Why did we abandon hydrogen cars so quickly?

[Bomby569]

It's a bit offtopic, but yes it's insane how easy it easy to make some promesses and get billions on the market, stock or private investors, without selling a single car, without making a single car.

Tesla is way overvalued, the last customer satisfaction numbers put them at the end of the pack. Rivian barely made a sale and is already worth millions. Lucian i think not a single sale. Insane

Ford is doing things right and no one seems to care

 

[dragontamer5788]

They are far, far ahead in terms of platform, motor, and packaging and lessons learned from ICE tech don't really apply. That and they are building the dedicated factories in the EU and China.

What? Like brakes and suspension?

Once we leave the drive-train, all of a sudden Tesla is in a disadvantage. All the other car makers know how to make the dumb stuff more cheaply and effectively than Tesla does.

 

[Bomby569]

What? Like brakes and suspension?

Once we leave the drive-train, all of a sudden Tesla is in a disadvantage. All the other car makers know how to make the dumb stuff more cheaply and effectively than Tesla does.

i don't follow you on that, Tesla doesn't actually have to do much, there are hundreds of companies that work for the auto industry that do 90% of the car, you just have to make the body, framework, paint. Build a jit model and decide out to get the car to the client and service it.
True that Tesla doesn't even do that right with all the panel misalignment problems. But that is easily fixed.

 

[dragontamer5788]

i don't follow you on that, Tesla doesn't actually have to do much, there are hundred companies that work for the auto industry that do 90% of the car, you just have to make the body, framework, paint. Build a jit model and decide out to get the car to the client and service it.
True that Tesla doesn't even do that right with all the panel misalignment problems. But that is easily fixed.

Tesla recalls nearly 3,000 Model Y and Model 3 vehicles over faulty suspension issue

The recall applies to 2020-2021 Model Y and 2019-2021 Model 3 vehicles, with owner notification letters set to be mailed Dec. 24.

www.usatoday.com

Tesla Model S Plaid Crashes Twice On The Track: Brake Issue?

This Tesla Model S Plaid seems to have some weird braking issues at the track. Then, it spins out, leaves the pavement, and crashes at 150 mph.

insideevs.com

'Aladdin' star says a defect in his Tesla Model 3 led to his car wreck, and it comes from a problem area the company has known about for years

Those who follow Tesla closely have come to refer to the company's problems with suspension as "whompy wheels."

www.businessinsider.com

These are simple brakes and suspension issues that other car makers have largely figured out. Tesla is running into issues despite making fewer than 300,000 cars/year. This is the easy part, Tesla haven't even scaled up yet and are already running into quality-control issues.

Spoiler alert: Suspensions are very difficult systems to model, test, design and deploy. So are braking systems. And finally, its hard to mass produce these systems with high quality. Having a VIP-customer like Mena Massoud have his freaking wheel fall off the suspension is NOT a good look for the company.

"Wompy Wheels" turns into a huge amount of news reports, demonstrating that Mr. Massoud is far from alone on this problem.

 

[Bomby569]

These are simple brakes and suspension issues that other car makers have largely figured out. Tesla is running into issues despite making fewer than 300,000 cars/year. This is the easy part, Tesla haven't even scaled up yet and are already running into quality-control issues.

Spoiler alert: Suspensions are very difficult systems to model, test, design and deploy. So are braking systems. And finally, its hard to mass produce these systems with high quality. Having a VIP-customer like Mena Massoud have his freaking wheel fall off the suspension is NOT a good look for the company.

"Wompy Wheels" turns into a huge amount of news reports, demonstrating that Mr. Massoud is far from alone on this problem.

This is offtopic, but you're mixing up everything. Every car manufacturer runs into issues and recalls, quiet a lot actually. But i do agree they are not the best at their job. Still those are the easiest things to overcome, i'm not saying they aren't major flaws, just that they can easily overcome that, it's not technological challenges. They already done the hard part, building the jit, managed to get the cars to the clients in a way no one could before, etc...

Once you remove the engine block, everyone can make a decent car. Like i said 90% (maybe an exageration i don't have the exact number but it isn't far off) of the car is not made by whoever puts the badge on it.

 

[Operandi]

What? Like brakes and suspension?

Once we leave the drive-train, all of a sudden Tesla is in a disadvantage. All the other car makers know how to make the dumb stuff more cheaply and effectively than Tesla does.

