Why did we abandon hydrogen cars so quickly?

[80-watt Hamster]

With the recent problems of heatwaves and the war, i wonder if people will finally start to take the transition seriously. More money needs to go to alternative fuel sources for vehicles and fast.

Regarding the trolleybus topic, I was watching a video, and it's insane how many cities had them (in Europe, Asia and North America), and just destroyed everything to go with traditional buses. Insane. I guess much of the complaints were they couldn't get around an obstacle, but we now have trolleys with small batteries (something very small) to give them a bit of autonomy to go around obstacules, and they are much cheaper to acquire, run and maintain than a fleet of electric buses and don't use as much precious resources by not using those massive batteries

Hybrid buses have become somewhat common in the 'States. It makes a ton of sense IMO; lots of stops to run the regen system, with an ICE for the long segments.

 

[KLiKzg]

Considering unlreaded petrol is $2.20 a liter here in Au right now, i get the feeling our cost efficiency estimates are about to change in favour of alternative tech really suddenly


I cant believe americans are complaining when their fuel is so much cheaper than everywhere else
View attachment 255204

Well, with these prices...even Mad Max looks more promising, then 2010 Odyssey in Space.

 

[KLiKzg]

Wanted to share something else with all of you:

Enjoy.

 

[defaultluser]

not a bad video , but will have to see what the effects are on air pollution plus paste waste

dos seemtoonly be viable for ai8ircraft

 

[Shrek]

My same old question, why turn methane into hydrogen?

 

[Mussels]

My same old question, why turn methane into hydrogen?

methane is a dirty fuel
hydrogen is not

They're trying to reduce global warming, not switch to another fuel that pumps out Co2

 

[defaultluser]

methane is a dirty fuel
hydrogen is not

They're trying to reduce global warming, not switch to another fuel that pumps out Co2

Blue H2 is just as dirty a process as burning the Methane directly into the atmosphere (and loses ton of efficiency in the process!) Burning the same methane in an engine is a way better return on your investment (assuming you have it, say, from a landfill, its carbon-neutral)

Green H2:he part where H2 reduces global warming is when you make it through electrolysis (even more expensive than Blue , and why not just charge An EV battery directly?the same electric supply? )

 

[KLiKzg]

methane is a dirty fuel
hydrogen is not

They're trying to reduce global warming, not switch to another fuel that pumps out Co2

If you use Methane for producing H2, then you also release the CO2.

So you either do not use H2 from methane source or contribute to pollution if you do.

 

[Bomby569]

Hydrogen is just as green as whatever you use to "produce" it, hydrogen is not a fuel source. That is sad because you see more and more shenanigans with hydrogen to trick people.

 

[Shrek]

methane is a dirty fuel
hydrogen is not

They're trying to reduce global warming, not switch to another fuel that pumps out Co2

Where does the carbon in methane go? (when producing hydrogen from methane)

Just asking, not trolling.

 

[KLiKzg]

Where does the carbon in methane go? (when producing hydrogen from methane)

Just asking, not trolling.

Easy...see here, chemistry 101:

 

[Shrek]

Much appreciated, that confirms my suspicion; I was hoping I was wrong.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

One advantage of converting methane to hydrogen is that the carbon dioxide can be cleaned and possibly captured, being in a centralized plant instead of in cars. But then you may as well burn it and generate electricity to power cars.

 

[Morgoth]

best way to make hydrogen is to split it from water using nuclear engergy...
current climate crysis is a scram in a hole. i do agree that we need to change our consumtion but not at this drastic level... bit by bit

mining the moon for raw materials and rifining it there wil do so mutch good for our biosphere

 

[Shrek]

Why not solar?

They say the Moon has tritium (generated by radiation that reaches the surface), the Earth not.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Hydrogen is just as green as whatever you use to "produce" it, hydrogen is not a fuel source. That is sad because you see more and more shenanigans with hydrogen to trick people.

Well, the important bit is to support electrolysis to make green hydrogen. Which is beginning to exist btw.

Why not solar? and save the nuclear for nighttime power.

It doesn't matter. The important thing about electrolysis is that it can take energy when the grid is overloaded (ie: nighttime nuclear is usually cheaper than solar, because we have so many air-conditioners in the USA that we almost never have "too much electricity" during the daytime, even with a large amount of solar panels).

Electrolysis Hydrogen (and other high-electricity usage production facilities, like Aluminum smelting), can be used to help "load balance" the grid. Run the machines when excess power is detected, turn them off during peak energy hours.

One advantage of converting methane to hydrogen is that the carbon dioxide can be cleaned and possibly captured, being in a centralized plant instead of in cars. But then you may as well burn it and generate electricity to power cars.

This is also true of coal power. "Green Coal" has very high densities of centralized CO2, which in theory could captured.

