[HN Gopher] Hyundai Nexo sets new world record 887.5 km travelle...
___________________________________________________________________
Hyundai Nexo sets new world record 887.5 km travelled on single
tank of hydrogen
Author : teleforce
Score : 267 points
Date : 2021-05-18 12:19 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.h2-view.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.h2-view.com)
| wglb wrote:
| Keep this in mind when thinking about hydrogen:
| https://www.tinaja.com/h2gas01w.shtml
| p1mrx wrote:
| I'm curious whether https://proton.energy/ will pan out. They
| claim to be developing a process to extract hydrogen from
| natural gas wells, leaving the CO2 underground. If that's
| possible, it would basically make hydrogen a fuel.
| wglb wrote:
| Possibly.
|
| I do worry about
|
| >Natural gas pipelines can transport large volumes of
| hydrogen without any hardware changes.
|
| as hydrogen exposure makes metal brittle.
|
| There are other moderately serious problems--hydrogen flame,
| unlike that of almost any hydrocarbon, is invisible.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| Since "tank" isn't a unit of measure, I suppose anyone could
| trivially break the record with a larger tank.
|
| From the article:
|
| > The Nexo consumed 6.27kg of H2
|
| For comparison with the other production H2 cars:
|
| Toyota Mirai: 5.6kg
|
| Honda Clarity: 5.0kg
|
| Seems like a promising technology. My understanding is that the
| current blocker is infrastructure. It's hard to pressurize up to
| 10,000 PSI, so many facilities are only able to refill to 60-80%
| capacity.
| contriban wrote:
| > anyone could trivially break the record
|
| "Make it bigger" doesn't really work in cars, otherwise range
| anxiety wouldn't exist as a concept.
|
| The record still makes sense because the Hyundai Nexo is
| commercially available and it's not a prototype with a
| comically-large _just for the record_ tank.
| 542458 wrote:
| "Make it bigger" does work, but it increasingly stops
| resembling a car. Check out the range this one can get on a
| single tank of hydrogen!
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas-Centaur
|
| I don't know what you'd consider the max range here to be,
| but it's definitely better than 887km.
| beckingz wrote:
| I think the space shuttle may win for most kilometers
| traveled on a single hydrogen tank.
| 542458 wrote:
| I would have citied that, but they use solid boosters
| which makes the number messier... I could get a lot of
| range on a Tesla if I was allowed to use solid fuel
| boosters!
| 0x64 wrote:
| Shuttle had solid-fuel boosters and hypergolic thrusters
| for on-orbit maneuvering. The Delta IV Heavy, on the
| other hand, is a fully hydrogen-powered rocket: three
| common cores, with an RL10-powered upper stage. It also
| launched the Parker Solar Probe, which has been doing
| rounds around the sun for a while now.
| [deleted]
| dweekly wrote:
| Excellent range. And to the point of the comment, said
| linked vehicle is a production vehicle where the tank was
| not added for the sole purpose of breaking a record, so...
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| hwillis wrote:
| While it's true that you _could_ add probably double the H2
| storage to most HFC vehicles, I think this is the correct
| take. The Mirai 's fuel tank is 37.25 gallons/141 liters vs
| 12-15 gallons/45-55 liters of gasoline for most cars.
|
| Tank capacity only helps so much. You may have to fill up
| half as often, but having to go out of your way for a special
| station is annoying. ICE vehicles could easily have 40 gallon
| tanks, and eventually FCVs won't have these incredibly high
| ranges.
| donkeyd wrote:
| > but having to go out of your way for a special station is
| annoying
|
| I went back from a Tesla to a diesel car. I hate going out
| of my way to special stations to fill up my car with
| diesel. I much preferred unplugging in the morning and
| plugging back in in the evening.
| toast0 wrote:
| > ICE vehicles could easily have 40 gallon tanks
|
| My first vehicle had a 33 gallon tank. Not much room for
| anything bigger; of course mileage was awful. My most
| efficient car can do about 600 miles on a 14 gallon tank;
| if it had room for a 33 gallon tank, it could go halfway
| across the country on one tank.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > "Make it bigger" doesn't really work in cars, otherwise
| range anxiety wouldn't exist as a concept.
|
| Sure it does. Just look at Tesla, at the time EVs had 24kwh
| or smaller batteries and they more than doubled that to give
| reasonable ranges.
| contriban wrote:
| My point is that there's a limit to it. Teslas still don't
| have the same range as a gas car in the same
| category/price. They could increase it but then I don't
| think they can sell a lot of $150k Model Ss.
|
| At some point you'll have more drawbacks than it's worth it
| (size, price, weight, efficiency, safety).
| _ph_ wrote:
| Beyond the missing expensive infrastructure, the big problem is
| energy efficiency. Moving forward, we have to switch every
| energy production to renewables. But for the same amount of
| electric energy produced, an electric car gets about 3x the
| mileage than producing "green" hydrogen and powering fuel cell
| cars with it. Hydrogen means at least 3x the electricity cost
| and for many years to come, we are going to struggle producing
| enough clean electricity in the first place.
|
| Also the infrastructure for electricity basically is there,
| mostly needed are plain outlets at all long-term parking spots.
| And of course, one can charge an electric car from your own
| solar.
| grogenaut wrote:
| I enjoy how you are taking all of the arguments people used
| against BEVs in favor of gas and using them against HV. The
| irony is strong in these threads.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Sorry, I don't get what you mean. Which arguments are you
| referring to and what is ironic?
| DeRock wrote:
| BEVs are much more energy efficient than ICE. When was the
| argument that they are not ever used?
| JPKab wrote:
| The key to a hydrogen economy will rely on creation of
| hydrogen in locations with extremely abundant electricity
| like Iceland. The next step is shipping it like it's LNG.
|
| Not a small order.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Yes, those locations will play a huge role in securing the
| global energy supply. However, the hydrogen will be
| desperately needed in the industry (e.g. steel production)
| and for supporting the electric grid in times of both low
| wind and solar. No good reason to waste it around the year
| driving cars.
| olivermarks wrote:
| My understanding is that hydrogen may be most useful for
| heavy good vehicles rather than cars. EVs could be great
| for short range urban delivery vans etc but long haul
| infrastructure may be built around hydrogen if the supply
| chain is viable.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Might, but if the Tesla Semi becomes a reality, the
| potential market for hydrogen in trucks becomes much
| smaller too.
| olivermarks wrote:
| The dynamics of moving heavy loads long distances has
| never favored electric power. Diesel currently powers
| tractor semis because it produces more energy than
| gasoline and creates much more low speed continuous load
| torque.
|
| EVs are well suited to light loads and short distances,
| rapid acceleration and altitude change but are not well
| suited to long range hauling of heavy loads due to the
| enormous energy required.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Do you mean similar to how we do the same with LNG or oil
| from Alaska?
| danogentili wrote:
| > The key to a hydrogen economy will rely on wasting energy
| on creation of hydrogen in locations with extremely
| abundant electricity.
|
| Honestly, this sounds just as bad as setting up bitcoin
| mines in places with high rates of renewables, to avoid
| directly throwing tons of CO2 in the atmosphere. Even if
| you have loads of clean energy, that's no reason to waste
| it when there are more efficient ways of using it (lithium
| batteries, PoS).
|
| Not to mention the fact that every watt of wasted green
| energy can't used to replace a watt of coal energy.
| mminer237 wrote:
| I don't think you can feasibly ship all your electric
| batteries to be charged up in Iceland.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > don't think you can feasibly ship all your electric
| batteries to be charged up in Iceland.
|
| No need if the Icelink DC link gets built.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelink
| JPKab wrote:
| I don't think there's a scarcity issue with electricity
| in places like Iceland where volcanic activity provides
| massive areas of land where electricity can be freely and
| easily generated. The issue is the ability to transport
| said electricity without massive losses.
| konschubert wrote:
| The bottleneck is not kwh of electricity produced, but
| storage. Hydrogen cards do well on that bottleneck.
| _ph_ wrote:
| No, the do worse than electric cars in that respect. The
| hydrogen production facilities are very expensive, so they
| have to run 24/7 at the same load. This is exactly what
| mixed badly with the varying supply of renewables. With
| electric cars, you just plug them in at home/at work and
| they charge whenever there is an oversupply of electricity.
| Offering special remote controlled charging outlets is
| going to be a game changer for the grid.
| donkeyd wrote:
| If I were to store solar in my electric car as a form of
| temporary storage, I get probably between 80 and 90% of
| what was generated by my cells delivered back to my house.
| All I need to do this are some slight alterations to my
| electrical system.
|
| If I wanted to do this with my hydrogen car, I would need
| to get some expensive electrolysis station next to my house
| and I would get maybe 50% of stored energy back after
| electrolysis. I would also need to get the compressor etc
| maintained regularly.
|
| Also, if you mean storage for actual driving, as in
| possible range, there's hardly a need for more range than a
| Tesla can already deliver... For most people. The biggest
| change to make it more feasible for pretty much all people
| is charging speed and that keeps improving too.
| eloff wrote:
| Tesla doesn't allow this because of the wear on the
| batteries, but it seems like a killer application for EVs
| and rooftop solar to be able to combine them like that.
| Mvandenbergh wrote:
| The question is not whether you pay a massive efficiency
| penalty for storing electricity as hydrogen (obviously, yes)
| but whether there are applications where you are effectively
| buying a set of useful properties for the losses you are
| "spending".
|
| For displacing existing grey hydrogen from the chemical
| industry, a possible reducing agent in steel making, and
| other high temperature industrial processes it's pretty clear
| that the answer will be yes.
|
| I happen to think that it is really unlikely that the answer
| for cars and vans will ever be yes, even if hydrogen could be
| made cheaply.
|
| Whether it will have a role in other applications depends on
| a few things:
|
| First, the structure of the future electricity mix. In order
| to ensure that there is enough electricity at every moment,
| we have to do a mix of things: -"over" build variable output
| renewables so that the troughs in production are higher
| -Intra-day demand side response -Intra-day storage (almost
| certainly batteries) -Dispatchable renewables like hydro
| -Dispatchable sort-of renewables based on biomass
| -Dispatchable fossil fuels (with CCS) -Load-following nuclear
|
| The reason why people think about hydrogen and other exotic
| technologies is that many of the technologies on that list
| either have limited available scope (hydro, biomass), are
| probably not really carbon-neutral (biomass, CCS), rely on
| unproven tech at scale (CCS, new nuclear designs), or have
| exceptionally high capital costs (any new nuclear but
| especially when at low load factors, CCS especially at low
| load factors).
|
| So what most simulations show you're left with as a low-cost
| mix for most days is a combination of the first five. That
| still leaves you with two problems: -What do you do if the
| average output net of load is very different between seasons?
| -How do you provision for a 1:20 yr weather system without
| making your system vastly more expensive?
|
| and one opportunity (which is also a challenge): -variable
| renewables are cheap and getting cheaper so cost-optimal
| generation mixes build a lot more than needed for the average
| day in order to keep use of expensive biomass and limited
| hydro capacity to a minimum. As a result, electricity has
| low/no marginal value a lot of the time.
|
| Second, the future cost of electrolysers. At current capex
| levels, they need to be run at max load all the time and
| still produce expensive hydrogen. Genuinely low costs like
| what BNEF thinks might be possible ($100/kW) allow you to run
| for only 20% or less of the hours in the year and scoop all
| the excess electricity up.
|
| Third, the cost of alternative solutions in the areas where
| hydrogen is currently being considered as this reduces the
| value of any hydrogen produced.
|
| I do agree that for passenger cars it's just not going to
| happen.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The amount actually traveled on a single tank is indeed
| meaningless - Teslas can go a thousand miles if you go up a
| mountain, end up at 10% battery, then charge to & past 100% on
| the way down the mountain via regen. Improving overall
| efficiency should be what is strived for.
| Widdershin wrote:
| Assuming you're starting with a significant amount of
| altitude, otherwise the laws of thermodynamics would like a
| word
| margalabargala wrote:
| They could be grabbing a bunch of rocks at the top and
| putting them in the car for the ride down.
|
| That worked for this one:
| https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1124478_world-s-
| largest...
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Sounds like you're talking about distribution infrastructure,
| which is true but in my mind the biggest issue is efficiency.
| Storing and using H2 isn't very efficient, and current
| production techniques for H2 emit as much or more carbon as
| Diesel.
| nobleach wrote:
| This is true. The current production techniques are basically
| using water. This is producing a ton of CO2 - the very
| opposite of what we're hoping to attain by running Hydrogen-
| powered vehicles. The hope is that we're able to leverage
| methane from animal droppings in the near future. Toyota is
| leading the research on this I believe.
| epistasis wrote:
| Current production methods use natural gas, specifically
| methane. Animal droppings will never supply enough methane
| to be a significant source of energy.
|
| The goal is to eventually produce hydrogen from water,
| through electrolysis. We have tech for this, but it's very
| expensive compared to our methane methods. Current
| electrolyzers are used for industrial applications. Spain
| is currently planning a huge deployment of electrolyzers to
| make ammonia, mostly for fertilizer.
|
| And honestly, electrolyzed hydrogen will mostly be used in
| industry, and maybe some long-haul transport, but almost
| certainly will never make sense for cars. We will probably
| see hydrogen converted to methanol or ammonia or something
| else that's easier to handle than hydrogen. Though I do
| hear that hydrogen could be used with current ocean
| freighters with only a 10% loss of capacity, so there's
| some potential there.
| Skunkleton wrote:
| Animal droppings are not our primary source of methane.
| Not sure if that was meant to be sarcastic.
|
| Electrolysis is expensive and energy inefficient. It is
| unlikely to be a primary source of hydrogen unless there
| is some breakthrough.
|
| If the limiting factor is clean electricity production,
| it makes sense to use it more efficiently with a BEV than
| it does to use it inefficiently with a HFCV.
| bildung wrote:
| All true, though to be fair CO2 savings with electric cars
| also only range, depending on car and country (i.e. local
| infrastructure and means of electricity production), from 0%
| to 35% of lifetime CO2 emissions of an equivalent ICE car).
| https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EV-
| life...
| devmor wrote:
| I wouldn't consider up to 35% to be worth of the
| disqualifier "only" - that's a pretty huge reduction, even
| if we'd like it to be much more.
| bildung wrote:
| Absolutely, I meant that the gains made by electric cars
| aren't that huge that the inefficiency of h2 production
| automatically disqualifies that approach.
|
| (I do feel the need to point out that public transport
| saves much more though, 85% for Hamburg, Germany, so
| again this heavily depends on the local situation.)
| canadianfella wrote:
| Only?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Gack... one of my pet peeves: 90% of my friends compare car
| millage in terms of "how much money I spend to refuel",
| completely ignoring:
|
| 1. Significantly different tank sizes - 53L to 70L on regular
| cars.
