Why did we abandon hydrogen cars so quickly?

[tabascosauz]

Because forcing people in a text-based forum to watch a 16-minute video to know what you're talking about is a bit of a hurdle to your argument. If there was something worthwhile to say, I think you'd be able to say it with your own words (or maybe find an article to copy/paste your point from).

I've "omni-slashed" youtube videos before and have provided counter-points with references. But... its really not worth the effort IMO. Switching between text-based and video-based arguments is a massive pain in the ass.

I do appreciate your discussion points on the 2010 Olympics.

Video wasn't my post, but fair point. Basically, lack of H2 stations (really makes me wonder honestly how exactly Toyota thought it was a good idea to push the car in the US before infrastructure reached an acceptable level), cost of filling up with H2, lack of performance, current methods for creating H2, and the success of EVs.

I agree on the idea of PHEVs but they seem to have missed their right time to make a move. If people want simplicity and $ they just keep buying ICE, if they wanna cut down on gas costs they buy a normal hybrid, if they want to make an environmental statement or really hate the gas station (basically me) they go and buy an EV. The PHEV Rav4 costs like $13,000 more compared to the regular Rav4 hybrid that gets better mileage.

But you do get full EV incentive amount on some PHEVs, and that EV sticker so you can take the carpool lane, though - our traffic always sucks. That seems a bit morally questionable to me though, why allow PHEVs to reap the EV benefits outside of promoting adoption? They are only really somewhat cleaner than ICE vehicles in practice, they aren't any cleaner than conventional hybrids, all they offer is a bit more range for that occasional road trip.

 

[dragontamer5788]

But you do get full EV incentive amount on some PHEVs, and that EV sticker so you can take the carpool lane, though - our traffic always sucks. That seems a bit morally questionable to me though, why allow PHEVs to reap the EV benefits outside of promoting adoption? They are only really somewhat cleaner than ICE vehicles in practice, they aren't any cleaner than conventional hybrids, all they offer is a bit more range for that occasional road trip.

A PHEV with 20-miles range would be sufficient at removing over 95% of my gasoline per year. That's 20-miles of range when I leave my house, then 20-miles of range from my workplace (8-hours of charging at a 220V charger), every day. The gasoline usage would still tick up: PHEVs need to run some gasoline every now and then to keep the hybrid-engine lubricated. But we're looking at 500 gallons of fuel (15000 miles @ 30MPG) getting reduced to maybe 50 gallons / year. Over 10 years, I'm probably looking at only using 500 gallons total.

Just some napkin math with round numbers. But we can see that ICE == 5000 gallons used. PHEV == 500 gallons (rest is electric). And Electric is 0-gallons, but 100% electric. Conventional Hybrid has no ability to plug-in to the grid but maybe runs at 40MPG or 50MPG. So your 150000 mile lifetime turns into 3333 gallons used over the lifetime. Better than ICE, but no where close to PHEV.

Is the literal 1-ton battery under a pure-EV really worth saving ~500 gallons of fuel over the lifetime of a car? I doubt it. Those rare-earth metals and the Lithium-Ion battery manufacturing process is extremely dirty.

--------

Conventional Hybrid doesn't have a plug-in capability. While our electric-grids remain coal / natural gas based, there's been a large push towards green sources of energy (Nuclear, Solar, Wind, and Hydro). Therefore, the Hybrid-vehicles will be all gasoline while PHEV will get more-and-more efficient as we electrify our grids.

 

[user112]

if batteries don't advance fast enough I could see hydrogen taking over with the growth of nuclear power. though it looks like solid state batteries in development already have some nice specs. still I could see EVs having bad resale value on the used market just because people want to avoid taking out loans to buy batteries.

 

[80251]

It was certainly combusted at one point.

I mean, re your points, you aren't wrong but in conventional speak that's not enough pressure to be considered "pressurized."

It required pressure above and beyond atmospheric to inflate the gas bladders that held the H gas. The gas bladders themselves became pressurized because they supported the entire weight of the Hindenburg! As Newton once said for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The gas bladders and thus the H gas itself was applying a force greater than gravity to the Hindenburg. The gas bladders must have deformed under that force and pressurized the H gas within.