No, the motor, battery management, cooling, that is all significant factors in a EV and thats where they are miles ahead. They are also making huge strides in the structure of the vehicle itself that nobody else till now has attempted on a large scale, Tesla's Switch to Giga Press Die Castings for Model 3 Eliminates 370 Parts. That puts them at a huge advantage over all the legacy OEMs in terms of designing and packing an EV druvetrain as you can't just catch up overnight. Combine that with all the inherent structural, weight, cost, time advantages with their casting technology and they have a pretty big lead over everyone.

True that Tesla doesn't even do that right with all the panel misalignment problems. But that is easily fixed.

The big OEMs have had decades to get that process right, Tesla is still going through growing pains of scaling. That and Tesla is constantly iterating changes during production so yeah, you aren't exactly producing a consistent product. The only Tesla that I'd ever consider because of that is the Model 3 or Y but that has nothing to do with Tesla's technology, manufacturing techniques, and outlook as company.

 

[dragontamer5788]

They are also making huge strides in the structure of the vehicle itself that nobody else till now has attempted on a large scale, Tesla's Switch to Giga Press Die Castings for Model 3 Eliminates 370 Parts

Tesla's giant stamping machine caught on fire at Fremont factory

Tesla’s giant stamping machine, believed to be the world’s biggest, caught on fire at Fremont factory today. No one was...

electrek.co

That machine needs to stop catching on fire first if you actually expect it to do any work.

------

More seriously: we can look at vehicles as Tesla sells them. There's no "unibody" models being sold anywhere. The entire die-casting machine is a marketing stunt. Pure and simple. It doesn't matter that it catches on fire often because its not really doing any real work.

The fact that the machine there is built outside the factory is proof of that. No one seriously expects consistently in die-stamping to be done in an uncontrolled, outdoor environment full of dust, pollen, the elements and uncontrolled humidity / temperatures.

 

[Operandi]

The entire die-casting machine is a marketing stunt. Pure and simple.

K, well I guess that settles it.

 

[KLiKzg]

Weight is a BIG issue for planes, less so for boats and trains

Thinking of keeping hydrogen in sealed steel cages. That is so 20 century!

Future is somewhere, more intelligent in a management way.

 

[Operandi]

Thinking of keeping hydrogen in sealed steel cages. That is so 20 century!

Future is somewhere, more intelligent in a management way.

Current FCEV tanks are made from carbon fiber. They are lighter and insanely tough.

The future though would be some sort of low pressure solid state storage.

 

[de.das.dude]

Impreza is a compact Sedan though. It seats 5 but your rear passengers will feel bunched up.

Honda Clarity is +4 inches wider and +20 inches longer. Cars of this size normally cost in the $22,000ish range. So $25,000ish for PHEV (After the $7500 credit is factored in) is a bit of a premium, but the gasoline savings will almost certainly win over in the long run.

That's why I liked Honda Clarity PHEV and GM Volt PHEVs. They actually were cost-effective at their jobs.



E85 is too expensive in the USA. I have a flex-fuel vehicle, so I can use both E85 and E15 gasoline. E85 gives me ~220 miles of range, while E15 gives me 330 miles of range.

So I lose well over 30% of my range, meaning E85 needs to be 30% cheaper before I seriously consider it as a daily fuel source. Unfortunately, E85 is maybe 10% cheaper at best than regular gasoline.

Damn here they went and upped the ethanol in normal fuel to ~9%. This explains why i have been getting poorer mileage in my vehicle than before

 

[Space Lynx]

Damn here they went and upped the ethanol in normal fuel to ~9%. This explains why i have been getting poorer mileage in my vehicle than before

yep everyone in the world has moved to 9-10% ethanol in gas. and yes it does give lower gas mileage, not to mention we only have about 60 years of good topsoil left for crops, so wasting any of that nutrient rich soil on corn... is probably a huge mistake.

 

[Shrek]

we only have about 60 years of good topsoil left for crops

Evidence for this claim?

 

[the54thvoid]

Interstellar. Great film.

But seriously, it is known that industrial scale farming is having a negative effect on topsoil quality.

Don't know about specific metrics for quality deprivation or timescales. But historically, farmers knew to rotate crops and let the land recover (in Scotland in old times we had the runrig system). Modern commercial farming is very nutrient intensive.

Edit: It's like most resources, modern humans tend to take a lot from the earth without considering the geological and lengthy processes that put them there.

 

[Bomby569]

There is artificial ways to enrich the soil, or we would never get the same crop year after year from the same soil. In large scale farming no one rotates crops or leaves fields to rest one season, that's something from the last century.
It sure isn't ideal, brings lots of other problems, but it isn't exactly that big a problem that in 60 years no one could farm or anything like that.