|
| 2. Different prices of gas (suburbs vs downtown, 87 vs 91
| octane, etc)
|
| 3. Different habits - some refuel at 1/3 left, 1/4 left, 50km
| left, yellow light on, needle at the end of the gauge, etc
|
| It drives me absolutely bonkers banana berserk, but... nothing
| I've been able to do so far :-/
| hydrogtehd wrote:
| You might have poor friends who have cash flow problems. When
| I was a kid my parents wouldn't fill up the tank, they'd put
| L20 000 in it ($15). About half way up. They couldn't afford
| more.
|
| For people like this, how much the car costs per stop is
| important. Especially if a re-fueling typically occurs after
| the next pay period.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's not scientific at all, but for most people gas mileage
| comes down to "how often do I have to go to the gas station".
|
| Which is why once electric cars passed a certain point they
| become effectively infinite mileage as far as people are
| concerned (as they never have to think about charging as it's
| always charged overnight).
|
| Similar for how for most people there are only two speeds of
| computers - I have to wait for it vs I don't have to wait for
| it.
| LaserToy wrote:
| I kind of agree. The only thing that matters for me is a cost
| of ownership in $$$ over some period of time.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| I have never heard of anyone judging fuel cost outside of
| miles/kilometers per gallon/liters.
|
| Where the hell do you live
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Hmm, slightly different measurement. They're not talking
| about "sticker price of fuel at the gas station", so not
| "fuel cost".
|
| Rather, if you ask them casually in an informal setting
| "Does your car get good milleage", they'll say things like
| "Yeah, it only costs me $50 to fill it up!" or my personal
| favourite, "Yeah, I only have to fill it once per week" -->
| the amount of unspoken variables in that one just boggles
| the mind, but goes to another commenter's point of
| "practical perspective". "How often I need to fill it up"
| is probably a sane, pragmatical way to think of milleage.
| It may in fact cut to the point faster than saying "it does
| 11L / 100km", because while it answers some questions in
| abstract, it doesn't actually answer the practical
| considerations of how often I need to refuel / how far can
| I get on a tank.
|
| As mentioned in my another reply, for me at least, it
| hasn't been a factor of where I live but variety of company
| I keep -- on average I'd say my Comsci/Sci-major friends
| don't do it.
|
| But I'm currently in Canada, where we do indeed as per
| stereotype, measure distance in units of time ("How far is
| your work?" "About 20 minutes" ComSciMajor response:
| "GAAACK!")
| kolinko wrote:
| amazing... I literally never heard of anyone using that
| metric. Everyone I've ever known uses liters/100km...
| Closi wrote:
| I hate to tell you this but 90% of your friends are silly,
| all mine talk about miles per gallon.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>I hate to tell you this but 90% of your friends are
| silly,
|
| Quoted out of context like that, that's probably the best
| compliment on living life right that I've had in a long
| time! :->
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| ... It's fascinating reading the comments here and other
| places that go between "that's crazy never heard of it
| couldn't imagine you're making it up" and "yup seen it / do
| it too" :-D
|
| But basically for many of my non-science-major friends, it's
| money per tank or at best kilometers per refueling. Re
| another (for some reason dead?) comment, there may indeed be
| a correlation between cash flow and tendency to use "money
| per tank", haven't thought about it that extensively. And
| then whether education is a confounding or causal variable to
| either of those axis, it gets complex.
|
| Location wise: Toronto Canada, Winnipeg Canada, and Fairmont
| Minnesota is where I've observed it, FWIW.
| Tarsul wrote:
| he, this reminds me of a recent interview with Daniel
| Kahneman (of behavioral science nobel fame) where he closes
| with saying he works on the "how the inability to solve the
| famous "bat and ball problem" [bat and ball cost 1,10
| together, the bat costs 1 dollar more than the ball, how
| much do they cost each?] correlates with belief in God and
| that 9/11 was a conspiracy."
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/may/16/daniel-
| kahnema...
| giantg2 wrote:
| Hydride tanks don't require those high pressures. Other than
| nuclear arms treaties, is there a technical reason they don't
| use those instead?
| WJW wrote:
| That's a hell of a "Other than" you have there.
| tyingq wrote:
| Long fill times? This commercially available one says 48
| hours to re-charge it.
|
| https://www.fuelcellstore.com/hydrogen-equipment/hydrogen-
| st...
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, but ideally they'd be swappable. Similar to propane
| tank exchanges. Or even how some EVs were thinking about
| battery swap stations.
| jandrese wrote:
| Aren't they really heavy? This is also why swappable
| batteries in EVs never got off of the ground. You need a
| crane to do it and that's too much effort for a top-up.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I thought the tanks were much lighter than the batteries.
| I think they use multiple smaller tanks due to the rate
| of release of the hydrogen.
|
| I don't know. I haven't done a lot of research since it
| will be at least another decade until a decent vehicle
| suiting my criteria comes out (electric or hydrogen). No
| point in me even looking at it now.
| csharptwdec19 wrote:
| Ehh, I feel like there's some challenges there.
|
| In the Toyota Mirai, for example, the tank is located
| under the passenger's seats, in a nice little 'braced'
| area. Likely chosen because it's the least likely
| location for the tank to get damaged in a collision. Also
| the challenge of either having to 'choose' between a
| 'swap' tank and a 'fill' tank, or a more complex tank
| that does both.
| tyingq wrote:
| The tank I linked to says it stores at 400psi, and the
| material data sheet indicates it doesn't vent the
| hydrogen in a way that creates a significant fire hazard.
| So I don't think these need the same kind of protection
| as a high-psi tank. Though I'm sure there are challenges,
| or we would have heard about them being proposed.
| toast0 wrote:
| Feels like the infrastructure and on car issues are going to be
| similar to CNG, but worse. Need new fuel stations, high
| pressure storage, no existing delivery network (worse than CNG;
| although CNG pipelines are much lower pressure than vehicles
| need, so you needed a compressor at the fueling point); and the
| killer --- the vehicle tanks expire and replacement may not be
| economically feasible, in which case your car's value
| evaporates when the tank expires (generally 15 years after tank
| manufacture); this is what happened to most CNG cars.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| 10,000PSI hydraulics are rapidly becoming cookie cutter
| commodity parts. Once you have the supply chain for all the
| little crap that nickles and dimes you the rest is a lot
| cheaper. Having industry expertise at working at those
| pressures really has a huge multiplier effect on everything
| else.
|
| Building a system to plumb stuff from A to B at a pressure
| nobody uses is expensive. Calling up a sales rep and asking for
| slightly modifications on an existing product line so it can be
| used with your product is pennies by comparison.
| snypher wrote:
| I can picture how the conversation would go. There's some
| pretty big differences between hydrogen and hydraulic fluid,
| probably to the point of whole component redesign. The little
| crap here (springs and o-rings) would be completely
| different.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| You're not wrong but "can you make hose X with material Y"
| or "can I get valve body P with spring rate Q" is a hell of
| a lot better than "we need custom hoses" or "is this
| casting good to 10kpsi?".
| simcop2387 wrote:
| The big problem with hydrogen is just how small it is. It
| likes to leach through stuff hold just about everything
| else. You very well might need custom hoses, custom
| seals, and custom materials for the castings just to
| safely store it at 10kpsi. It'll leak through solid steel
| containers that will otherwise hold helium fine.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Even worse than simply leaking, hydrogen can diffuse into
| the crystal structure of metals and cause havoc with the
| material properties. It's definitely not as friendly as
| hydraulic oil.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Exactly. This is a major problem with anything hydrogen
| related, especially if it has an expected lifespan of a
| decade+.
| m4rtink wrote:
| And once it gets the thing all brittle and it starts
| leaking, you won't see it burn as it produces a lot of IR
| but almost no visible light.
| baybal2 wrote:
| How many people would be ready to drive a hydrogen bomb?
| hydrogtehd wrote:
| "Hydrogen bomb" is a little exaggerated. But to your
| detractors:
|
| "More than a gasoline bomb, hopefully. Gasoline is more
| dangerous."
|
| Citation needed. How is gasoline more dangerous? While
| gasoline is very dangerous, gasoline is a liquid and will
| not burn until vaporized; Gasoline is dangerous because it
| vaporizes quickly. H2 is already a gas and has a
| ridiculously low spark energy. Furthermore H2 is under
| pressure.
|
| Gas does have a lower auto-ignition T than H2, that's no
| fun, but overall H2 scores worse than gasoline.
|
| "Do you ride on a CNG city bus?"
|
| CNG stands for Compressed Natural Gas; i.e. methane.
| Methane is a lot easier and safer to use than H2 because
| it:
|
| - Packs a lot more energy vs. P so the tanks don't have to
| be as strong - Doesn't embrittle the container - Much
| higher spark energy (in fact, CH4 is kinda hard to light) -
| Smaller flammability range (i.e. mixture with air that will
| ignite) - lower auto-ignition T
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammability_limit
| wglb wrote:
| And you can't see a hydrogen flame.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Do you ride on a CNG city bus?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Much higher activation energy, not to be compared.
| hydrogtehd wrote:
| There's no comparison in the risk of methane vs. H2. The
| only thing H2 has going for it, safety wise, is that it
| disperses very quickly.
|
| Otherwise methane is insanely safe, safer in all regards
| except pressurization than gasoline.
| goodpoint wrote:
| More than a gasoline bomb, hopefully. Gasoline is more
| dangerous.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Few kg of hydrogen are surely more dangerous than 50 kg
| of gasoline.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The total amount isn't as much a problem as is the
| activation energy. Hydrogen will explode when you look at
| it cross eyed. For gasoline you will have to do some
| work.
| MayeulC wrote:
| 120 MJ/kg for H2 vs 46 MJ/kg for gasoline.
|
| Both are explosive, so I think (I'm no authority on this)
| we can compare those values directly, without taking into
| account the storage pressure.
|
| Source:
| https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2005/MichelleFung.shtml
| https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/ArthurGolnik.shtml
| jandrese wrote:
| Gasoline will not explode in normal conditions. Even in
| an accident it is pretty safe, although the risk of fire
| must always be considered.
|
| A 10k PSI H2 tank is a straight up bomb. A gasoline tank
| can start a nasty fire but nobody is going to be torn
| apart by shrapnel or killed by the overpressure wave in
| an accident. Gasoline cars don't explode like they do in
| the movies. It must also be noted that the large
| batteries in EVs are also a fire hazard and in some ways
| worse than gasoline. For gasoline to act like a bomb it
| has to be aerosolized first and then ignited. In an
| accident there's not much that could achieve that. With a
| high pressure H2 tank something that cracked it open and
| allowed all of the H2 to be released at once would
| instantly create the conditions for a massive explosion.
| All it would need is a single spark.
| adrianN wrote:
| I'm relatively sure that a tank of hydrogen at ridiculous
| pressure makes a nicer fireball than a tank of gas at no
| pressure.
| hydrogtehd wrote:
| No, it isn't. Gasoline is dangerous, but it's a liquid.
| H2 is a gas, under extreme pressure, and with a very low
| spark energy.
|
| The spark (ignition) energy is very important safety
| wise. Nothing will light without an ignition source. In
| fact hydrogen is more dangerous wrt to gasoline than
| gasoline is wrt to flour (yes, flour can explode). That
| is:
|
| Flour:gasoline < gasoline:hydrogen
|
| Hydrogen is dangerous. And that's fine.
|
| [1] http://www.explosionsolutions.co.uk/110411020.pdf
| ratsmack wrote:
| There is a great concern about the safety of Lithium batteries
| because of the fire hazard, yet we are pursuing a much more
| dangerous technology with Hydrogen with very little gain in
| performance. Also, it still takes a significant amount of energy
| to produce the hydrogen.
| Keyframe wrote:
| Isn't driving on a tank full of hydrogen like super dangerous?
| Vvector wrote:
| Compared to a tank full of gasoline?
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Yes. Gasoline has a relatively narrow ignition range, it has
| much less rigorous sealing requirements, and it burns with a
| flame that's visible in daylight.
|
| The problem is that we can't easily make gasoline with solar
| panels and water.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Actually it is possible to make gasoline with solar panels,
| water and carbon dioxide from the air.
|
| Making synthetic gasoline was already possible before WWII
| and that was used a lot by Germany.
|
| It is true that making hydrogen is easier, because making
| gasoline requires additional steps and equipment, but due
| to the large disadvantages of storing and handling
| hydrogen, making gasoline is nonetheless preferable and it
| does not require any infrastructure change.
|
| While hydrogen is preferred currently for room-temperature
| fuel cells, for the moment that seems like a dead end,
| because the current catalysts are much too expensive.
|
| High-temperature fuel cells can use gasoline, so hydrogen
| no longer has advantages.
|
| Even if one would not choose gasoline, there are still
| other much better ways to chemically store solar energy
| than hydrogen, e.g. ammonia or methanol.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Or just charge a battery with the solar panels at much
| greater efficiency.
| adrian_b wrote:
| For short-term storage a rechargeable battery is
| certainly preferable.
|
| For long-term storage, the battery auto-discharges, so
| the efficiency drops quickly with the storage time, until
| it becomes much less than for storing the energy by
| synthesizing some appropriate chemical compound.
|
| For storing solar energy, both short-term storage (e.g.
| for a day or a week), like rechargeable batteries, and
| long-term storage (e.g. for a year or more), like
| synthetic gasoline, are needed.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Lithium self discharges at 1-2% per month, not an issue
| in most circumstances, not sure where it would be an
| issue, if it was just have a maintaining solar panel
| nearby.
| mda wrote:
| Driving a car tank full of gasoline or thousands of lithium
| batteries is also dangerous, there are ways to reduce risk.
| Keyframe wrote:
| There's dangerous and then there's super dangerous!