 

[Space Lynx]

if batteries don't advance fast enough I could see hydrogen taking over with the growth of nuclear power. though it looks like solid state batteries in development already have some nice specs. still I could see EVs having bad resale value on the used market just because people want to avoid taking out loans to buy batteries.

yep if Bill Gates ever gets his new ideas for a new nuclear plant implemented, or fusion has more breakthroughs (its had several in last few years)... its very possible electricity usage won't matter anymore, in which case hydrogen fleets make sense for everyone in every sector and the planet is transformed overnight -

big IF on the fusion, bill gates new plant designs actually uses the old nuclear waste as more fuel... so... it does seem promising at least.

problem with renewable energy, wind, solar, etc is they still require large banks of lithium battery for storage. nuclear does not.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

It required pressure above and beyond atmospheric to inflate the gas bladders that held the H gas. The gas bladders themselves became pressurized because they supported the entire weight of the Hindenburg! As Newton once said for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The gas bladders and thus the H gas itself was applying a force greater than gravity to the Hindenburg. The gas bladders must have deformed under that force and pressurized the H gas within.

So I ended up falling back on Wikipedia for this info, but for dirigibles like the Hindenburg, the bladders can't inflate past atmospheric pressure or they'll rupture. They're underfilled at launch to allow for inflation at altitude. Lighter-than-air craft rely on buoyancy, not pressure, to fly. When you add pressure (and by extension density), you reduce effective lift.

Blimps, however, do operate at slightly-higher-than atmospheric pressure to keep the bladders in shape, since there's no rigid skeleton like in a dirigible.

 

[Caring1]

Fuel? Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Way to miss the point, if you can't be right, laugh at any mistake?

 

[ralfy]

You need to look at energy return. For example,

Behind the Numbers on Energy Return on Investment

A full listing of the sources and references behind the calculations in this EROI infographic

www.scientificamerican.com

Will Fossil Fuels Be Able to Maintain Economic Growth? A Q&A with Charles Hall

The inventor of the energy return on investment (EROI) metric argues that economic growth could soon stop—and that we need to get smart about incorporating the true cost of fuel in energy policies

www.scientificamerican.com

 

[Totally]

yep if Bill Gates ever gets his new ideas for a new nuclear plant implemented, or fusion has more breakthroughs (its had several in last few years)... its very possible electricity usage won't matter anymore, in which case hydrogen fleets make sense for everyone in every sector and the planet is transformed overnight -

Nuclear is already prepping for a comeback, right now it's the perception issue that still plagues them as SMR and micro SMR designs are demolishing the second hurdle, the high initial cost to bringing a plant online.

 

[Steevo]

yep if Bill Gates ever gets his new ideas for a new nuclear plant implemented, or fusion has more breakthroughs (its had several in last few years)... its very possible electricity usage won't matter anymore, in which case hydrogen fleets make sense for everyone in every sector and the planet is transformed overnight -

big IF on the fusion, bill gates new plant designs actually uses the old nuclear waste as more fuel... so... it does seem promising at least.

problem with renewable energy, wind, solar, etc is they still require large banks of lithium battery for storage. nuclear does not.

Nuclear is our only viable option, if we subsidized it as much as we do other forms of energy we would have clean energy that was affordable enough to heat/cool homes with, cook, clean, drive, for 90 percent of the US population.

Hydrogen still requires immense energy input for low output, and has issues with high pressure storage, more dangerous to transport efficiently. If we used electrolyte based water splitting we would still end up with some very dangerous by products, copper chloride from breakdown of the copper and salt.

Hydrogen is a poor fuel choice, figuring out battery tech that is more stable, charges faster, and lasts longer is a better option. Quick charge capacitors with current output limiting circuits.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Nuclear is our only viable option, if we subsidized it as much as we do other forms of energy we would have clean energy that was affordable enough to heat/cool homes with, cook, clean, drive, for 90 percent of the US population.

Hydrogen still requires immense energy input for low output, and has issues with high pressure storage, more dangerous to transport efficiently. If we used electrolyte based water splitting we would still end up with some very dangerous by products, copper chloride from breakdown of the copper and salt.

Hydrogen is a poor fuel choice, figuring out battery tech that is more stable, charges faster, and lasts longer is a better option. Quick charge capacitors with current output limiting circuits.

You're kind of comparing two hypotheticals. Figuring out a better, cleaner battery system is proving just as non-trivial as cleaner H2 production.

 

[Shrek]

One battery can last 200,000 mi; the pollution of production and disposal is spread over a lot of miles.

 

[Steevo]

You're kind of comparing two hypotheticals. Figuring out a better, cleaner battery system is proving just as non-trivial as cleaner H2 production.

Except we have the infrastructure for electrical and battery production, but little for hydrogen production, transport or storage.

Hydrogen doesn’t provide a solution to heating and cooling, stable electrical production but instead requires that solution to already exist, and the biggest issue is still that you cannot get more energy out of a system than you put in, so Hydrogen will be a order more inefficient at the very best.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Except we have the infrastructure for electrical and battery production, but little for hydrogen production, transport or storage.