 

[KLiKzg]

& you can get ethanol from any kind of sugar reach plant or source...so ethanol is not only "plant based", but can be also got from other sources.

 

[xrobwx71]

also where did this plane get its hydrogen fuel... see lot of questions here not a lot of answers... main thing is would it scale to be cost efficient?

They built their own infrastructure as did the Australian's you mentioned. To build an on-site infrastructure compared to scaling it nationally is astronomical.

 

[Steevo]

Impreza is a compact Sedan though. It seats 5 but your rear passengers will feel bunched up.

Honda Clarity is +4 inches wider and +20 inches longer. Cars of this size normally cost in the $22,000ish range. So $25,000ish for PHEV (After the $7500 credit is factored in) is a bit of a premium, but the gasoline savings will almost certainly win over in the long run.

That's why I liked Honda Clarity PHEV and GM Volt PHEVs. They actually were cost-effective at their jobs.



E85 is too expensive in the USA. I have a flex-fuel vehicle, so I can use both E85 and E15 gasoline. E85 gives me ~220 miles of range, while E15 gives me 330 miles of range.

So I lose well over 30% of my range, meaning E85 needs to be 30% cheaper before I seriously consider it as a daily fuel source. Unfortunately, E85 is maybe 10% cheaper at best than regular gasoline.

That “credit” isn’t free, we are all paying taxes to pay for it.

Electric or hybrid make sense only with a nuclear base load, right now we are burning more natural gas to offset the difference from “renewable” than they will ever save.

Interstellar. Great film.

But seriously, it is known that industrial scale farming is having a negative effect on topsoil quality.

Don't know about specific metrics for quality deprivation or timescales. But historically, farmers knew to rotate crops and let the land recover (in Scotland in old times we had the runrig system). Modern commercial farming is very nutrient intensive.

Edit: It's like most resources, modern humans tend to take a lot from the earth without considering the geological and lengthy processes that put them there.

I can chime in on this, the issue is the removal of organic matter, already in most of the arid parts of the world where cereal crops are grown a “fallow” year is common. Removing the straw and lack of nutrient management is the issue, but most farmers fail when they engage in shitty farming, subsidies exist for advanced farming to encourage better practices and most are from companies they sell to, not for tax payers. Example, Molson Coors pays more for barley that can be traced to its source and for using the correct amount of fertilizer at the right time, with the correct hybrid of seed, and better farming practices.

Interstellar was a great film, however the autonomy was wrong for machines (20 plus years in the field(s)).

they also don’t harvest green corn with a combine like that.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Electric or hybrid make sense only with a nuclear base load, right now we are burning more natural gas to offset the difference from “renewable” than they will ever save.

Electric engines are much more efficient though, and Natural Gas turbines are also much more efficient due to size.

ICE engines are maybe 30% efficient (taking 30% of the power in gasoline and using it for motion, and then turning 70% of the power into heat). You can notice this by just feeling the hot exhaust on your car.

There are 50%+ efficient natural gas turbines (https://www.ipieca.org/resources/en...-heat-generation/combined-cycle-gas-turbines/). Electric engines are 80% efficient, and maybe you have 10% transmission loss, but when all is said and done, you are still using far less carbon-emissions from electric than you are from gasoline / ICE.

So even if you've got natural gas powered electricity, you've still got a net-benefit from gasoline. Heck, the consistent torque / RPM curves on PHEV vehicles also take advantage of this and start reaching absurdly efficient ICE-designs thanks to hybrid technology.

-------

As for me personally, I'm solar powered thanks to community solar. You can rent out solar panels these days on some field somewhere, and use the grid to transfer those panels to your house without ever building solar panels on your house now.

Its like all the benefits of solar power, with none of the hassle of actually building it myself, dealing with contractors, or worrying about the quality of the roof / storms / etc. etc.

 

[defaultluser]

Current FCEV tanks are made from carbon fiber. They are lighter and insanely tough.

The future though would be some sort of low pressure solid state storage.

And yet they still only get 15 years of lifetime before you drop 10k per-tank to replace it; the Fuel Cells also have to get replaced around the same time.

Solid-state storage is like trying to get an overly-excited dog to sit - nearly impossible, as there are not too many materials that can hold energetic H2. And currently (20 years into research) they're nowhere near high PSI tank storage!