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| I shouldn't think it's much more dangerous than other
| pressurized flammable gases. Those pressure vessels are
| designed for safety contrary to what you see in movies. I'd be
| about as concerned as I am driving around with a tank of highly
| flammable gasoline.
| makomk wrote:
| Hydrogen forms explosive mixtures with air at a much wider
| range of concentrations than typical hydrocarbons and has a
| nasty tendency to permeate straight through a lot of
| materials.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| It's lighter than air though so it won't pool in low areas
| and if a pressure vessel won't contain it it probably
| diffuses through car interiors / dry wall and vapor barrier
| pretty quickly. What's the rate at which it escapes?
| Probably pretty slow.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It can be very safe if using hydride tanks. I think there are
| some international arms controls related to hydrogen bombs that
| makes hydride tanks difficult to produce.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Time to watch some of these
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hydrogen+tank+b...
|
| (not joking, it's useful to see worst case scenarios)
| louthy wrote:
| I'd be much more concerned about Lithium batteries, when
| they're exposed to air, they reeeeally go up fast.
| cesarb wrote:
| Probably just as dangerous as driving with a tank of
| pressurized natural gas, which is already very common (for
| instance, where I live, nearly all taxis are converted to run
| on pressurized natural gas, since it's cheaper than gasoline).
| fyhhvff wrote:
| Just to put this into context, my 2003 diesel car with a 68 litre
| tank can drive ~7-800km.
| xdrosenheim wrote:
| More context: My Hyundai i20 can go almost 700km on a 40L tank.
| (I don't drive efficiently)
| MattRix wrote:
| What is the appeal of a hydrogen car vs an eletric car? The range
| appears to be similar, but being able to charge at home is so
| much more convenient.
| roel_v wrote:
| I live in a city center, no driveway. My neighbour with an
| electric i3 runs a charging cord across the sidewalk, I'm not
| going to do that, ever. I'd much prefer a hydrogen car I can
| fill up someplace else over requiring plugging in my car every
| day.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Hydrogen has a great energy density, that's why it is used in
| rockets. It may have similar range as battery electric cars but
| it can scale better.
|
| It can be refueled in minutes, like gas cars.
|
| And the economy is based on using "waste" renewable energy. The
| problem is that solar panels and wind turbines don't produce
| energy when we need it the most (see: duck curve). The idea is
| to store that energy as hydrogen and use it in vehicles.
|
| For commuters with a garage and a charging spot, batteries are
| more convenient but I think big trucks can benefit more from
| hydrogen.
|
| Now the big question is, can we modify these hydrogen trucks to
| "roll steam" at these pesky Teslas.
| bkor wrote:
| > And the economy is based on using "waste" renewable energy.
| The problem is that solar panels and wind turbines don't
| produce energy when we need it the most (see: duck curve).
| The idea is to store that energy as hydrogen and use it in
| vehicles.
|
| I've seem this statement loads of times before. But actually,
| Hydrogen production is not economical if you do not produce
| it continuously. Meaning, it does not make economical sense
| to only use excess energy capacity. Further, Hydrogen for
| cars is highly inefficient if you take all of the steps into
| account.
|
| For the foreseeable future the common expectation is that
| Hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels (e.g. read forecasts
| from analysts or companies such as Shell). This while at the
| same time they pretend it'll make this more green.
|
| Hydrogen is already produced in huge quantities btw, but it's
| somewhat hidden as it's used by industry. Meaning, most
| people wouldn't even notice it. Unlike e.g. seeing a new
| hydrogen gas station.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > Hydrogen has a great energy density, that's why it is used
| in rockets.
|
| Per kg, but its energy density per litre is very poor. Every
| modern rocket uses RP1 (kerosene) or Methane (natural gas)
| for their first stages now.
|
| > It can be refueled in minutes, like gas cars.
|
| If your hydrogen station has 10,000 PSI hydrogen available. A
| typical station can fill 3 cars per hour quickly. More than
| that and you have to wait for it to get back up to 10,000
| PSI.
|
| > And the economy is based on using "waste" renewable energy.
| The problem is that solar panels and wind turbines don't
| produce energy when we need it the most (see: duck curve).
| The idea is to store that energy as hydrogen and use it in
| vehicles.
|
| You can also store "waste" renewable energy in EV batteries.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > You can also store "waste" renewable energy in EV
| batteries
|
| Yes you can, but the time when solar energy is the most
| abundant is in the the middle of the day, typically when
| people are away from home and not charging their cars.
|
| Hydrogen can be stored for years in huge tanks so it is
| really "on demand". Unlike batteries, tank benefit from the
| square cube law and therefore makes large scale storage
| cheaper.
|
| And BTW, personally, I am not convinced by hydrogen cars,
| but it doesn't look completely stupid either.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Hydrogen isn't used in rockets much. It's actually not energy
| dense enough compared to more exotic fuels.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| You are right, but considering that many people think it is
| too dangerous to put hydrogen tanks in cars, I wonder what
| they are going to say about "exotic rocket fuels" :)
|
| For reference, here is a quote from the Ignition! book
| about Chlorine trifluoride. It is an oxidizer, not a fuel
| but you get the idea.
|
| > It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least
| of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and
| so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been
| measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth,
| wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand,
| and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept
| in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper,
| aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of
| insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the
| metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium
| keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however,
| this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to
| reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of
| coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this
| situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running
| shoes.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Electrons are more energy dense than hydrogen unfortunately
| you need a heavy battery to store and use them properly.
|
| However hydrogen needs high pressure tanks and fuels cells to
| store and use it properly so there is basically no energy
| density advantage right now in a car, both fuel cells and
| batteries are increasing in energy density due to R&D not
| sure which will win out it the end. My current opinion is
| batteries are simpler in every way and have good enough
| energy density.
|
| All the current cars also need a lithium buffer battery
| because the fuel cell can not put out enough burst power nor
| do regenerative braking.
| timthorn wrote:
| Hydrogen cars usually are electric cars. The main advantage to
| the owner is being able to fill the tank in minutes, and to
| society as a whole is being able to manage the H2 generation
| process to align with supply and demand on the grid.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Hydrogen production is not well suited to be run depending on
| the power supply in the grid due to the high prices of the
| production facilities. If you keep electric cars plugged in,
| they are far better suited to absorb high supply situations
| at a much higher efficiency.
| cbolton wrote:
| If we're going to store energy by generating H2, is it more
| efficient to consume it in small cars rather than in big
| plants that convert it back to electrical power on demand?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I don't think the previous commenter meant converting it
| back; just that if there is an excess of power, e.g. on a
| sunny and windy day, that can be captured into H2 which is
| much easier to store than electricity. It wouldn't be
| converted back to electricity for the grid.
| cbolton wrote:
| That's also what I understood, but I'm asking if that's
| really an argument in favor of H2 vehicles: with
| electrical vehicles we can also store excess power as H2.
|
| Of course we then need to burn it in power plants to
| convert back to electricity. But which is more efficient?
|
| Electricity -> H2 -> electricity -> electrical motor with
| 80% efficiency
|
| vs
|
| Electricity -> H2 -> hydrogen motor with 30% efficiency
|
| My guess is that "H2 -> electricity" is a bit more
| efficient than "H2 -> hydrogen motor". So using H2 as
| excess power storage for hydrogen engines is only
| marginally better than doing the same for electrical
| engines.
|
| And that's for excess power storage. For "normal"
| production/consumption the electrical engine is way more
| efficient.
| [deleted]
| bildung wrote:
| Most people can't charge at home (because most people live in
| multi-story houses in a bigger cities and don't have a garage
| to charge in), so refueling in 2min at a gas station still has
| appeal.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I can charge at work and the grocery store. Still much nicer
| than going to the gas station, especially in the winter.
| rplnt wrote:
| You can now, but it doesn't scale that well if electric car
| usage increases 10-fold for example (which is still a very
| little fraction of total).
| dagw wrote:
| The number of charging poles I see in public and store
| parking lots has literally increased 10-fold over the
| past 3 years. To the point where I always see several
| free charging points every time I bother to look. I'm
| reasonably convinced that this scaling can continue at
| the rate of electric car adoption.
| rplnt wrote:
| I've seen that too. 20 instead of 2. Can it go to 200?
| Not really.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| It scales better than green production of hydrogen does
| rplnt wrote:
| Do you know what is even less green? Building tens of
| thousands of charging ports that are not being utilized
| because they are used for day parking.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Care to show your math?
|
| This is 'batteries pollute the environment too" FUD all
| over again.
| rplnt wrote:
| Care to stop pretending I'm arguing against EVs?
|
| I'm very much for EVs instead of fossil cars, but the
| argument that you don't need fast charging because you
| can charge it while at work or while shopping doesn't
| stand.
|
| Increasing cost of a parking space 1000 times for extra
| convenience is not economically feasible. The
| environmental implications are obious, it simply can't
| scale, no need to show any math (you made up your numbers
| first, I don't have anything to compare it to).
| jsight wrote:
| At least 75% of Americans live in houses. A garage isn't
| necessary, just a driveway with access to an outlet.
| malinens wrote:
| Yeah, forget those 25% (I assume it is something like
| roughly 100 million people in USA). In other parts of the
| world it is even smaller percentage...
| jsight wrote:
| Forget? No, but that's ultimately up to the property
| owner to fix it. It is certainly no more onerous than a
| lot of amenities that they already provide. We have
| several here that have pretty good charging setups, and
| that will only improve.
|
| But ultimately you can't please everyone. Hydrogen would
| have similar issues as you can't deploy it everywhere at
| once, it would take years.
| dagw wrote:
| I personally think we'll see charging poles next to most
| public parking spaces before we see a sufficiently built out
| network of H2 'gas stations'.
| bildung wrote:
| I think this underestimates the massive infrastructure
| investments those charging poles would need to work. I live
| in a medium density European town (about 1000
| inhabitants/km2, think 4-5 story buildings on average). In
| residential areas the whole street is lined with parked
| cars on both sides. To charge these, one would need
| something like 1MW charging per every 4 cars, which means
| every 20m of the road, on both sides. So 1km of inner city
| street would have new electricity demands of about 100MW
| for fast charging.
|
| Even overnight charging at say 10MW per km of road would
| mean the complete energy infrastructure of the complete
| town would have to be changed.
|
| Edit: Inserted a line break before the last sentence
| because apparantly almost every replier overread that one
| :)
| dagw wrote:
| I also live in a medium density European city and
| charging poles have been popping next to parking spaces
| an impressive rate over the past year or so. 2 years ago
| I might have agreed with you, but today it would
| absolutely be possible to own an electric car if I lived
| back in my old apartment without its own parking space.
| [deleted]
| pedrocr wrote:
| > To charge these, one would need something like 1MW
| charging per every 4 cars
|
| This is massively overestimated. 250kW per car is great
| for fast charging on road trips but for overnight
| charging it would be enough to charge a car 30+ times in
| a single night. 3 to 7kW is more than enough. The grid
| for that is already there and the chargers can even
| coordinate to not exceed maximum power if everyone plugs
| in at the same time and draws the maximum. Almost no
| infrastructure in the town will need to be changed, the
| existing grid that supplies all the houses will be
| enough. After all those cars are owned by people that
| have electricity at home and are practically not using it
| while they sleep.
| ableal wrote:
| > one would need something like 1MW charging per every 4
| cars,
|
| 10 kW per 4 cars is plenty enough.
|
| I charge overnight a 24 kWh Nissan Leaf (< 10 hours a
| couple of times a week), and just use a 2.1 kW EVSE to
| charge at a standard socket on a 16 A circuit breaker.
|
| If those were available at all parking spots in the city
| (say from city lamps), everybody could have electric
| cars.
| [deleted]
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| No, you'd need around 6-7kw per car.
| bob33212 wrote:
| Autonomy and ride sharing is the only answer to this
| problem. Most people who live a dense European town are
| not driving long distances every day. SO the should just
| rent a car on the days they need one or take an
| autonomous or non-autonomous taxi. Those cars do not need
| to be parked on those specific streets at night.
| vardump wrote:
| > To charge these, one would need something like 1MW
| charging per every 4 cars, which means every 20m of the
| road, on both sides.
|
| I think your numbers are off by at least two orders of
| magnitude.
|
| Let's say an average BEV travels 20000 miles per year and
| that it consumes 400 Wh/mile. Traveling 20k miles per
| year takes about 21 days assuming 40 mph average speed.
|
| If we assume the car is charging the rest of the time,
| average power required is (400 Wh/mile * 20000 miles) /
| (1 year - 21 days) = 0.968 kW average charging power!
|
| That's quite a bit less than 250 kW per car (well, 1 MW
| per 4 cars) you suggested! It'd still be below 2 kW, even
| if the car is charging just 50% of the time it's not in
| use.
|
| Other way to think about is charging from empty to full
| battery with 11 kW of power: (80 kWh) / (11 kW) = 7.27
| hours.
|
| Please also remember charging the battery full would be a
| rather rare scenario. I'd be surprised if you need even
| 10 kW power allocation for each 4 cars being charged --
| 1% of what you suggested. Simply because the batteries in
| most of the cars are full most of the time!
| labcomputer wrote:
| The plural of anecdote isn't data and all that, but:
|
| My personal experience of driving electric cars for many
| years is that home charging from a Level-1 (120V, 8A ~=
| 1kW) plug is completely sufficient for all of my in-town
| driving needs.
| EwanToo wrote:
| If your home has the appropriate electric supply, then yes, but
| there's lots of places in the world with poor electricity
| distribution.
|
| The future of transportation seems likely to be a mix of
| electric, hydrogen, and diesel, depending on the use case for a
| long time to come.
| prennert wrote:
| I don't know if there is data to support this, but k have
| heard hydrogen proponents say that even in London it would be
| difficult to charge all cars, because the grid could not
| handle it.
|
| So fully electric cars for everybody might not be practical
| in high density environments.
| dagw wrote:
| _What is the appeal of a hydrogen car vs an eletric car?_
|
| Fast 'charging' seems to be the big one. Also for larger
| engines (like trucks) you should get lower total weight
| compared to batteries.
| cowmix wrote:
| I'm begging to doubt this. Right now all hydrogen car are
| about 15% heavier than their BEV equivalents yet are SLOWER
| and make worse use of available internal space.
|
| When the 4860 cells are used in the structural battery pack,
| I recken electric semis will have a good power to weight
| ratio too.
| bsdetector wrote:
| Often overlooked is when you turn a hydrogen car off, it's
| off. Come back days or even months later and it should be
| exactly as you left it.
|
| On the other hand a Tesla Model 3 requires a _lot_ of energy
| to stay warm in the winter - some reports from the dead of
| winter of it taking 2000 watts just to stay warm. Under
| extreme conditions you can 't leave it unplugged for a week
| or possibly even a weekend without concern over the battery
| charge and health.
|
| There's better ways to insulate the battery of course, but
| there's always going to be some tradeoffs to maintain a safe
| battery temperature at rest and in use.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > a Tesla Model 3 requires a lot of energy to stay warm in
| the winter - some reports from the dead of winter of it
| taking 2000 watts just to stay warm. Under extreme
| conditions you can't leave it unplugged for a week or
| possibly even a weekend without concern over the battery
| charge and health.
|
| If that were the case there would be a lot of dead Teslas
| here in Norway. And even more dead Nissan Leafs which do
| not have active battery temperature management.
|
| I often leave my Model S disconnected over the weekend or
| longer in -15C in the winter without any noticeable effect
| on the battery health.
|
| It has an effect on range of course because as you say the
| car does prevent the battery getting too cold. Perhaps I'll
| try to measure how much energy is required next winter.
|
| Here is a first hand anecdote about using a Model S in the
| Arctic: https://electrek.co/2020/02/11/tesla-
| model-3-arctic-circle-w...
| bsdetector wrote:
| Model 3 uses the wheel motors to generate heat and has
| some kind of single nexus for all coolant, very much
| different from Model S. The story you posted doesn't say
| anything about how much energy was lost over just 4 days,
| and it being noteworthy that the car can be left for 4
| days without incident at presumably a high state of
| charge is telling on its own.
|
| In any case, the only difference between the two models
| is the amount of time it takes before the car exhausts
| itself maintaining the battery.
| teddyh wrote:
| I think it's precisely that; with electric, there's no special
| product to sell you. With hydrogen, or ethanol, the old oil and
| gas companies can more easily pivot into simply selling another
| chemical product. With electric cars, the oil and gas companies
| are like cable TV in the age of the internet; their days are
| numbered, and they fear it like nothing else.
|
| (Also, governments have nothing to levy special taxes on if
| cars run on your wall plug.)
|
| Of course, this is all conspiracy theories and speculation. I
| have nothing to back this up.
| nojito wrote:
| 100% electric cars isn't feasible for countries like Japan
|
| https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/toyotas-chief-says-
| electric...
| bkor wrote:
| > 100% electric cars isn't feasible for countries like
| Japan
|
| Japan heavily subsidises research into Hydrogen. This over
| anything else, e.g. electric. Quoting a Japanese car
| manufacturer is therefore a bit biased. Japan has two
| different energy grids btw, one runs at 50 Hz, the other at
| 60 Hz. Japan made some really strange decisions regarding
| their electric grid. That makes Japan unique, it isn't
| common to have such problems.
|
| For most countries the additional electric requirements
| aren't that significant. Though there will need to be some
| behavioural change (possibly helped by some technology).
| E.g. don't charge everything immediately at once, but align
| the supply and demand. Meaning, don't charge everything at
| once, charge more when there's an over supply (e.g. windy
| day/hour).