Hydrogen doesn’t provide a solution to heating and cooling, stable electrical production but instead requires that solution to already exist, and the biggest issue is still that you cannot get more energy out of a system than you put in, so Hydrogen will be a order more inefficient at the very best.

This is all true. There's tradeoffs for everything. I'm going to try to summarize the pro/con list as I see it for the three players here.

ICE: Fuel is currently abundant/inexpensive, easy to transport and store, and is extremely well-developed technically and infrastructure-wise. CO2, other pollutants and long-term supply are its primary downsides.

Battery electric: Technology and infrastructure is well-developed, for the most part. Energy density has gotten to an acceptable point. Costs are currently higher than ICE, but not insurmountably so. Negatives: cradle-to-grave battery production is not as environmentally-friendly as we'd like. Supply of important elements is limited, and will only tighten as electric vehicle production expands. Large infrastructure investment required to handle additional grid load.

H2 electric: Assuming electrolysis, fuel is endlessly recyclable: 2(H20) -> 2(H2)+1(O2) -> 2(H2O). Good energy density and powertrain efficiency. Definitely the biggest list of challenges. Production is the most energy-negative, infrastructure basically doesn't exist, all methods of production have troublesome byproducts, tech not as well-developed as others.

As much as it pains me as a motorhead, ICE is an eventual dead-end, whether for practical or political reasons. Maybe not in our lifetime, but it's coming. Truly "eco-friendly" battery electric will depend on expansion of renewables/nuclear plus development of more favorable battery tech. The former is achievable, the latter may not be. It definitely won't be easy. Hydrogen... there's just so much to overcome. A page on the U.S. DoE website (that I forgot to bookmark) notes that H2 infrastructure could resemble that of natural gas, particularly with some storage methods that don't rely on high compression. It wouldn't solve the massive amounts of additional electricity we'd need to generate, but the eventual load on the grid could be lower than with battery electric. A side benefit the same page mentioned that I hadn't thought of was load-balancing: generation could be used for H2 production during low-demand periods, increasing system efficiency. Not much of a mitigation, granted, but everything helps. And in a solar/nuclear future, maybe the extra energy input isn't as big a stumbling block as it seems.

 

[Caring1]

Can't say Hydrogen vehicles are totally abandoned, it's just a slow uptake.

'Australia will have the cheapest hydrogen in the world' according to Hyundai - Car News

Speaking to media at the launch of its Xcient hydrogen fuel cell truck, Hyundai singled out Australia as a potential future energy powerhouse thanks to hydrogen.

www.carsguide.com.au

First hydrogen car fleet hits Aussie roads - carsales.com.au

Large-scale FCEV trial begins as fleet of 20 Hyundai NEXO SUVs is pressed into service

www.motoring.com.au

 

[dragontamer5788]

Good energy density

H2 has Good energy density by weight. Terrible energy density by volume. Volume matters, and is the biggest issue with H2.

 

[Space Lynx]

The hydrogen economy is about to get weird

Companies may be investing in production capacity that will outpace demand.

arstechnica.com

welp. apparently I am not the only one who thinks hydrogen is not dead just yet. USA investing in RnD on it, UK and other countries already working heavily on it.

Germany has a hydrogen train up and running already too. wow neat

 

[Vayra86]

Nuclear is our only viable option, if we subsidized it as much as we do other forms of energy we would have clean energy that was affordable enough to heat/cool homes with, cook, clean, drive, for 90 percent of the US population.

Hydrogen still requires immense energy input for low output, and has issues with high pressure storage, more dangerous to transport efficiently. If we used electrolyte based water splitting we would still end up with some very dangerous by products, copper chloride from breakdown of the copper and salt.

Hydrogen is a poor fuel choice, figuring out battery tech that is more stable, charges faster, and lasts longer is a better option. Quick charge capacitors with current output limiting circuits.

Nuclear is fine, just build us some Vaults here and there prior to mass consumerism with it And hire Musk to make sure all the waste ends up on Mars.

Last I heard they wanted to mine crypto with nuclear. That's where excess energy will go, I guess. Nuke em all. That said I do agree with you. I think nuclear should be pushed a lot more especially in development. There are big possibilities there, at least to shift away from fossil.