Centralizing fossil fuels and capturing CO2 from those plants probably should take priority. Its one of the easiest ways we can mitigate CO2 emissions IMO. Its still net negative (its impossible to capture all the CO2), but we should capture what we can.

But any usage of methane / Fossil Fuels is "dirty" so to speak. Even if we capture / recycle the CO2 (ex: put it into a greenhouse, where CO2 can help plants grow faster), that's carbon that didn't exist in our atmosphere before... since it was dug up from underground. We're seeking to minimize damage here.

 

[Shrek]

Electrolysis implies we have electricity, at which point just go with electric cars.

 

[Panther_Seraphin]

Why not solar?

They say the Moon has tritium (generated by radiation that reaches the surface), the Earth not.

Energy usage tends to peak when Solar is generating electricity so there isnt much spare capacity there to make Hydrogen in the amounts needed to make it viable.

Using Nuclear you could run a Nuclear plant at 100% safe load between maintenace/fuelings and when the demand disappears overnight etc you can dedicate that to mass H2 production. While using Solar to boost/cover increase loads during the day.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Electrolysis implies we have electricity, at which point just go with electric cars.

1. Much faster to fill up with Hydrogen than electric. H2 is even faster than gasoline actually, especially for large trucks.

2. High-speed electric chargers are very, very, very bad for our grid. We absolutely cannot sustain daytime superchargers. Not only are these devices sucking hundreds-of-kW over 30-minute periods, they will be doing so during peak daytime hours (ie: when traffic is heaviest) on the average.

3. Hydrogen, especially electrolysis, can be done to use "off-peak" energy. Which for all practical purposes, is free (or at least is very cheap). There are many times where off-peak energy goes even negative, because our USA grid is starting to become unstable (ie: utility companies will pay other companies if they can "guarantee" a load-source and/or a load-reduction for stability).

4. Hydrogen-energy is largely stored in steel containers, rather than lithium-ion batteries. Large scale storage of hydrogen, be it in trucks, busses, or H2 stations, will be far cheaper than building out electrical batteries. In fact, this has been demonstrated in a commercially successful project already: https://www.gmhydrotec.com/product/public/us/en/hydrotec/Home.html

Its actually better to ship-in H2 in many cases (IE: Army bases and far-away places), rather than to connect up to the electrical grid. And moving H2 through steel containers is surprisingly effective in terms of energy transferred.

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No matter how you cut it, using steel-and-concrete containers to store (and move) pressurized H2 is a more sustainable future than digging up Lithium, Cobalt, rare-earths, and other such mining operations. We can store more energy in steel containers than Lithium-ion containers, cheaper and more effectively.

 

[simlife]

The more I look at what Toyota has done (and is doing) with a hydrogen powered internal combustion engine even... I just don't get it. I know storage costs of hydrogen are expensive, but if it were scaled up, wouldn't the cost dramatically lower? The Boring Company could dig giant underground storage facilities (its cold as crap if you dig far enough down)... and store the tanks of hydrogen there, and a driver will simply drive down a ramp, get the hydrogen tank replaced, and drive off.

I feel like clean energy with no messy batteries even... is staring us right in the face, why is Toyota taking a risk on it if there is no possible future for it? I don't get it. Someone educate me.

(reason I bring this up is because I was just reading recently how 5% of all electric car batteries are recycled, who knows what happens to rest... not to mention they are not good to begin with...)

If all world governments got on board and were like ok all... we highly miscalculated climate change, things need to change within 5 years... all mass production changed to this hydrogen idea... would it be impossible? Or would it scale?

why ask about a major world subject like billions of ppl world without doing any math or eshaerch are u just asking randos about this?!??! i mean the world isgoing to end thantaos is right... if you look at the las 900 years of the worlrd pop even if u are a werido on religion tech didnt exsist and now 100X more ppl are polotuing 400X faster and no one cares our record highs vs recorde lows is 10x.... 10.... how are the gen z ppl not worried????!?... oh wait they lit fallow on media and other stuff milllionare to billionares.... making them richer in the process why... i know 0 60k or less who can tell me why a good why the faloow a 300k+ person... can u?

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

1. Much faster to fill up with Hydrogen than electric. H2 is even faster than gasoline actually, especially for large trucks.

2. High-speed electric chargers are very, very, very bad for our grid. We absolutely cannot sustain daytime superchargers. Not only are these devices sucking hundreds-of-kW over 30-minute periods, they will be doing so during peak daytime hours (ie: when traffic is heaviest) on the average.

3. Hydrogen, especially electrolysis, can be done to use "off-peak" energy. Which for all practical purposes, is free (or at least is very cheap). There are many times where off-peak energy goes even negative, because our USA grid is starting to become unstable (ie: utility companies will pay other companies if they can "guarantee" a load-source and/or a load-reduction for stability).

