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Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

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Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#91

Post by kleiba »

mmooss wrote: post #85
kleiba wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has this recurring fixation on hydrogen for whatever reason. Even when Tesla had already long hit the mainstream market, German car manufacturers were still arguing against EVs in favor for hydrogen-powered cars that would theoretically be vastly superior. Well, we all know how that turned out for Mercedes, BMW, and the so on.

If people followed that reasoning, there would be few EVs now because EVs had been tried for decades without success; so were airplanes and AI. If people quit as easily as you say hydrogen car manufacturers should, we wouldn't have much of anything.

Right. But at some point, you should acknowledge reality. That's why I'm not currently trying to collect VC money for a new start-up on BetaMax recording technology.

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#92

Post by philjohn »

mmooss wrote: post #85
kleiba wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has this recurring fixation on hydrogen for whatever reason. Even when Tesla had already long hit the mainstream market, German car manufacturers were still arguing against EVs in favor for hydrogen-powered cars that would theoretically be vastly superior. Well, we all know how that turned out for Mercedes, BMW, and the so on.

If people followed that reasoning, there would be few EVs now because EVs had been tried for decades without success; so were airplanes and AI. If people quit as easily as you say hydrogen car manufacturers should, we wouldn't have much of anything.

Yes - but Hydrogen vehicles have not proven to match or even beat EV's in a lot of key metrics that matter.

The biggest one is efficiency. 40% efficient is one figure I saw, versus 80% for EV's.

Yes, you can refill quicker, but time to "refuel" EV's is dropping precipitously as well, and it's just all around safer than tanking around highly combustible liquid gas.

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#93

Post by smeeger »

martinald wrote: post #7
m4rtink wrote: post #2

I'm not really sure there is any place for a discussion - you would need a whole new infrastructure for hydrogen powered buses, while keeping a lot of the downsides of fossil fueled air breathing vehicles (eq. air filters filters regardless of if you burn the hydrogen or use it in fuel cells). With battery buses - you might need to slightly beef up the local transformer and installs some new wires and that's it. Or e…

While I agree with you; just to be clear it's not "slightly" beef up the local transformer. If you imagine a medium sized depot with 50 buses stabled at any one time, and 300kW chargers (I believe you could go higher), that's 15MW peak which is not trivial to add in many cities overnight. You really need some sort of HV connection for that kind of load, the existing local LV distribution grid isn't going to handle it…

a lot of people like to laugh very, very loudly at the idea of upgrading the grid to handle EVs. simply remind them that at one point in time there was no grid at all. the grid is not some magical entity that cant be changed

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#94

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

amsha wrote: post #59

There is a very to-the-point diagram called the Hydrogen Ladder [0] that classifies the usefulness of hydrogen by domain. The author makes a good case that, despite its versatility, hydrogen is almost always worse than some other clean technology for any use case. It’s hard to make, store, and use in a scalable/cheap way, and even generous estimates of future progress show a cost curve that requires subsidies basical…

did the picture die or smth?

edit: no, even internet archive from a year ago shows no picture

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#95

Post by atoav »

kleiba wrote: post #83
spacebanana7 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, their point was directionally correct. London has 1397 electric buses and Moscow has over 2300. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_emission_buses_in_London https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_buses_in_Moscow

Germany has this recurring fixation on hydrogen for whatever reason. Even when Tesla had already long hit the mainstream market, German car manufacturers were still arguing against EVs in favor for hydrogen-powered cars that would theoretically be vastly superior. Well, we all know how that turned out for Mercedes, BMW, and the so on.

Reasons I can think of for that fixation are:

1. Germany's existing industrial capacity in terms of machining is a much closer match to hydrogen than to EVs. So in short it is wishful thinking mixed with a kind of self-preservation.

2. There seems to be a (somewhat unfounded) worry about energy storage when it comes to EVs, that many German technologists think is easier to handle and solve with hydrogen.

3. Germans culturally have a slight tendency to be fascinated by intricate and complex systems (which can also be a bad thing, see bureaucracy). Electric vehicles are conceptionally very simple, so the opposite. Hydrogen is a little bit more involved.

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#96

Post by grapesodaaaaa »

philjohn wrote: post #92
mmooss wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people followed that reasoning, there would be few EVs now because EVs had been tried for decades without success; so were airplanes and AI. If people quit as easily as you say hydrogen car manufacturers should, we wouldn't have much of anything.

Yes - but Hydrogen vehicles have not proven to match or even beat EV's in a lot of key metrics that matter. The biggest one is efficiency. 40% efficient is one figure I saw, versus 80% for EV's. Yes, you can refill quicker, but time to "refuel" EV's is dropping precipitously as well, and it's just all around safer than tanking around highly combustible liquid gas.

Let’s not forget that the highly combustible liquid gas either needs to be stored with complicated cooling or under immense pressure (feel free to disprove me if I haven’t kept up with technology).

It can be done safely, but adds a lot of complexity on top of all the complexity needed for ICE engines.

Your points are also great.

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#97

Post by masklinn »

dvdkon wrote: post #86
jillesvangurp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries are cheap. Installing lots of copper lines for trolley buses isn't. That's why trolley buses are pretty rare. Old idea, didn't really take that well. There are a handful of cities that have them. And they've had them for decades. Most of those cities now also have battery electrical buses to service all the areas where the cables don't go. Expanding the network of cables doesn't seem to have a very high pri…

As a counterpoint, Prague is building new trolleybus lines at a somewhat regular pace after having abandoned them in the 70s. Granted, these trolleybuses also have batteries and only spend about 1/2 of their journey under wires.

Yep, hybrid trolleys / battery trolleys are really cool, as they provide the flexibility of batteries to e.g. work around roadworks and blockage, but allow for a more distributed electricity consumption thanks to partially fixed routes / overhead lines.

The poles also make for convenient overhead charging docks, which you can add on a somewhat piecemeal manner. With some automated guidance, that means you can charge the buses at long-wait stops or when they wait to run the route back even though they're not a a depot, without the need for an "accessible" charging infrastructure (or the driver needing to move out, go open an electric cabinet, plug in a charge cable, then remember to unplug before going back out).

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#98

Post by m101 »

XorNot wrote: post #17
chermi wrote: post #11

The hydrogen economy hasn't made since to me from when I first heard about it 15+years ago. It's one of the clearest examples of academics not understanding how business works.

The hydrogen economy has had a lot of not very subtle backing from the gas industry, which is fully aware that they would have no problem selling hydrogen cracked out of natural gas if it ever took off.

The battery economy has had a lot of very not subtle backing from the government.

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#99

Post by masklinn »

chermi wrote: post #11

The hydrogen economy hasn't made since to me from when I first heard about it 15+years ago. It's one of the clearest examples of academics not understanding how business works.

The hydrogen economy never had anything to do with academics. It's a fallback plan by the oil industry.

Re: Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

#100

Post by m101 »

kumarski wrote: post #35

Hydrogen buses limp at an EROI of 0.5 to 1.5. Losses via Gibbs free energy (237 kJ/mol to split H2O) and compression (20% of H2’s 120 MJ/kg.) Barely cash in on the H2-O2 reaction (ΔH = -285.8 kJ/mol). Battery buses, powered by lithium-ion cells, hit EROI of 2 to 4. Redox heavy lithium mining (150 MJ/kg) drags it all down. Charge-discharge losses (90% Coulombic efficiency)+ 5-10% capacity fade after 1000 cycles. All t…

Is that hydrogen EROI number assuming lowest energy hydrogen? Or something like electrolysis?
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