Hydrogen storage gets real

As production costs fall and demand is poised to rocket, James Mitchell Crow finds the hydrogen economy is finally ready for take-off - as long as we can find ways to store it

www.chemistryworld.com

And, I'm sure that (like everything H2 touches), these things will still need to be replaced just-as-often as a BEV's battery, at much higher cost!

Even Toyota has all-but abandoned the Mirai

Toyota opens up about its battery EV strategy, shows off new SUVs

It includes everything from a small crossover to an electric supercar.

arstechnica.com

 

[dragontamer5788]

And yet they still only get 15 years of lifetime before you drop 10k per-tank to replace it; the Fuel Cells also have to get replaced around the same time.

Hyundai XCIENT just beat the Tesla-semi to market dude. But in any case, Li-ion traditionally only had 2-years of useful life. (See any decent cell-phone battery). I'm not convinced that its safe for Li-ion to be on the roads for so long actually.

There seems to be benefits to H2 on the larger vehicles. Mirai might have just been too small to be practical. I dunno.

 

[Bomby569]

Even Toyota has all-but abandoned the Mirai

Toyota opens up about its battery EV strategy, shows off new SUVs

It includes everything from a small crossover to an electric supercar.

arstechnica.com

True that Toyota abandoned the Mirai but not hydrogen, they are actually betting more on it then before. But also doing EV's.

As world's automakers scramble to go electric, Toyota bets on hydrogen

Over the weekend, Akio Toyoda raced Toyota Yaris subcompact in Japan — a hydrogen car he says could preserve millions of auto jobs.

www.cnbc.com

 

[defaultluser]

Hyundai XCIENT just beat the Tesla-semi to market dude. But in any case, Li-ion traditionally only had 2-years of useful life. (See any decent cell-phone battery). I'm not convinced that its safe for Li-ion to be on the roads for so long actually.

There seems to be benefits to H2 on the larger vehicles. Mirai might have just been too small to be practical. I dunno.

And? Being first in modern times to field a BEV didn' win any points for GMC

General Motors EV1 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Just because you're first doesn't mean you will automatically be profitable; you need to sell tens of thousands of fuel cells a year before the build costs of these plastic sandwiches falls below 10k,

Oh, and, Bomby569, you obviously bought the Bull, with a hydrogen-powered concept car that will never again be sold here in the US (that gives it a very small market , with just a few places outside US West Coast and Japan have enough H2 infrastructure to support it)

Toyota Confirms Yaris Sedan, Hatchback Are Dead to U.S.

The 2020 model year will be the last for U.S. sales of the economical subcompacts.

www.caranddriver.com

Face it dude, H2 is dead in cars, and this Yaris concept one will be Japan-only!

 

[dragontamer5788]

Just because you're first doesn't mean you will automatically be profitable.

Except we're seeing Japan, Korea, and China all bet on H2 in substantial levels.

Sure, USA is making a different bet, but... its not like those countries are bad an engineering either. There comes a point where its important to reflect upon what others are doing, and wonder if they're onto something.

Look, I don't know the future. I don't know if H2 will work or not. But there are some smart people in smart companies who think H2 will work. I wouldn't count it out yet.

------

If we look at the math and costs behind H2, there seem to be some substantial advantages to fuel cells, electrolysis, and other such technologies behind H2. USA has a lot of engineering talent, money, and entrepreneurs. I'm more than willing to support an experimental H2 group to try things out domestically. If it works out, great. If not, we probably learned a lot from it.

I'm not seeing why H2 is destined to failure yet. There's significant weight advantages, as well as storage / distribution advantages, to the methodology.

 

[defaultluser]

If we look at the math and costs behind H2, there seem to be some substantial advantages to fuel cells, electrolysis, and other such technologies behind H2. USA has a lot of engineering talent, money, and entrepreneurs. I'm more than willing to support an experimental H2 group to try things out domestically. If it works out, great. If not, we probably learned a lot from it.

Because the best-case efficiency of H20 to H2 is 70% (using expensive catalysts), plus the efficiency of that Fuel Cell is only 50%. Add in the losses to transport H2 from a big electrolysis factory to your local gas station (15% higher losses than just sending it over power lines), and you get a final efficiency of around 30%

I'm not seeing why H2 is destined to failure yet. There's significant weight advantages, as well as storage / distribution advantages, to the methodology.

Cause you choose to disbelieve reality. Over-and--over again!

!. There is no weight advantage, because the steel carbon-fiber reinforced fuel tanks weigh as much as Lithium ION battery packs.
2. There is no distribution advantage, because there is no real H2-rated gaspipelines infrastructure already built in the US - we already have a proven efficient electric grid.