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I disagree with what he says about co2 and the old "you
| have to make electricity with something" argument. It
| wasn't until I bought a Tesla and did the math myself that
| I realized how inefficient gas cars are compared to an
| electricity generating power plant. My equivalent mpg with
| my electricity rate is something on the order of 150-180
| mpg. For trips where we can charge at home (most of our
| miles) it is a 1/3 of the cost of our Prius to drive.
|
| http://chooseev.com/savings-calculator/
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| Asian countries like Japan, Korea and China are the ones who
| are still pushing hydrogen tech. None of these are big oil
| producing nations so the conspiracy theory does not make
| sense.
| bkor wrote:
| > None of these are big oil producing nations so the
| conspiracy theory does not make sense.
|
| Big companies such as Shell are pushing Hydrogen via
| something called the "EU green deal". This while Shell (and
| similar) do not expect hydrogen to be produced via green
| methods for 15+ years. They push the EU to "subsidize"
| hydrogen (and other things), to basically get loads of
| money from people in an indirect way.
|
| This was e.g. reported via the journalists at ftm.nl.
| They're probably unknown to most people here, but loads of
| their findings resulted in loads of issues for the
| government (scandals, fraud, etc).
| numpad0 wrote:
| There is supposedly a huge gas deposit under the sea
| between those three countries so it's supposedly just a
| matter of negotiating and setting up a fair mining
| operations and start extracting it to theoretically become
| big oils overnight.
|
| That isn't how things work but that's the logic behind
| pushing Hydrogen.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Plus the folks here probably forget what poverty looks
| like. In areas with no infrastructure the only way of
| getting energy is to literally carry it home for your stove
| or motorcycle. Gas is ideal for these cases. Hydrogen
| cylinders maybe? Batteries are definitely a no go to
| transport energy.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Those cars have 10,000 PSI tanks, and Hydrogen is
| notorious for leaking through everything. It's not an
| option for places with no infrastructure.
|
| Trickle charging a battery with a small solar panel is
| what no-infrastructure places are moving towards for
| charging phones and other electronics. That's not enough
| energy for cooking or transportation, yet, but I can see
| it moving towards that.
|
| Another option is synthetic fuel. Currently horribly
| expensive because it is energy intensive and still
| experimental, it may become viable if solar energy prices
| continue to drop. It's much less efficient than an EV,
| but it works with existing gas/diesel/kerosene
| infrastructure.
| whatever1 wrote:
| You don't have to have 10,000psi tanks. A regular
| 3,000psi industrial gas cylinder would do the job and it
| would store energy equivalent of around 8gallons of
| gasoline. The gas cylinder would weigh ~ 100 pounds. So
| totally feasible.
|
| Now, do we have cheap appliances that consume hydrogen
| and produce work/heat ? Not yet.
| jdblair wrote:
| It depends on how you define convenient. Hydrogen can be
| refilled quickly, in minutes, like a conventional liquid fueled
| car. If there were a network of hydrogen filling stations then
| driving, especially long distances, would be similar to driving
| a liquid fueled car.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| More like an electric car, if it's a hydrogen fuel cell car
| (I'm not sure if all hydrogen cars are that or if there's
| another variant that combusts the hydrogen)
| jdblair wrote:
| Drives like an electric, refuels like a liquid fuel car (it
| uses a compressor, not electric charge).
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| If by "electric" you mean "Prius", you're right.
|
| Tesla's and similar cars have great acceleration because
| they support massive currents at high voltages. They need
| this to support fast charging, the incremental cost of
| adding a high torque motor is small.
|
| Hydrogen cars have tiny batteries that don't need to
| support fast charging. Like a Prius.
| hwillis wrote:
| > Hydrogen cars have tiny batteries that don't need to
| support fast charging.
|
| Because that's what they think consumers want, not
| because of technological limitations. Size is not a
| requirement for high power batteries. The Porsche 918 has
| a 6.8 kWh battery that can do 210 kW. That's ~31 kW per
| kWh, compared to a top-end Model S at ~6 kW/kWh.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Yes, a $800K Hydrogen car would probably have a small but
| high power battery. But Nexo's and Mirai's don't.
| hwillis wrote:
| There is! Here's what it sounds like:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dgzKW8EKMc
|
| Hydrogen is more energy-dense than gasoline, but it's much
| more of a pain in the ass. Gasoline is far denser than air
| but hydrogen is far less dense, so normal injection
| displaces a ton (30%) of oxygen from the cylinders. You
| need to use direct injection to get any kind of power out
| of hydrogen, and a very high-flow fuel pump.
|
| Combustion is also much hotter than normal, so you produce
| a ton of NOx compounds; that's why there's a huge catalytic
| converter on the back of the Toyota.
|
| Without the efficiency of a fuel cell there's quite a lot
| of loss of range. The potential for increased power+lower
| weight in high performance vehicles could do a lot to
| combat the halo effect of gasoline... or at least I hope
| so.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Right. Similar to a liquid fueled car, but worse than an
| electric car in most circumstances.
|
| But the problem is there will never be an equivalent hydrogen
| network as there is gasoline network because hydrogen fueling
| stations are far more expensive to install and maintain.
| Either the station overhead ends up much higher than gasoline
| or hydrogen is used much more rarely.
|
| Electric car distance records as of 2018 are 1178km in a
| Model S and 1001km in a Model 3.
| https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-s-model-3-hypermile-
| wo...
|
| Model S Plaid+ next year is supposed to have ~50% greater
| range than the Model S used in that 2018 record. And has a
| nationwide charging network (and access to other EV charging
| networks, which themselves are becoming impressive... Lucid
| Air's offering is also impressive).
|
| I just don't see the attraction of hydrogen any more besides
| niche applications.
|
| The vehicles are much more expensive (Model 3 way cheaper
| than equivalent range Toyota Mirai), the charging is far less
| convenient and totally unavailable outside California,
| they're slower, and the fuel is vastly more expensive, and
| they're fundamentally less energy efficient. Heck, the Model
| 3 LR actually weighs less and has more range than the Toyota
| Mirai.
|
| Hydrogen cars are a bonfire of money.
|
| Conventional carmakers insistent on fast fueling capability
| ought to do plug-in hybrid. Even if you use synthesized fuel
| for the few trips that go beyond the electric range, the cost
| per mile (and cost per vehicle) would be way lower than
| hydrogen and you could use existing gas stations (although
| we'd need a lot fewer of them), and you still get the
| logistical benefit of home/work charging for commutes.
|
| You could switch everyone's car for a plug in hybrid version
| today and they wouldn't even know except it'd sound
| different. We could ban new vehicles without a plug and it
| wouldn't ruin anyone's corner case commute and a lot of
| people wouldn't even realize it at first (just like many
| don't realize they drive a mild hybrid). This is a far better
| argument than hydrogen cars' "liquid fueling like experience!
| But only in a handful of stations in California at enormous
| expense..."
| nobleach wrote:
| I think the two biggest sellers of Hydrogen electric over
| battery electric, are the fact that batteries have a useful
| life. That life degrades over time. Hydrogen doesn't have
| this characteristic. Secondly, cold weather doesn't affect
| Hydrogen electric vehicles the way that it does with
| battery electric. If one lives in a cold weather climate,
| owning a Tesla isn't as advantageous.
| audunw wrote:
| > Hydrogen doesn't have this characteristic.
|
| Hydrogen itself doesn't. But the fuel cells do. I can
| imagine there will be problems with the plumbing as well,
| as hydrogen has a tendency to make materials it comes
| into contact with brittle.
|
| > If one lives in a cold weather climate, owning a Tesla
| isn't as advantageous.
|
| Eh, it's fine. Norway is the EV capital of the world.
| Range is decreased, but it's not really a problem in day-
| to-day driving. We have an older 30kWh EV, with less than
| 100km range in winter. It's almost never an issue. Even
| driving 2 hours to a cabin is fine with a fast-charge
| that takes less time than buying groceries next to the
| fast charge station.
|
| In colder climates, it's more common for people to have
| garages where they can charge at home. There are even
| colder areas, and remote areas where the range really is
| a big issue, but then we're talking about areas with very
| small populations. If all of them continue to drive
| diesel cars, it'll be a microscopic blip in terms of
| global CO2 emissions.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Both the pressure tanks as well as the fuel cells
| themselves degrade over time and need to be maintained
| and replaced.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| absolutely wrong. Hydrogen fuel cells absolutely degrade
| over time (they are batteries! Just with more maintenance
| required due to needing fluids pumped through them).
| Their lifetime for automotive applications is about 5000
| hours, or 150,000-200,000 miles, which is less than what
| a Model 3's battery will last.
|
| https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/progress18/tahi_lohs
| e-b...
|
| Cold weather isn't a major problem, either, you just will
| want to get a heat pump option. Electric cars are
| insanely popular in Norway, and it doesn't seem to be a
| significant problem.
| merb wrote:
| they even need a battery aswell which will wear. since
| the cell is too sluggish to be fed directly to the
| electric motor.
| jdblair wrote:
| Just for the record, I agree H2 fueled cars make terrible
| sense. On top of the points you make, hydrogen is simply
| too hard to store.
| bkor wrote:
| > Hydrogen can be refilled quickly, in minutes
|
| Only if the gas station has enough hydrogen at the right
| pressure. After a few cars it'll need 45+min to build up
| pressure again. The gas stations are really expensive due to
| the problems, plus there are more restrictions on where they
| can be placed.
|
| Hydrogen for cars is great for companies such as Shell. For
| the foreseeable future they expect most of the Hydrogen to be
| created using non-green methods. Even if it's green, you'll
| need way more green energy (e.g. wind / solar). Way more
| profit to be had.
| jeffbee wrote:
| What are the restrictions? There's a hydrogen station in
| Berkeley in University Avenue across the street from a
| school and with houses on two sides.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I think he meant fire safety of hydrogen requires more
| consideration than an electric charger.
| bkor wrote:
| In NL a hydrogen station needs to follow loads of safety
| requirements. So not just fire safety, safety in general.
| This was raised as an issue around hydrogen gas/fuel
| stations.
|
| Note that due to increase of EVs the safety requirements
| for garages have been increased (in NL). E.g. more
| monitoring is needed, automatic link to fire department,
| plus changes in construction requirements. Construction
| bit is due to an EV burning for longer. They basically
| demand thicker concrete walls and so on. This from memory
| and it's only what I've been reading (interested in
| safety; I don't work in construction).
| Retric wrote:
| Hydrogen is likely a much better fit for semi trucks, aircraft,
| boats, and remote rail lines than electric cars. The advantage
| is twofold, first you can produce and then cheaply store it for
| weeks and it very quickly refills a car.
|
| However the downsides and required infrastructure is massive.
| Overall it's simply a poor fit vs modern EV's but just close
| enough to viable to get significant investments.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Being able to fill up the tank in 2 minutes is the value
| proposition. When driving a lot or long distances, it matters.
| Also, not everybody has the possibility to charge at home.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| An electric charger costs less than the fuel cell does, so it
| makes very little sence unless this is being used in
| industrial equipment
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Sure. News from 15 years ago: diesel powered car is 10
| times cheaper than an electric car.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Thats like saying a second-hand Nespresso machine is
| cheaper than abrand new DeLonghi.
|
| Much smarter to compare total cost of ownership, and then
| the ociture is very different
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Tell me more, please, about the TCO.
| bdamm wrote:
| It isn't that much of a value proposition. Modern EVs do fast
| charging pretty well. Given that it takes on the order of 10
| minutes to pull off a freeway, navigate a traffic light or
| two, select a pump, pay, use the restroom, grab a snack from
| the store, and then navigate another intersection to get back
| on the freeway, adding 5 more minutes to that time to make it
| a fast charging stop is not really a big deal.
| dagw wrote:
| Can modern EVs really fast charge in only 8-10 minutes? I
| thought we where still talking on the order of 30+ minutes.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| A Tesla with under half a charge charges at a rate of
| 1000km of range per hour at a Supercharger. So 10 minutes
| of charging is definitely not a full charge but it is
| often a useful charge.
| labcomputer wrote:
| Put in your favorite road trip, vehicle and any advanced
| settings you'd like to adjust:
| https://abetterrouteplanner.com
|
| (No affiliation, just a happy user)
|
| Taking a Tesla Model 3 for example, I typically get a
| 15-20 minute stop every 2-3 hours (standard or long range
| trim).
