."

That covers only the energy spent on mining etc but not the environmental impact of digging up entire country sides.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environmen...

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#78

Post by k4lk »

yholio wrote: post #70

The train has left that station 10 years ago, and it's all electric. No point staying in the trenches like the apocryphal Japanese soldier, fighting for the resurgence of Hydrogen. It's less efficient, more expensive for vehicles and infrastructure and more expensive to fuel, has lower range, it's more dangerous. The range record for a Hydrogen vehicle is less than the range of mass-produced commercial cars available…

I don't think it has left the station per se. I agree we should get as driving battery EV as possible, but at some point the current grid will not sustain more charging stations at the mall through existing cabling. At that point it makes sense to look to hydrogen. It should be possible to drive it to existing gas stations for refueling, reusing existing infrastructure on that front.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#79

Post by jackthezipper »

dale_glass wrote: post #38

Hydrogen almost certainly won't go anywhere, in my opinion. * The efficiency compared to battery tech is horrendous. * Hydrogen is effectively a storage technology -- we have to generate it and compress it. Which combined with the above means that charging a hydrogen car will always be more expensive than putting the same amount of usable energy into a battery powered car. * Let's not forget that the cheapest way of…

While inefficiency is indeed a problem, I feel like a lot of people overlook the one huge pro hydrogen has over batteries, namely charging time. Of course this might not be important for the daily commute, or 99% of the vehicles' use. But for that remaining 1% it _is_ a huge deal. And most people buy cars to fulfill a 100% of their needs, not 99%.

Now I should say, I know basically nothing about battery tech. But unless full charging time can be greatly reduced, by which I mean under 5 or at most 10 minutes, I still feel hydrogen could have the upper hand even if it is more expensive and less efficient.

Re: Hydrogen fuel cell cars (2020)

#80

Post by epistasis »

pkphilip wrote: post #77
varjag wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a rather detailed study on total emission effects of EV lifecyle: https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EV-life... "An electric vehicle’s higher emissions during the manufacturing stage are paid off after only 2 years compared to driving an average conventional vehicle, a time frame that drops to about one and a half years if the car is charged using renewable energy."

That covers only the energy spent on mining etc but not the environmental impact of digging up entire country sides. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environmen...

This seems to be a rather selective concern, when, as the article states, there's only 12kg of lithium in the batteries of a Tesla, which is one of the larger batteries out there.

Are you also concerned about the steel, which is on the order of thousands of pounds per vehicle, and requires not only digging for iron, but also the coking coal?

And speaking of digging, iron and coal do actually dig up landscapes, whereas most lithium is actually brine mined rather than dug out.

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