4. Hydrogen-energy is largely stored in steel containers, rather than lithium-ion batteries. Large scale storage of hydrogen, be it in trucks, busses, or H2 stations, will be far cheaper than building out electrical batteries. In fact, this has been demonstrated in a commercially successful project already: https://www.gmhydrotec.com/product/public/us/en/hydrotec/Home.html

Its actually better to ship-in H2 in many cases (IE: Army bases and far-away places), rather than to connect up to the electrical grid. And moving H2 through steel containers is surprisingly effective in terms of energy transferred.

-------

No matter how you cut it, using steel-and-concrete containers to store (and move) pressurized H2 is a more sustainable future than digging up Lithium, Cobalt, rare-earths, and other such mining operations. We can store more energy in steel containers than Lithium-ion containers, cheaper and more effectively.

You bring up some very good points. Not trying to argue, but there is some other aspects to consider for each point you make.

1. Electric can be charged at home overnight.

2. Fuel cells and electrolysis are inefficient compared to batteries - and are unlikely to ever catch up. The overall load would be reduced, and the peak usage would be covered by the solution below:

3. Energy storage. Electrolysis and fuel cells to create and use power, or something more efficient such as pumped water.

4. Modern batteries are safer in a vehicle, and the extra efficiency at passenger vehicle scale is fairly small.

Many off-grid areas, especially army bases, would be better served by micronuclear, and the military is not super fast to adopt new technology (outside of weapons or communication systems), especially if it has reduced survivability in a combat situation.

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New battery technologies being developed could turn batteries into a clear winner in this situation.

As an example:

Developer Of Aluminum-Ion Battery Claims It Charges 60 Times Faster Than Lithium-Ion, Offering EV Range Breakthrough

The graphene aluminum-ion battery cells from the Brisbane-based Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) are claimed to charge up to 60 times faster than the best lithium-ion cells and hold more energy.

www.forbes.com

Despite all of this, I just can't get a good feeling about the future of the battery - powered electric car. First, they seem to be all completely nutty (cybertruck, elio) and/or serious halo products (F150 Lightning). The main push is about ridiculous features or performance, and nobody seems to want to compete on price.

With 5 minutes of research, I find that for around $25k USD I could convert a car to full electric with decent performance and range paying full retail prices for the parts. Yet the cheapest electric car on the market is over $28k, and the reliability of used cars is strongly suspect. Also, replacing battery packs is very expensive.

 

[dragontamer5788]

New battery technologies being developed could turn batteries into a clear winner in this situation.

Hydrogen Fuel cells are simply batteries where you replace the electrolyte at a pump. If we can master electrolysis of Hydrogen, its effectively a battery. Electricity to turn water into Hydrogen. Hydrogen inside of a fuel cell to turn back into electricity and run an electric motor.

This is one of the most promising technologies being developed right now. I see it as simply another form of electric power, especially when you consider how Fuel Cell cars actually work (ie: Hydrogen into electricity, electricity into motors).

 

[theFOoL]

What about one day cars can run on water...

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

Hydrogen Fuel cells are simply batteries where you replace the electrolyte at a pump. If we can master electrolysis of Hydrogen, its effectively a battery. Electricity to turn water into Hydrogen. Hydrogen inside of a fuel cell to turn back into electricity and run an electric motor.

This is one of the most promising technologies being developed right now. I see it as simply another form of electric power, especially when you consider how Fuel Cell cars actually work (ie: Hydrogen into electricity, electricity into motors).

Yes, however fuel cells are more of an issue for efficiency - they run around 55%.

One method I see being possible is gas (petrol) stations turning into decentralized electrolysis locations and just pumping H2 like gasoline.

What about one day cars can run on water...

Micronuclear to the next level, just add cooling water...

 

[dragontamer5788]

Yes, however fuel cells are more of an issue for efficiency - they run around 55%.

Batteries aren't perfectly 100% efficient either. In fact, pumped-hydro is only about 80% efficient.

So long as the price of off-peak electricity is (55%/80%) == 68% (ie: 32% lower) than the price of on-peak electricity, then H2 electrolysis is actually as good, or better, than even pumped-hydro economically. And lo-and-behold, off-peak energy is in fact that much cheaper (or more).

In fact, off-peak in my area is 7-cents/kW-hr, while on-peak is 30+-cents / kW-hr. So off-peak is 23% the cost of on-peak energy prices. Plenty of opportunity to energy arbitrage and make money even with only 55% efficiency (and future tech will improve). So its economically feasible today, and will only get better.

When a nuclear power plant is running at night, it is making too much electricity. Almost no one uses electricity at night. Therefore, we use that excess for H2 electrolysis.