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Right. Assuming that: there is a fast charger available,
| there is no queue, the charger is not broken. When I drive
| from Aachen to Berlin, if I have to stop, I stop at the
| pump, pay - takes 5 minutes, use the bathroom maybe, get in
| the car and leave. When I arrive in Berlin, I don't have to
| look for a parking space where there is a charger, I just
| park wherever it is legal to park. I leave the meeting, get
| in the car, stop at the pump if it needs to be and off I
| go. Roundtrip takes 16 hours. I can do 1000km+ on 65 litres
| of diesel when driving reasonably or 750km when driving
| flat out where there is no speed limit. I can use aircon,
| indicators, satnav, charge stuff in the car and when the
| gas runs out, I am not forced to have a snack... how often
| can one snack.
|
| There was a test done in Germany. Driving from Hamburg to
| Munich. Instead of 8 hours, it took over 11. Either a queue
| at the charger, or you have to adapt the route to get to
| the charger, or the app says fast charge available but no
| fast charge was available, or the charger is broken...
|
| Sorry, I don't believe in electric cars but I hold my
| fingers crossed for h2. Fortunately the hydrogen port built
| in Antwerpen gives some hope.
|
| It's quite funny looking at all these people in their
| expensive Taycans on the Autobahn. Either limping 110kph or
| standing on the hard shoulder with hazards on waiting for
| adac to turn up.
| bdamm wrote:
| It is true that the DC fast charging (DCFC)
| infrastructure is still being built out. The number of
| endpoints is ramping up.
|
| DCFC infra today is way better than the H2
| infrastructure, and by quite a lot. Good luck holding
| your fingers.
| asciimov wrote:
| For me the biggest appeal is you could convert a petrol powered
| car to run off of hydrogen. While they are not as efficient as
| fuel cell, running a regular engine off of hydrogen would allow
| us to create demand for fueling stations faster than waiting on
| fuel cell cars to gradually enter the market.
| trutannus wrote:
| Same question from me also. Also, hydrogen is highly explosive,
| so how can that be safely used in cars without detonating a la
| Hindenburg whenever there's a collision?
| gnull wrote:
| It is explosive only when mixed with enough oxygen, much like
| gasoline or propane. Hindenburg did not explode, it burned
| (quite fast, I should add).
|
| As I understand, If you make a hole in hydrogen tank and set
| it on fire, it will just burn (don't try to do this at home).
| trutannus wrote:
| > If you make a hole in hydrogen tank and set it on fire
|
| Right, the issue is though that in a collision you won't
| always just have a nice small controlled hole and burn.
|
| I've worked around Hydrogen before, and storage was always
| a tricky issue. I remember the regulations stating
| something like needing to store the tank with either Argon
| or Nitrogen beside it. Not really something I'd want in the
| back, or any part for that matter, of my car.
| gnull wrote:
| Sorry, my bad, I misunderstood what you meant.
| _gtly wrote:
| The danger of using hydrogen gas in a vehicle may be on the
| same order as compressed natural gas (CNG) which is used for
| e.g.: some busses. Hydrogen is stored under very high
| pressure in tanks, which if ruptured in an accident can cause
| a physical explosion.
|
| A study on CNG in busses says: "One can therefore conclude
| that CNG buses are more prone to fire fatality risk by 2.5
| times that of diesel buses, with the bus passengers being
| more at risk by over two orders of magnitude."
|
| source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15876211/#:~:text=One
| %20can%....
| trutannus wrote:
| > 2.5 times that of diesel buses
|
| These are not compelling numbers. Ideally you'd want
| something safer, not a few times more dangerous.
| cbmuser wrote:
| Great. Now you just need to find an economic and clean way to
| make large amounts of hydrogen. Nuclear power is probably the
| best option given that you can use it as a source high process
| heat source.
| tomhoward wrote:
| Archive link if it goes down again (seems OK right now, but
| seemed to be swamped just before):
|
| https://archive.md/iUFAL
| alex_young wrote:
| Hydrogen fuel is still a fossil fuel byproduct right? I'm not
| sure what the point of this is. It sure doesn't seem like a green
| technology at this point.
| boringg wrote:
| 3 main sources. 1- Natural Gas 2- Renewable Natural Gas
| (capping waste emissions from waste water treatment or
| municipal solid waste and coverting to Hydrogen). Net negative
| CO2 but smaller supply 3- Electrolysis (electricity + water).
| Source of electricity determines the cleanliness of the H2.
| Still requires water which is not ideal (especially in
| california)
| onychomys wrote:
| Presumably it'll eventually be made by splitting water using
| electricity from renewable sources.
| batmenace wrote:
| There are already early stage projects in France (and I
| assume other places as well) where Siemens Gamesa is using
| prototype turbines that does exactly this at an offshore wind
| farm
| SigmundA wrote:
| Splitting water with electricity then recombining in the fuel
| cell back to electricity is extremely inefficient compared to
| just charging a battery with eletricity.
| jandrese wrote:
| It may make sense in cases where batteries aren't practical
| like ocean going container ships.
|
| There was a time a couple of decades ago when it might have
| made sense for cars when battery power wasn't good enough
| but that time has passed.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| It is, but it doesn't have to be. It is possible to make H2
| from H20 and sunlight. At the moment there is little market for
| such "green" hydrogen but the hope is that hydrogen-based
| transportation will create that market.
|
| Imho I cannot afford to be a market leaders in this field.
| Until H2 is available everywhere, including at remote locations
| during Canadian winters, I'll have to stick to gas stations. (I
| have yet to see any electric car that can handle -50*c.)
| bdamm wrote:
| While technically true, the conversion is inefficient. It
| takes a lot of power to extract H2 from H2O. You could just
| use that power directly.
|
| The problem with electrics in -50 is keeping them plugged in
| when not in use. -50 is very extreme though, you're talking
| far north or Edmonton.
| darksaints wrote:
| The conversion using current SOEC technology isn't
| particularly inefficient. 88% efficient when using LHV
| values, 105% efficient when using HHV.
|
| http://www.helmeth.eu/index.php/technologies/high-
| temperatur...
| labcomputer wrote:
| That analysis ignores the heat used to raise the reactant
| (water) temperature to 800C.
|
| On its face, the claim doesn't make much sense anyway. If
| you could convert water to 2 H2 + O2 at zero energy cost,
| you could make a perpetual motion machine by taking
| advantage of the exothermic reaction 2 H2 + O2 -> 2 H2O.
| darksaints wrote:
| That's the difference between LHV and HHV. It is possible
| to exceed 100% efficiency when using HHV because it is an
| inherently more conservative convention for energy
| content due to practical concerns. LHV, by contrast, is
| bounded by the laws of physics.
| labcomputer wrote:
| Well, no, that's still wrong. The >100% efficiency comes
| from using two slights of hand:
|
| 1. Counting only the _electrical_ energy input. But you
| also need to supply heat at the same time. That 's the
| whole point of this product--use heat ~~instead of~~
| (edit: in addition to) electricity to split water.
|
| Critically, they are assuming you get "free" (as in beer)
| waste heat at 800C... which is _fairly silly._ 800C heat
| is high-grade energy, not waste heat. Exhaust gas from a
| combined-cycle NG power plant, for example, is more like
| 250-300C. Thermal steam plants operate with a Th of ~550C
| (so the waste heat is much, much cooler).
|
| 2. Ignoring the fact that you need to heat the reactant
| (water) to 800C before you can have the discussion in #1.
| Now, the problem is that the heat capacity of water is
| much higher than an equal mass of H2 and O2. So, you
| can't even use the hot as-produced gas to heat the
| incoming water to anywhere near the operating temperature
| of the electrolyzer.
|
| The efficiency in a practical application is probably
| half to two-thirds of what they are claiming.
| fouric wrote:
| > the conversion is inefficient. It takes a lot of power to
| extract H2 from H2O.
|
| _How_ inefficient? That number matters. If it takes 500
| kWh to make a tank that stores 100 kWh, you 'd be a fool to
| use that energy directly, as that tank is going to store
| hundreds of times that much (at least) over its lifetime.
| Black101 wrote:
| But it is much faster to fill-up an hydrogen tank then it
| is to charge a battery.
| labcomputer wrote:
| Really? It takes me about 5 seconds to charge my car
| every day, and I don't even need to leave my house to do
| it.
| bdamm wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. It takes me
| about 5 seconds too. I plug in, I walk away. When I'm
| ready to drive, I unplug and get in. Not complicated,
| adds up to about 5 seconds. All the work is being done
| when I'm not around. In sum, since ditching gas, I have
| in aggregate spent much less time tending to my car's
| energy needs.
| jogjayr wrote:
| > I have yet to see any electric car that can handle -50*c.
|
| The car can use battery power to heat itself and its battery
| when it's that cold, right? It'll consume more energy but
| it'll still work.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Maybe, but cars like Tesla have minimum operating/storage
| temperatures, usually on the order of -30c. With modern
| telemetry systems I don't want a warranty repair to be
| rejected because I had to park it overnight at -40. It hit
| -46 one night last winter, staying below -40 for several
| days in a row.
|
| https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/how-cold-is-too-
| cold...
|
| "Do not expose Model S to ambient temperatures above 140deg
| F (60deg C) or below -22deg F (-30deg C) for more than 24
| hours at a time."
| jogjayr wrote:
| Does it get that cold in a garage? I assume you'd always
| want to park a $100k automobile in a closed garage.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Lots of pickup trucks in that price range are parked
| outside. Garages are not a norm outside of detached
| homes. Diesels don't handle it well, but it doesn't
| actually damage them. The northern 2/3rds of Canada may
| be an edge case ... unless you actually live there.
| jogjayr wrote:
| Understood thanks.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Handling very low temperatures isn't very hard if the car is
| designed with that in mind.
|
| It would simply have a small heater and insulation around the
| battery. A 3 inch thick layer of insulation around the
| battery should keep the heating power to 10 watts or so to
| keep the battery at -10*c. A 70kwh battery will last 7000
| hours supplying 10 watts, or about a year. Longer if it isn't
| -50 every day.
| hannob wrote:
| It's not a fossil fuel byproduct. It's a fossil fuel product.
|
| You take natural gas, split it in a process called steam
| reforming, you get hydrogen and CO2 emissions.
|
| Green hydrogen only exists in very small quantities these days
| and for many years to come it'll be needed to first replace
| existing natural gas based hydrogen and to decarbonize
| industries like steel. There's basically a consensus among
| energy experts these days that hydrogen in cars is a dead end.
| exitb wrote:
| It has a similar relationship to fossil fuels as electric cars.
| bdamm wrote:
| Operating electric cars on coal generation produces more
| miles driven for the same carbon emissions than gasoline
| does.
| epistasis wrote:
| Sort of, on some qualitative descriptions. But on the
| quantitative level they are quite different, enough to change
| the entire quality of the relationship to carbon. The
| cheapest source of electrical power are renewables, and for
| more than a decade renewables have been at cost parity.
| Additionally, electrical vehicles are the perfect complement
| to the weakness of renewables: intermittency.
|
| In contrast, the most optimistic estimates I have seen say
| that we are at least a decade from electrolyzed hydrogen that
| is as cheap as carbon-spewing current steam methane
| reformation. And in the interim, hydrogen boosters are
| pushing a nonexistent large-scale carbon capture and
| sequestration of steam methane reformation, something that
| doesn't exist on an industrial scale, with several failed
| projects over the past decade.
|
| So I would say that hydrogen cars today are like EVs in the
| mid 90s. The tech chain has a long ways to go.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the issue with hydrogen the
| supply chain? I believe the overwhelming majority of hydrogen is
| currently produced from fossil fuels.
|
| > As of 2020, the majority of hydrogen (~95%) is produced from
| fossil fuels by steam reforming of natural gas, partial oxidation
| of methane, and coal gasification. [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
| daniellarusso wrote:
| How viable is it to extract from water via solar power?
| arcticbull wrote:
| Yeah, you can do electrolysis, but I don't think it's
| particularly efficient. I'd love to know more myself.
| yonaguska wrote:
| > "I was constantly checking the Nexo's efficiency readout to
| maximise the distance I was getting per kilogram of hydrogen. I
| found that by using techniques from rally driving, such as
| looking as far down the road as possible, as well as tips I have
| learned from my dad for driving a truck efficiently over long
| distances, it's actually possible to go way beyond Nexo's
| official range."
|
| Anyone have some insights on this? The efficient driving tips
| that is?
| bdamm wrote:
| Hypermiling is almost a sport at this point.
|
| https://electrek.co/2018/07/16/tesla-model-3-autopilot-unman...
| jedimastert wrote:
| If there's one thing I've learned on the internet, it's that
| if there's a measurable number, people will turn it into a
| hobby and then a sport to maximize or minimize it.
| mclightning wrote:
| Yeah, nowadays it is part of the course when getting driving
| license (here in Sweden).
|
| Economical driving is an important factor when taking the test
| eventually after the courses too. It is one of the 5 big
| factors you need to pass.
|
| As it is mentioned above, you need to look far and plan ahead,
| do engine braking, let it roll on its own if it is redlights
| etc etc.
| ne0flex wrote:
| Would be good to have this implemented in the curriculum in
| Canada & US. The amount of times I've been honked at because
| I was approaching a red light without hitting the gas, only
| to have the person behind me speed up and overtake me then
| slamming the brakes as they approached the light is
| ridiculous.
| marvin wrote:
| It generally breaks down to don't brake unless you have to, and
| know & use the performance characteristics of whatever you're
| driving.
|
| This might mean slowing down while anticipating stoplight
| changes, curves or congestion behavior so you can just keep
| rolling, not accelerating over the top of a hill or entering a
| decline with excess speed, leaving a good distance to the car
| in front and so on.
|
| Also knowing the efficiency characteristics of your vehicle.
| For ICE cars, generally running in high gear/low RPM. Not going
| fast. Engine braking is also braking, clutch in or shift to
| neutral while rolling downhill might help. But obviously use
| engine braking on very long declines, so you don't burn out
| your brakes. Prefer regenerative braking rather than mechanical
| braking in battery vehicles with this feature. This is
| generally done by changing speed slowly, which requires that
| you think a few seconds ahead. Don't accelerate hard if your
| engine/motor burns more energy than if accelerating slowly.
| jbarberu wrote:
| When you go in neutral downhill your engine idles, vs if you
| leave it in gear the ECU cuts fuel supply completely. It's
| generally better to stay in gear except when you're at a
| standstill. (This assumes a modern vehicle with fuel-
| injectors)
| marvin wrote:
| Do automatic gearboxes compression brake when going
| downhill? That's what I was trying to avoid. My point was
| to conserve your kinetic energy, not optimizing the fuel
| flow during the times when you don't want the engine to
| produce power.
| jbarberu wrote:
| Can't speak for all of them, but many will engine brake
| if you use cruise control downhill.
| [deleted]
| jchook wrote:
| Get an OBD2 Bluetooth adapter and an app on your smart phone to
| display the real time fuel efficiency of your driving.
|
| That feedback can help a lot.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| I drive a Prius, it's a skill to drive efficiently. The main
| tip: do not use the gas pedal if you're going to brake soon
| anyway. Think of the brakes as wasting gas, then you'll use the
| brakes sparingly, and the safe way to do that is by not
| accelerating unnecessarily.