Renewable I think is still the only way forward, but it comes with a culture shift where you seek efficiency before expansion of capacity and even reduction before both. A big issue with renewables, mostly, is that they take craploads of space. Space we don't have, the world is overcrowded and ecobalance is at odds with solar and wind farms. Public health just as well. The noise from wind turbines can be sickening. But there are only a few places in the world actually where square miles are not at a premium, and those places are usually suboptimal or too remote for transport. An energy demand that keeps rising while the net gain per square mile compared to coal is negligible is not going to cover it either.

Look at us humans, we're better at exponential growth than Covid, except on a somewhat longer time scale. It can't keep going like that, and there is no historical precedent either. Anyone saying its fine, is deluded - other systems in the world are also deteriorating exponentially...

I think the bottom line is, its really irrelevant what powers our driving, we're too many drivers.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

I thought actual hydrogen production was cost and environmental effects deficient ie makes it pointless much like the TCO costs of electric cars.

We need better answers, less misdirection etc.

Public transport doesn't account for much of total emissions, creating products , generating power and global product transportation are where we should be working to limit emissions and also.

The whole thing of building consumer throw away items needs to stop where reasonably possible.

Less moved around a lot before hitting landfill via Amazon warehouse might help more.

 

[Aquinus]

H2 has Good energy density by weight. Terrible energy density by volume. Volume matters, and is the biggest issue with H2.

That makes no sense. Energy density is, by definition, energy per unit volume. Energy per unit of mass is specific energy, not energy density. Also weight != mass.

 

[64K]

yep if Bill Gates ever gets his new ideas for a new nuclear plant implemented, or fusion has more breakthroughs (its had several in last few years)... its very possible electricity usage won't matter anymore, in which case hydrogen fleets make sense for everyone in every sector and the planet is transformed overnight -

big IF on the fusion, bill gates new plant designs actually uses the old nuclear waste as more fuel... so... it does seem promising at least.

problem with renewable energy, wind, solar, etc is they still require large banks of lithium battery for storage. nuclear does not.

Lockheed Martin said about 7 years ago that they would have a fusion reactor within 10 years. I haven't seen anything more on the progress but fusion is definitely the future of electricity generation if they can pull it off.

Lockheed says it'll make a truck-sized fusion reactor within 10 years

Lockheed Martin, the US government's largest contractor, says it has made a technological breakthrough in nuclear fusion power. The breakthrough will apparently allow Lockheed to build a 100-megawatt 'compact fusion reactor' (CFR) that can fit on the back of a truck within 10 years. If Lockheed...

www.extremetech.com

 

[GerKNG]

because oil companies are richer than the people who want something else.

 

[Caring1]

The hydrogen economy is about to get weird

Companies may be investing in production capacity that will outpace demand.

arstechnica.com

welp. apparently I am not the only one who thinks hydrogen is not dead just yet. USA investing in RnD on it, UK and other countries already working heavily on it.

Germany has a hydrogen train up and running already too. wow neat

Hydrogen heated homes under development in the UK.

U.K. Setting Its Sights Too Low for Hydrogen Heating in Homes

The U.K. should move faster to replace gas with hydrogen in domestic heating, as the country’s pipes will be ready to make the switch in just two years, according to the head of a pilot project.

www.bloomberg.com

Hydrogen heating campaign launches to promote benefits for UK homes

A hydrogen heating campaign is underway as the UK energy sector strives to make households aware of hydrogen's home heating benefits

www.homebuilding.co.uk

 

[Space Lynx]

Hydrogen heated homes under development in the UK.

U.K. Setting Its Sights Too Low for Hydrogen Heating in Homes

The U.K. should move faster to replace gas with hydrogen in domestic heating, as the country’s pipes will be ready to make the switch in just two years, according to the head of a pilot project.

www.bloomberg.com

Hydrogen heating campaign launches to promote benefits for UK homes

A hydrogen heating campaign is underway as the UK energy sector strives to make households aware of hydrogen's home heating benefits

www.homebuilding.co.uk

Hydrogen seems to be the future of the UK, and geographically speaking they are the right size and shape for that kind of distribution network too.

Thanks for sharing that, very interesting. I believe the first hydrogen plane that flew was also in the UK. They seem to be going all in with hydrogen over there.

 

[eidairaman1]

There was a guy in Japan years ago that created an engine that literally ran off of water.
Part of the process involved ceramic "Plugs" that were heated to a very high temp and when the water was injected, it contacted the plugs, exploded/burned like gas and the engine ran.

It's a similar effect when you have molten metal and it comes in contact with water - If you are ever in a foundry and water comes in contact with the metal it will cause an explosion, if enough of both comes together you'd better RUN and hope you're fast enough.

Nuclear melt down comes to mind