|
| Just think of this. You see some kid in a red sports car at a
| stop sign. They blast off quickly, then after one block they
| brake hard for the next stop sign. That's wasting gas, brake
| pads, and creating more emissions in that area too.
|
| Other than that, accelerate slowly, watch your RPMs, stay
| around 60 mph, take it easy on hills, there's a lot to it, even
| without a Prius Regen style battery.
| pjerem wrote:
| Yes, it's a skill you learn with hybrid cars because they
| reward you with silence when you are efficient, and they
| punish you with noise when you run out of battery.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| I feel like a lesson lots of people (including some recent
| rideshare drivers I've had) could learn is that the pedals in
| your car can be operated with more subtlety than an on/off
| switch.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Anyone have some insights on this? The efficient driving tips
| that is?
|
| Basically drive like you have no brakes.
| narrator wrote:
| I remember back during the 2008 oil crisis, I was on a forum
| where we were talking about energy and the alternatives to oil
| and the consensus was that hydrogen was a lot less efficient than
| batteries. You had to store the hydrogen in compressed cylinders,
| it's flammable, you need expensive catalysts in fuel cells to
| transform it, though hydrogen is light, it takes a lot of volume
| to store it because it doesn't compress very well, refueling is
| complicated. There are also losses at every step of the energy
| pipeline: electrolysis, pipelining, compressing, decompressing,
| running it through fuel cells ,etc. It's much more efficient and
| less complicated to just use electricity and batteries.
| abakus wrote:
| Is hydrogen escaping into space something we should be
| legitimately concerned about if it became mainstream?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion-limited_escape
| SigmundA wrote:
| This is at 66.9 km/h (40 mph) in order to greatly increase its
| range due to lower drag compared to normal highway speeds.
|
| As a comparison a Tesla Model 3 got 975km (606 miles) at 40 km/h
| (25 mph) [1]. I can't seem to find any range tests at a similar
| speed as the Nexo.
|
| I found an EPA dyno test for the Model 3 at 77 km/h (48mph) for
| 708 km (440 miles).
|
| The Nexo and Model 3 have similar dimension and weight and price,
| while the Nexo advertises 380 miles vs 353 miles.
|
| It doesn't seem like current fuels cell have much of a energy
| density / range advantage even though hydrogen itself is much
| more energy dense, the fuel cell weight and efficiency and high
| pressure liquid hydrogen tanks must be accounted for.
|
| Also fuel cell cars seem to use a buffer battery and have lower
| power output than BEV's as current fuel cells can't output as
| much burst power and can't store power from regenerative braking
| with out a battery somewhere.
|
| Pretty skeptical about hydrogen fuel cells compared to the
| continued advancement in battery tech.
|
| 1.https://electrek.co/2018/05/27/tesla-model-3-range-new-hyper...
|
| Edit: very good efficiency comparison of hydrogen vs batteries by
| Volkswagen, which to me shows the biggest issue with using
| hydrogen in cars the "well to wheel" efficiency:
|
| https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2019/08/hydroge...
| bjourne wrote:
| > This is at 66.9 km/h (40 mph) in order to greatly increase
| its range due to lower drag compared to normal highway speeds.
|
| > As a comparison a Tesla Model 3 got 975km (606 miles) at 40
| km/h (25 mph) [1]. I can't seem to find any range tests at a
| similar speed as the Nexo.
|
| > It doesn't seem like current fuels cell have much of a energy
| density / range advantage even though hydrogen itself is much
| more energy dense, the fuel cell weight and efficiency and high
| pressure liquid hydrogen tanks must be accounted for.
|
| I'm curious to know how you come to this conclusion? I don't
| know much about aerodynamics other than at, as a first order
| approximation, drag is proportional to the SQUARE of the
| velocity. Driving 887.5 km at an average speed of 66.9 km/h is,
| afaict, much more impressive than driving 975 km at 40 km/h.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Drag isn't the only thing in play. They both are driving
| below highway speeds, one more so than the other, I wish
| there was some data for a Tesla at 40 mph vs 25 or 48 to
| compare more directly the difference. The Tesla will have
| between 975 and 708km range at 40 mph the NEXO is 887km, I
| will make an assumption the Tesla is less, but how much less,
| is it "much" different?
|
| What is the energy density delta between a HFCV and BEV
| currently?
| donaldcuckman wrote:
| drag really is just about the only thing at play
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| And a Hyundai Kona Electric did 1000km as well, probably at
| ridiculously low speeds as well :) (
| https://thedriven.io/2020/08/14/three-unmodified-kona-electr...
| )
| jvanderbot wrote:
| The one thing H has going is quicker fills at the pump, right?
|
| Being low on joules is a pain when you're going to work in the
| morning, but it's a royal pain if you have to wait a half hour
| to charge.
| elihu wrote:
| On the other hand, if we ever build out electrified road
| infrastructure, one might be able to recharge a battery
| electric vehicle without even stopping just by pulling power
| from rails embedded in the road or overhead power lines.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| 30 mins at a supercharger is hundreds of miles of
| range...that's quite the commute. But if you're at home -
| yes, I guess not having any charge is an inconvenience in the
| morning, but so is not having any gas or hydrogen. Neither
| should happen if you are even remotely responsible and on top
| of your life.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Yep if you have a hydrogen pump nearby it will probably fill
| faster than a charger. Not sure if they need attendants like
| a propane fill.
|
| If you have a plug at home though thats much more convient at
| least to me when going to work.
| barney54 wrote:
| You do not need an attendant the hydrogen stations I've
| been to.
| jfengel wrote:
| At least you get a half hour to think about how you should
| have plugged it in last night.
| Mvandenbergh wrote:
| >It doesn't seem like current fuels cell have much of a energy
| density / range advantage even though hydrogen itself is much
| more energy dense, the fuel cell weight and efficiency and high
| pressure liquid hydrogen tanks must be accounted for.
|
| Hydrogen has a better gravimetric scaling than batteries - as
| stored energy increases, the fixed weight of the fuel cell is
| amortised over more energy and the weight of high pressure
| tanks goes up with their surface area while the energy stores
| goes up with volume.
|
| So for applications where you want to store a lot of energy and
| are weight but not volume limited, hydrogen might make enough
| sense to pay the efficiency penalty required to turn
| electricity into hydrogen and back again.
|
| That's why it makes more sense for big trucks than it does for
| passenger cars where volume limitations matter a lot more and
| where total energy is less.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > So for applications where you want to store a lot of energy
| and are weight but not volume limited, hydrogen might make
| enough sense to pay the efficiency penalty required to turn
| electricity into hydrogen and back again.
|
| It's also not inconceivable that if we have more base load
| power generation (e.g. through more nuclear) then we could
| generate hydrogen at night with the excess.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| For trucks and other heavy duty applications, liquid hydrogen
| starts to win out over pressurized. In LH2 tanks, the scaling
| becomes advantageous as you are optimizing against heat
| ingress, which goes down as 1/R when you increase the radius
| R.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Double walled high vacuum tanks that vent hydrogen gas if
| left unused for less than day and empty themselves after 10
| days.
|
| Liquid hydrogen at -253c that is more energy intensive to
| make than high pressure.
|
| Not sure I see that being practical.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Lithium batteries still seem to have a way to go in energy
| density currently at around 250-300 wh/kg and going up year
| over year with a theoretical maximum (Sulfur cathode) of
| above 2500 wh/kg.
|
| At around 2000 wh/kg you are equivalent to diesel drivetrain
| energy density both size and weight based on my rough math.
|
| Expensive large hydrogen tanks in a trailer with high
| pressure lines to tractor seems like it would cause safety
| and cost issues offsetting much of the benefit.
| emptyfile wrote:
| I have no clue about batteries or hydrogen tanks.
|
| But I'm always amused to think that posters on HN give more
| credence to their back-of-the-napkin calculations over
| opinions of, say, folks at Toshiba, Volvo or Daimler.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Yes I always like to do my own math it has sniffed out
| the BS many a time from the likes of Tesla, Nikola and so
| on. Not always right, but amazing how many times theirs
| is wrong especially if marketing something.
|
| You should alway try to understand the math / science and
| make your own judgements rather to falling for arguments
| from authority. This isn't always feasible but I think
| most people can do enough to weed out the snake oil to a
| much better degree than we seem to be doing as a society
| now.
|
| Note this will also make you a better engineer /
| programmer in my experience.
| nick_kline wrote:
| Do you see Tesla as a snakeoil company today when it
| comes to their batteries, drivetrain, range, reliability?
| I wouldn't put Nikola and Tesla in the same categories.
| Tesla has one serious issue imho that they can only fix
| with refunds of the cost, that their auto-driving cars
| probably won't get there in the next 5+ years, so all the
| people that paid up to 10k for that will have to get some
| compensation.
| SigmundA wrote:
| No I don't however I was much more skeptical of them in
| the past and also the math still lets me know Elon's
| timelines are lets say "optimistic", however the math
| also told me they where not completely full of it vs
| Nikola which is a complete sham.
|
| For instance the Semi being announced in 2017 I said no
| way, but their range numbers where not outlandish, they
| just conveniently left off weight numbers for the tractor
| and cost of the battery seemed to high at the time. What
| I missed was how quickly battery cost are coming down and
| energy density going up, however they still haven't
| delivered a tractor yet so...
|
| Tesla has a real tech lead, not sure if they can keep it
| and they are way over valued stock wise.
|
| Nikola complete BS.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Math, physics, and chemistry, don't discriminate.
|
| The Emperor and the downtrodden, the Ivey League and the
| community college, you'll find the same mathematics
| wherever you go.
|
| Some may have an advantage in innovation or inspiration,
| but it should he fair trivial for any sufficiently
| motivated individual to _check the numbers_.
| colordrops wrote:
| The people on HN are the same people that work at
| Toshiba, Volvo and Daimler. Many of them are more
| accomplished and you'll find sub-par engineers making bad
| decisions at any company.
| valuearb wrote:
| Smart engineers chose Hydrogen as the first stage fuel
| fuel the Space Shuttle, and it turned out to be a
| terrible choice.
|
| H2 offered the highest ISP, ie energy per fuel mass, and
| originally they wanted the Shuttle to be a single stage
| to orbit vehicle. But Hydrogen also added larger, much
| heavier tanks and engines didn't have enough thrust for
| that. So they had to add large Solid Rocket Boosters to
| get off the pad. And all they additional dry mass meant
| the higher ISP of H2 was wasted.
|
| And now the SLS is repeating those mistakes, not because
| engineers didn't learn those lessons, but because
| politicians require them to repeat them.
|
| Engineers recommending Hydrogen for cars are influenced
| by regulatory requirements and benefits, and politically
| by company objectives. If your CEO says Hydrogen is
| important to use because our government and regulators
| say it is, you as an engineer will find a way to make the
| best of a bad choice.
| bombcar wrote:
| The companies are not entirely worried about the total
| results as they have other aspects to deal with (in fact,
| you'll sometimes find companies doing things they
| personally think are silly because "everyone" in the
| industry is doing it, and they need to be able to check
| off the box for the Board - example: "Why aren't we doing
| anything with this blockchain stuff").
|
| They also have large resources and are willing to
| experiment in things (especially if there are incentives
| around it from government, etc) - and even if it fails
| entirely they'll likely get useful and actionable data
| and results that still can help the company.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| Are these humans mutually exclusive?
| eternauta3k wrote:
| > the weight of high pressure tanks goes up with their
| surface area while the energy stores goes up with volume.
|
| Nope, tank mass scales with volume because bigger tanks need
| thicker walls:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_vessel#Scaling
| abakker wrote:
| With hydrogen this is especially problematic due to
| hydrogen embrittlement.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Nope, because you don't make hydrogen tanks out of
| materials that are susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement.
|
| In particular, pressurized automotive-size hydrogen tanks
| aren't made from metal at all, they are typically
| epoxy/kevlar/carbon fiber composites.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Hydrogen makes much more sense for container ships, where
| electric batteries can't be made practical, but hydrogen
| storage can be scaled easily.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Ammonia is a better fit for marine applications, as it
| doesn't require high pressure or cryo storage. It can also be
| produced using renewable energy, and is cheaper to transport.
|
| One of the largest producers in the world (CF Industries in
| Louisiana) has committed to producing it using offshore wind,
| and renewables in general (and their terminals are located in
| geographic areas where there is already high penetration of
| renewables on the local grid).
|
| https://www.cfindustries.com/globalassets/cf-
| industries/medi...
| darksaints wrote:
| Cryo/pressurized storage isn't technically necessary for
| ships either. Liquid hydrogen with insulated storage works
| well enough. The key is evaporation rates. As long as the
| ship consumes fuel faster than it evaporates, there is no
| need to maintain pressurization.
|
| In practice, some buffering pressurization may be
| necessary, but the scale of pressurization needs will be a
| lot lower than is required to store hydrogen long term.
| wiz21c wrote:
| And if the ship sinks I guess hydrogen pollutes less than oil
| ?
| ivalm wrote:
| Maybe ever so slightly acidifies water + escapes
| atmosphere; I don't think there is real hydrogen spill
| pollution.
| scatters wrote:
| The hydrogen goes up. Most of it will be in space in an
| hour or two. Any that doesn't will react with atmospheric
| oxygen to produce water vapor.
| eloff wrote:
| Sure, but it's not a big concern as it's not that common.
| eloff wrote:
| To the person who disagrees - compared to climate change,
| it's the least of our worries.
|
| No oil spills beats a few oil spills - but these are not
| an Exxon Valdez sized event, and they don't really matter
| in the grand scheme of things.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| By a lot, mostly. The liquid hydrogen eventually doesn't
| have enough pressure/cold enough temperature to stay liquid
| so it turns back to gas and most bubbles out of the water
| (with some of it reacting with Oxygen and becoming more
| water). It's possible if it were a "big enough" and
| "concentrated enough" spill it might briefly create anoxic
| zones where fish will die.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_waters (But humans and
| dumb algae accidentally do that "all the time" and the
| ocean does have recovery methods from anoxic waters. It's
| not great for the climate or the ocean, but it is mostly
| survivable and much more "temporary" problem than the long
| term effects of oil pollution.)
| wglb wrote:
| It is also a greenhouse gas
| http://agage.mit.edu/publications/global-environmental-
| impac...
| SigmundA wrote:
| I agree also perhaps for grid scale storage
| himlion wrote:
| Or aluminium smelters.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Hydrogen needs to be a game changer to command a redirection of
| investment and effort for consumer transportation.
|
| Even if it offers 20% better range and some allegedly better
| refuel experience (H2 people keep handwaving that as "solved"),
| that wouldn't justify the gigantic infrastructure switchover
| cost.
|
| Electric vehicles can use the grid. That's a massive advantage
| for infrastructure readiness and scalability, even if the
| current grid isn't ready for full EV consumer transportation.
|
| EVs can use home solar as well. Easily scalable, adds
| redundancy and alleviates load to the grid.
|
| H2 would need a huge buildout of hydrogen generators,
| transporters, refuelling. EVs are so far ahead of all of that.
|
| By the time any significant H2 infrastructure was out there,
| it'd be 10 years even if they secured 100s of billions in
| financing yesterday.
|
| In 10 years, the alternative energy / solar / home solar / grid
| / battery / storage economic proposition is likely to be 50%
| cheaper in real dollars, and possibly even better.
|
| It's the same problem nuclear faces.
|
| Sure, throw some money at places like aviation or maritime
| shipping.
|
| But it's just distraction, because I think the oil industry
| knows that the hydrogen will come from natural gas for the
| foreseeable (10-40 years) with some "future switchover" to
| "green hydrogen".
|
| Green hydrogen smacks of "clean coal". Granted the
| physics/engineering for it are a lot more realizable.
|
| But everyone should see that for the shell game it is.
| taneq wrote:
| > But it's just distraction, because I think the oil industry
| knows that the hydrogen will come from natural gas for the
| foreseeable (10-40 years) with some "future switchover" to
| "green hydrogen".
|
| Hydrogen was always a distraction. Fuel cells have been 10
| years away from practicality since the 80s, and hydrogen
| production was only ever non-fossil-fuel-based in theory.
| It's 100% a smokescreen to protect fossil fuels.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Plus, unlike gas, the hydrogen is never directly burnt "in
| the engine", it's always converted to electricity first. A
| hydrogen car is _always_ going to use EV motors (and
| batteries, because while denser, H2 doesn 't yet have
| anything near the ability to supply power at high demand that
| current battery tech has) and have all the complexity of an
| EV, often without the convenience of grid charging (home
| charging) given much smaller batteries to compensate for the
| weight of the fuel cell and fuel.
|
| Even the greatest H2 car is always just going to be a second
| class EV with "weird fuel needs".
| seryoiupfurds wrote:
| Maybe that's where current hydrogen R&D is going, but it
| isn't inherently true.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_internal_combustion_
| e...
| isoprophlex wrote:
| But now you're again limited by the low efficiency of
| ICE, the theoretical limits imposed by the carnot
| cycle...
| new_realist wrote:
| The Nexo is much less aerodynamic than the Model 3. One is an
| SUV/CUV, the other is a low sedan which looks like wet poop.
| The Nexo has more frontal area and a higher CD. And the Tesla
| is known for rigging its EPA tests for higher, but illusory,
| numbers.
| JPKab wrote:
| I own a model 3 and I laughed pretty hard at your comment
| regarding it looking like wet poop.
| vardump wrote:
| > And the Tesla is known for rigging its EPA tests for
| higher, but illusory, numbers.
|
| By that you must mean Tesla bothers to do the full suite of
| EPA tests instead of accepting a somewhat penalizing
| multiplier, like how other manufacturers do?
|
| There's no rigging whatsoever and the same option is
| available for other manufacturers as well. If they bother to
| do the longer and more demanding test cycle, that is.
| sfblah wrote:
| Nobody cares exactly how a company gets unrealistically
| high numbers. What matters is as a consumer your experience
| won't match the company's claims. Best would be for
| companies just to tell the truth. C.f. the "full self
| driving" falsehood.
| vkou wrote:
| Anyone who has bought a car in the last 50 years is
| already well aware of how much EPA mileage differs from
| actual mileage.
|
| My old 2010 Prius was EPA-rated for 50 MPG. If I drove it
| with kid gloves over flat terrain, I could hit that
| mileage. If I drove it in a way that doesn't piss other
| road users off, I would get closer to 46 MPG.
|
| If I was doing 80+ MPH over the Rockies on the Trans-
| Canada, I'd be getting a cool 35 MPG, because air
| resistance is very high at those speeds, and because most
| of my braking was exceeding the regenerative capacity of
| the car.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Ok so go to the Model Y which is slightly heavier (Actually
| closer to the Nexo) and the worse aerodynamics than the Model
| 3 should have minimal effect if hypermiling at low speed,
| which also helps the Nexo vs Model 3.
|
| Model Y will blow the doors off the Nexo in performance due
| to much larger electric motors.
| [deleted]
| usrusr wrote:
| Pretty much everything is aerodynamic at 25mph when comparing
| to something else at 40mph...
| ajross wrote:
| > Tesla is known for rigging its EPA tests for higher, but
| illusory, numbers.
|
| The Tesla numbers are correct and verifiable, actually. The
| problem is that the EPA "highway" test is designed to capture
| the "average highway mile" driven by a US vehicle (which
| makes sense, it was designed to inform purchasers of
| aggregate fuel use). Here's the driving schedule:
|
| https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/hwfetdds..
| ..
|
| Note that it never goes above 60mph, and spends most of its
| time between 40 and 50. This isn't wrong, but it corresponds
| to an urban highway commute (again, which is pretty much the
| "average highway mile").
|
| The problem is that this does NOT match what typical
| consumers think of as "highway driving", meaning blasting
| 75mph+ down an open road. So people get in their Model 3's
| and measure their consumption at those speeds and it doesn't
| match.
|
| And it's true that other EV manufacturers (Ford, especially
| -- the Mach E actually does somewhat better than sticker
| consumption on the highway) chose not to run the full test
| and used other methods that put a higher number on their
| stickers. And in context that's probably more informative.
|
| But nothing was "rigged". In fact Teslas in stop-and-go urban
| commute traffic really do get close to their sticker mileage.
| It's just that no one cares because one's battery doesn't run
| out on an urban commute before you get home to charge it.
| Ironically, EV owners in this case care _LESS_ about
| efficiency than gas owners.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > The Tesla numbers are correct and verifiable
|
| There are caveats. The lower end Model 3s hit their
| estimates pretty reliably. The Performance trim usually
| misses by a pretty big margin for most people. There are
| exceptions to every rule, but I owned a P3D and hung out
| with other P3D owners as well, and this was a commonly
| shared experience.
| kaladin_1 wrote:
| Off by a magnitude, but can you see any future where entry level
| car manufacturers like Hyundai and Toyota will snatch the market
| from the German auto makers?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| They're not entry level anymore, they're huge companies, some
| of the biggest in the world. And yeah they have already, people
| used to laugh at Hyundai, now they're renowned for their
| quality.
|
| I think all the car manufacturers have moved to the more
| premium sector. They all make good cars.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| Didn't the Gumpert Nathalie [1] already break the range record
| beyond 1000km?
|
| Granted, their cars use methanol "fuel" to bind hydrogen, but the
| car is all electric and uses fuel cells to produce electricity.
|
| For anyone asking whether this is legit: Gumpert was the inventor
| of AWD/quattro and a long time the Audi Sport engineering lead.
|
| [1] https://www.rolandgumpert.com/en/
| effie wrote:
| Hydrogen car is much less comfortable and more expensive to use
| than electric car - few refueling stations, much lower energy
| efficiency.
|
| Maybe for long distance transport hydrogen makes sense, because
| you can have a big tank and CO2 impact is lower than
| gasoline/diesel, but this will require incentives/subsidies from
| the state to make economic sense.
| TedShiller wrote:
| Teslas run on coal power if you're charging from your outlet
| beyondcompute wrote:
| Hydrogen is the future of electric transportation!
|
| Imagine you are driving and you have several cartridges of
| magnesium hydride and when you pass by a refueling station a
| drone catches up with you and swaps nearly-depleted cartridges
| one by one all while you continue going! How cool is that! B-)
|
| And then you can refuel by stuff that you produce yourself using
| photo catalyst solar panels in your back yard.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Why couldn't you do that with batteries?
| daedalus2027 wrote:
| how do you convert oil into hydrogen?
| brickmort wrote:
| 887.5km = ~551.46 miles
| neom wrote:
| Tangentially- Korean taxi driver talking about using a hydrogen
| Nexo around Seoul:
| http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20210405000819
| natch wrote:
| In hydrogen versus electric, it would seem that hydrogen offers
| way more to the auto and fuel industries in terms of ability to
| extract ongoing payments out of consumers for parts, single
| source or limited / controlled source fuel, and maintenance of a
| large complex system of high tech components.
|
| It also ties the consumer to that fuel system with no other
| options. You can't, in other words, fill up at home in your
| parking spot.
|
| The potential for auto parts profits is high because hydrogen,
| being the smallest molecule, is notoriously corrosive as it is
| able to leak through almost any material. And able to bond with
| many molecules, causing corrosion. So I would expect a lot of
| degradation over time.
|
| So I guess that's why Toyota loves this: ongoing parts sales. As
| a former Toyota owner, I loved the reliability at first, but it
| was not absolute, and the parts cost for repairs started
| approaching the cost of car payments as the car got older.
| asciimov wrote:
| I've always hoped hydrogen would have taken off. Since you can
| convert gas engines to run off of hydrogen it would be easier to
| move the market to hydrogen than electric. Allowing us to build
| out the infrastructure first, then transition vehicles over to
| fuel cell.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| By the time you can build the infra, we'll have replaced all
| the ICE cars to EV. And the cost to build the infra far exceeds
| the cost to replace all ICE to EV and install electric chargers
| everywhere, too.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Burning hydrogen in an ICE is a very expensive and inefficient
| process. It's a bit like electric heating, you need to first
| make the hydrogen which is itself a lossy process. In both
| cases, the "high-quality" energy source that is produced, can
| be efficiently used by a specific process (fuel cells for
| hydrogen, heat pumps for electricity) or squandered in an
| inefficient conversion process (internal combustion engine for
| hydrogen, resistive heating for electricity).
| jdlyga wrote:
| 551.47 miles
| spuz wrote:
| It's not quite clear from the article, but is this a stock
| Hyundai Nexo or was it modified to add more fuel tanks? The stock
| range of the car is 413 miles or 664km, so how exactly was this
| new record achieved?
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Down hill with a trailing wind going very slowly without
| breaking? Still 664km is impressive!
| csunbird wrote:
| The factory recommendations are not always the maximum
| theoretical distance you can get from your cars, those
| recommendations are based on real world usage, e.g. 120 km/h on
| a highway or 30km/h average with stops in the city center.
|
| It is called "hypermiling", you can do that with gas cars as
| well, by driving on a level road, minimal breaking and
| accelerating, plus driving in the engine's optimal RPM period
| in the highest gear possible. In short, the ideal conditions
| for the car.
| OriginalNebula wrote:
| Maybe a good driver who drove economically
| MattRix wrote:
| The arricle says it was a production spec Nexo, it was just
| being driven for maximum efficiency. As the driver says "it's
| actually possible to go way beyond Nexo's official range".
| erk__ wrote:
| It says in the article that it consumed 6.27 kg of hydrogen and
| the standard tank is 6.3 so I would say that it was not
| modified.
| Thlom wrote:
| Tesla record is over 1000 km, so at this point I'm not sure why
| anyone is interested in hydrogen for personal vehicles over
| electric.
| alecmg wrote:
| We were getting 1000km between fill ups (60L tank) on a
| family road trip in a bog standard 1.8L gasoline (!) Ford
| Mondeo, seating 2 adults 2 kids and with trunk loaded to the
| brim and A/C running on full.
|
| Really difficult to be excited or impressed by these
| "records". Both Tesla and H2
| pjerem wrote:
| Filling my Mondeo tank costs me about 70+EUR. Recharging a
| Tesla at home costs 1 or 2EUR.
|
| The record is not the autonomy by itself, but is about
| getting the same autonomy for 35-70x less money and
| potentially 0Co2e emission.
| xutopia wrote:
| A full charge for 15$ versus how much for fuel? And do you
| pollute?
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| The storage problem:
|
| You can make hydrogen from solar panels and store it until
| you need a refill vs. to charge your Tesla with solar, you'll
| need to surrender it in the middle of the day and wait for a
| full charge.
| manquer wrote:
| Let's appreciate the achievement rather than comparing instantly
| with electric or Tesla.
|
| Would be interested to know what makes nexo different to be able
| to break the record.
| mrweasel wrote:
| It doesn't say anything about the size of the tank, which seems a
| little weird. Technically you could break that record by adding a
| bigger tank.
|
| Does anyone know what this means: "It purified 449,100 litres of
| air on the journey - enough for 33 adults to breathe in a day."
|
| Why is the car purifying air while driving? Is this a side effect
| of hydrogen powered cars?
| liquidforce wrote:
| I was curious about this too, basically they're just filtering
| air as they go and counting it as negative emissions:
|
| https://www.altenergymag.com/story/2021/03/can-fuel-cell-tec...
| Gravityloss wrote:
| You don't want your fuel cell chemistry to be contaminated. The
| fuel cell needs oxygen from the air.
|
| That's also why it's so light, since in H2O, 90% of the weight
| is the oxygen.
| merb wrote:
| > That's also why it's so light, since in H2O, 90% of the
| weight is the oxygen.
|
| which also makes it unsuitable for moon cars.
| effie wrote:
| The car has an HEPA filter which removes dust from the air
| which is nice but that's not the whole story, as can be
| expected from marketing.
|
| 6.3kg of hydrogen consumed means 50 kg of atmospheric oxygen
| consumed, which is 170 000 liters of air. So it purified 450
| 000 liters but it also removed oxygen from that same air,
| around 38% of it. I would not breathe that exhaust air, it may
| not be CO2 rich, but it sure is oxygen depleted.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I guess that's marketing speak for an F150 doing the same
| journey would have produced that much impure air.
| lnsp wrote:
| To make a fuel cell work, you need an external oxygen supply
| for the chemical reaction. A cleaner oxygen supply with fewer
| particles make the fuel cell work longer, therefore Hyundai
| added an air filter which filters out fine particles before
| passing it on to the fuel cell.
|
| (I'm not an expert, but this is how I understood the process.)
| jacquesm wrote:
| FWIW: the material challenges for hydrogen are such that I do not
| think that it will ever be a mainstream storage medium for
| vehicular use (it's not a fuel, it is a battery).
|
| - hydrogen embrittlement
|
| - leakage from whatever container you plan to use
|
| - very low activation energy -> always danger of explosion
|
| So it's a great thing in the lab and to get subsidy for but it
| sucks for large scale deployment, and deploying it in devices
| that have a long projected lifespan has its own special class of
| problems.
|
| Plenty of manufacturers have already had hydrogen test fleets and
| as far as I'm aware all but a few have been abandoned.
| foxyv wrote:
| I think if you are going to go with a highly energy inefficient
| storage medium then methane makes more sense. It's a lot more
| practical to transport and store. It can be carbon neutral as
| well if you use sabatier generators or bio reactors instead of
| fossil fuels. You can convert existing ICE engines to use it
| too.
|
| It's definitely not ideal, but it's still a fair bit better
| than the hydrogen options which generally just kind of suck.
| (3000PSI vs 5000PSI for CNG vs H2) If you can source something
| to dissolve it in you can also store it as LNG. Busses have
| been using it for ages now. Although I've seen what happens
| when an CNG tank goes on those busses and it is scary as heck.
| I can't imagine a similar issue with hydrogen. That stuff is
| scary.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHf2o9oVY24
| AAA_Rating wrote:
| Hydrogen is not dead, all the hate it has been getting from Musk
| made people leave the space. If somebody bets on it right now it
| seems like a better bet compared to say 5 years ago.
|
| The whole promotional attitude towards EV will cause an EV winter
| when the rubber meets the road and things aren't as rosy as
| advertised. Mark my words. It's already happening .
| bdamm wrote:
| Can you be specific? Looks pretty good to me.
| kazoomonger wrote:
| I doubt that. I've got a Leaf that I've had for almost 2 years
| (i.e. lots of rubber on the road), and I'm not going back.
| Judging by the number of Teslas I see driving on the road every
| time I'm out, I don't think other people are going back either.
|
| This is in Minnesota too, with very icy and cold winters. I've
| seen that commonly brought up as an anti-EV talking point, but
| it's empirically wrong.
| bkor wrote:
| > I've got a Leaf that I've had for almost 2 years
|
| Isn't the Leaf known for poor battery temperature management?
| This causes the battery perform way worse over time than
| other EVs. A battery performing way poorer over time is a
| common fear that I've noticed. If someone notices this and
| doesn't know it's unique (caused by manufacturer not doing
| enough) then I'd expect some Leaf-owning people to dislike
| EVs.
|
| The huge price difference between charging an EV at home vs
| anywhere else is why I dislike an EV. Though I actually do
| not dislike EVs, I dislike the price difference.
| kazoomonger wrote:
| The Leaf doesn't have active cooling. From what I
| understand, charging up to 80% instead of full except on
| long trips prevents any thermal issues. I've got a 230 mile
| range, so 80% is not an issue for me for daily driving. I
| will say that the max capacity meter hasn't yet gone below
| 1.0 after nearly 2 years.
|
| Every Nissan dealership around me has free Leaf-only
| supercharging, and there's also a few superchargers around
| the Twin Cities that just cost the price of parking (e.g.
| ~$1/h). Other than that, every Goodwill has a supercharger
| that costs some actually metered amount of money.
| AAA_Rating wrote:
| Hydrogen has the same infrastructure as gasoline. A
| "recharge" takes as much as 40 seconds. EVs have a negative
| impact in the quality of life of those who buy them because
| they cost more and have the problem of recharging time. It's
| simply an own goal you are doing to your team which in this
| case is your family because of woke ideals.
|
| Lower mantainence costs is also a legend unless we are
| talking about Toyotas and Benz build quality. Teslas have
| lots of issues, don't know about the Leaf.
| kazoomonger wrote:
| I really just fucking love plugging in at home to charge
| (and so does my family, and no I'm not just saying that). I
| don't want "infrastructure". I would take even slower
| charging if it meant I got to charge at home. As-is, I'm
| very satisfied, and excited to see where EV tech goes. I'm
| sure in a few years the charging speed and range I've got
| now will be peanuts to what's out there.
|
| My maintenance costs have been tire rotations. I joked to
| the service tech that I'm sorry they're not making more
| money off of me.
| AAA_Rating wrote:
| > I really just fucking love plugging in at home to
| charge (and so does my family, and no I'm not just saying
| that)
|
| Why is that? When you purchase a car you buy the 24/7/365
| availibility of said car.
|
| An EV is not availible to use 24/7/365. Regardless of the
| human biorythms you should get a discount because an EV
| is less of a car compared to an actual car which is
| always ready to go.
|
| With EVs you are not getting a discount, but you'd have
| to pay a premium. This is a subpar outcome for the
| consumer in my book.
| kazoomonger wrote:
| This is honestly a rather bizarre take, but also not
| true. I almost never run out of battery at the end of the
| day, because I've got 230 miles of range. I plug the car
| in overnight, and it's fully charged in the morning, but
| if there were an emergency overnight, I'd still have
| plenty of range for getting to wherever. So I do have
| 24/7/365 availability? I even don't have to remember to
| stop by a gas station (or hydrogen station given the
| original post).
|
| The few times I got super low on battery from driving
| around all day, I stopped by one of the dealerships near
| me and used their free Leaf-only supercharger, went
| inside and sat in their nice comfy chairs with free wifi
| for a bit. Note that I didn't have to do this and
| could've charged at home, but figured it would be nice to
| have the quick charge. I've done this less than half a
| dozen times in the whole time I've had the car, so this
| is not a general concern I have.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| If you'd rather have a car that's twice less efficient (and
| twice more expencise to fuel) than wait 20 minutes to
| charge, then you are living in a bubble of privilidge that
| does not reflect life priorities for 90% of folks out there
| kazoomonger wrote:
| I wouldn't rather have such a car, it's just the benefits
| from charging at home are such that I'd still accept it.
| woeirua wrote:
| EVs are perfect second cars or city cars. You don't need
| to charge them completely all the time. If you want to
| take a road trip then get a PHEV, or a Hybrid.
| woeirua wrote:
| I own a LEAF. The maintenance costs are basically zero:
| just tire rotations. It pains me to think about spending
| money for oil changes on my other car.
|
| Also the build quality on a Nissan is as good as a Toyota.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| I have an acquaintance who has made a substantial fortune from
| energy focused startups (including a battery tech one) and is now
| working on another hard tech startup and they are very critical
| of hydrogen as a fuel. I've had superficial conversations with
| them about it but could never get a sense of their fundamental
| arguments. Is hydrogen a non starter or are they just protecting
| their investments with FUD?
| Gravityloss wrote:
| They could work for cases where long distances are needed and
| charging is inconvenient, like for trucks.
|
| I do wonder how much the driver needs to rest, if high speed
| charging works during the driver's breaks. Could use overhead
| chargers.
|
| Ammonia is another alternative.
| fossuser wrote:
| The arguments I've seen have specifically been about hydrogen
| in the context of EVs (specifically almost always as a way to
| dismiss EVs).
|
| - The trade-offs work in favor of EVs, hydrogen has a similar
| distribution problem to gasoline (fueling stations).
|
| - Hydrogen requires production somehow, electricity we already
| have the grid and people can charge at home
|
| - The things hydrogen is good at (lighter weight than
| batteries, faster refueling) are starting to become less
| relevant as battery and charging tech improves.
|
| - The argument that you need an equivalent charging
| infrastructure isn't really true since you only need that for
| long tail long range trips (and also we have that now).
|
| The reason I personally dismiss people talking about hydrogen
| or supporting it (Japanese automakers) is it ignores the
| obvious current success of EVs in addition to the arguments
| above and it often feels like a disingenuous argument in bad
| faith. Specifically, someone is anti-EV and bringing up
| hydrogen as misdirection to make some EV thing harder to
| implement.
|
| The success and market uptake of hydrogen vs. EV seems to be
| empirically obvious at this point. I suspect because EVs could
| get over the chicken/egg charging infrastructure issue because
| early adopters could just charge at home (and most trips are
| short range).
| bkor wrote:
| > - The argument that you need an equivalent charging
| infrastructure isn't really true since you only need that for
| long tail long range trips (and also we have that now).
|
| To add: Hydrogen stations are fairly unique. It's really
| expensive to build such stations (millions). Plus heavy
| restrictions on where they can be placed. Putting up a charge
| station is really cheap in comparisons (think it was
| something like 10k for on a public street with 2 charge
| ports), plus you can place them pretty much anywhere (way
| less safety restrictions).
|
| What I dislike about EVs is how expensive they're to charge
| if you're not using your own electricity. At least, that's
| the situation in NL.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| The chicken or egg problem with charging is one of the
| reasons I tend to down-weight the opinions of EV owners when
| talking about the future of transportation.
|
| People that own EVs have to deal with the lack of supporting
| infrastructure, and have a vested interest in steering public
| opinion to go in a direction they have already personally
| committed.
|
| That doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong about the future,
| just that they have incentives that could cause them to hang
| onto some bad ideas because they adopted early (and want to
| save face).
| gorjusborg wrote:
| In case anyone was wondering where the Overton window was.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Here a few major issues hydrogen would need to solve.
|
| * There isn't a fuel distribution system. The reason BEVs work
| is because everywhere has power, setting up power distribution
| is generally just plugging into the local grid.
|
| * Hydrogen escapes any container it's placed in. That's a
| pretty hard thing to deal with. Most approaches have looked at
| chemically binding hydrogen to something in order to keep it
| from escaping, but that, as you can imagine, is expensive. The
| other option is onsite electrolysis, but that's rather
| expensive to pull off.
|
| * Speaking of electrolysis, while we can get hydrogen from many
| sources, the one we are likely to actually use isn't
| electrolysis but rather natural gas and oil. Why is that?
| Because electrolysis is inefficient (about 20% efficiency IIRC
| _edit_ I recalled incorrectly. Electrolysis has a ~70%
| effciency).
|
| So you have a hard to store fuel, without a distribution
| network, that may be coming from fossil fuels anyways. -So why
| do major companies like Toyota love hydrogen? Because it
| doesn't require them to make any major changes to their fleet.
| You can get a lot more miles out of the basic combustion engine
| design and you don't need to retool all your product lines.-
| _edit_ I was wrong, looks like most hydrogen vehicles are fuel
| cell based.
|
| Now, that isn't to say that hydrogen has no place in the
| future. I think because of it's energy density hydrogen will
| likely play a role in the airline industry. It may even be
| possible that hydrogen ends up finding a place in long range
| shipping. However, hydrogen in a consumer car is, IMO, DOA.
| BEVs already exist as do their charge networks.
| effie wrote:
| > So why do major companies like Toyota love hydrogen?
| Because it doesn't require them to make any major changes to
| their fleet.
|
| Toyota Mirai (their hydrogen powered car) is fuel cell
| vehicle, it uses hydrogen to power electric motors.
| mastazi wrote:
| > You can get a lot more miles out of the basic combustion
| engine design
|
| Why would there be a combustion engine in a hydrogen car? I
| expect that there would be a fuel cell powering electric
| motors. Are there other ways to use hydrogen in cars, other
| than fuel cell? I'm not an expert.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| You can use hydrogen in a modified combustion engine: https
| ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_internal_combustion_e...
|
| Doesn't look like a great path forward - deep internal
| engine parts need to be modified (no "hydrogen kit" for
| existing cars), they emit NOx emissions (so not zero-
| emission), and you have all the disadvantages of a
| combustion engine.
|
| However, combustion engines have 100 years of development
| behind them and a proven track record of reliability
| (probably billions of running hours by now). Fuel cells are
| still newish - "the devil you know". This would also keep
| mechanics employed and keep dealership service bays busy...
| kind of a perverse incentive, but it's there for sure.
|
| It may be a stop-gap, or useful for certain situations
| (long haul trucking is mentioned). It could be part of the
| tapestry of technologies needed to move to a more
| renewable-based future.
| Diggsey wrote:
| > Because electrolysis is highly inefficient
|
| Actually it's pretty efficient. According to wikipedia,
| efficiency ranges from 70% for the cheaper method, to 80%
| with more expensive catalysts. Theoretical efficiency is 94%.
| bkor wrote:
| > Actually it's pretty efficient.
|
| Electrolysis is only a small factor.
|
| It's all of the other required bits that makes Hydrogen so
| inefficient. Transportation, building up pressure, etc.
| Hydrogen if you compare things simply is more efficient
| than gas/diesel. However, gas/diesel is pumped out of the
| ground. Meaning, a lot of the energy needs for gas/diesel
| are already there.
| merb wrote:
| well theoretical efficiency can never be achived, also it
| might be more efficient than gasoline cars it can never be
| more efficient than BEV, because you need to convert power
| into hydrogen and back, converting anything always has
| losses
| ppf wrote:
| In this use case, hydrogen forms a fairly inefficient way of
| transferring energy from renewable sources to your car. As well
| as that, you have severe problems with distribution and storage
| - the pressures required are frankly terrifying as an end-user,
| and hydrogen embrittlement of any steel in contact with the
| hydrogen is also a big problem.
| starfallg wrote:
| There's a lot of Hydrogen FUD for sure, but the core of the
| problem is storage and transport. Hydrogen is just extremely
| hard to store and move around pressurised. This makes it
| uneconomical in most use cases. There's nothing fundamentally
| wrong about it as a technology (if you treat it as a energy
| store instead of a fuel), just engineering challenges and cost.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| There's a ridiculous amount of of FUD from the industry (at
| both/all ends). It's a Catch 22. You need infrastructure before
| people will invest in infrastructure. You don't want to invest
| the millions/billions in the wrong one, so people spread FUD to
| protect their investment. For example, Elon Musk had doubled
| down on battery tech, so H2 winning out isn't in his best
| interest.
| danparsonson wrote:
| Aside from the other points raised here, presumably there are
| safety concerns too - a hydrogen tank is basically a highly
| pressurised bomb; I'm not sure how you go about keeping that
| safe in a collision except making it heavily-armoured and
| hoping for the best.
| effie wrote:
| It is a bomb alright, but surprisingly that is the least of
| its problems. The bomb can be made strong enough to withstand
| great majority of accidents. Of course it won't withstand
| some very nasty ones, but that rare possibility people could
| live with.
|
| The problem with hydrogen is there is no hydrogen available,
| we have to first generate it and distribute it to cars. So
| far this process is much more expensive than generating and
| distributing electric power.
| slobiwan wrote:
| > has since taken the Californian market by storm, with
| approximately 400-500 units running in the sunshine state right
| now.
|
| Um, "taken by storm" is a bit of an overstatement. 500 out of 14
| million? https://www.statista.com/statistics/196010/total-number-
| of-r...
| martini333 wrote:
| For everyone here comparing Teslas range to this: It takes less
| than 10 minutes to fill a tank with hydrogen. It takes 40+
| minutes to fill a Tesla to 80%.
| [deleted]
| merb wrote:
| Superchargers can only take around 25 minutes for a model y, it
| heavily depends how many people are on a charging station. of
| course not every car can be "filled" with 250kW, it also is a
| huge wear on the battery.
|
| btw. hydrogen energy cells are also subjected to wear,
| especially when doing a really really long trip. energy density
| of course is still in favor for hydrogen, especially since they
| do not need to store oxygen, which means a hydrogen car only
| needs to keep half the fuel, but battery technologies are
| expanding way faster than hydrogen can keep up.
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