[HN Gopher] Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reali...
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Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check
Author : xbmcuser
Score : 86 points
Date : 2025-04-16 11:26 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (cleantechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cleantechnica.com)
| m4rtink wrote:
| I'm not really sure there is any place for a discussion - you
| would need a whole new infrastructure for hydrogen powered buses,
| while keeping a lot of the downsides of fossil fueled air
| breathing vehicles (eq. air filters filters regardless of if you
| burn the hydrogen or use it in fuel cells).
|
| With battery buses - you might need to slightly beef up the local
| transformer and installs some new wires and that's it.
|
| Or even better, do what the city mass transit company does here
| in Brno, Czech Republic - get trolley busses with batteries, that
| charge from the overhead wires while on the way, so they can then
| continue to serve additional destinations past the terminus of
| road electrification.
|
| It is also super handy for any road work, they just automatically
| stow their collectors and then once again under wires, deploy
| them. There is usually a small trough around the wires at this
| spot, guiding the 2 collectors to the 2 wires. As a result, the
| driver does not have to leave the vehicles when connecting or
| disconnecting from wired power.
|
| And it looks super cool! :)
| martinald wrote:
| While I agree with you; just to be clear it's not "slightly"
| beef up the local transformer. If you imagine a medium sized
| depot with 50 buses stabled at any one time, and 300kW chargers
| (I believe you could go higher), that's 15MW peak which is not
| trivial to add in many cities overnight. You really need some
| sort of HV connection for that kind of load, the existing local
| LV distribution grid isn't going to handle it.
|
| I do definitely think green hydrogen has a big future ahead of
| itself though. We still use an absolutely ridiculous about of
| H2 in industrial processes (especially fertilizers).
|
| Europe could produce huge amounts of fertilizers in the summer
| in the future with all the excess solar and wind it has via
| this method.
|
| It seems to me hydrogen skipped a step - focus on replacing
| hydrogen feedstocks in industrial processes directly with green
| hydrogen, instead of replacing stuff up the chain that can be
| done with batteries directly anyway.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Any decent sized installation will use current clamps at the
| local transformers to scale the charging rate up and down
| depending on other users in the local area.
|
| Ie. in the evening whilst everyone has their ovens on,
| charging might only be 3 kW per bus, but then at 1am when
| everyone has gone to bed, it can be 30 kW per bus.
|
| Using that approach, you can get far more capacity out of old
| infrastructure.
|
| Unfortunately, some utility companies aren't amenable to that
| approach, and instead insist you pay to upgrade the infra,
| since to them it's a free upgrade.
| martinald wrote:
| Not really. Buses need to be charged whenever, not just
| overnight (it creates enormous logistical problems
| otherwise). A typical bus route running 5am to midnight say
| is not going to last with one charge, depending on length.
|
| Also, if it is a cold night and everyone leaves electric
| heating/heat pumps on, what happens then? Noone can get to
| work the next day?
|
| Regardless most urban transformers are not going to have
| 15MW of overnight capacity spare even on a good day. The
| largest LV substations might be 30MVA in the UK at least -
| they won't just have half capacity suddenly free.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Lots of busses are split shift. i.e. they drive from
| ~6:30am to ~9:30am and ~4pm to 7pm. This means that a
| significant portion of your bus fleet will be able to
| charge during the middle of the day when energy demand is
| relatively low and there's a ton of solar power.
|
| As an aside, we have so far really dropped the ball on
| level 1 electric vehicle chargers at offices. As solar
| power and EV numbers increase, it's pretty obvious that
| we want more cars charging during the day and fewer
| charging at night.
| linedgolyi wrote:
| >we have so far really dropped the ball on level 1
| electric vehicle chargers at offices
|
| Our govt. really did a disservice to transition to EVs by
| slapping on a big tax to anyone even brushing against a
| charger at work: 120EUR/year
| bmicraft wrote:
| Where do you live that buses aren't running during most
| of the day? That just seems absurd to me. Buses in my
| city run at only slightly reduced (from the rush hour
| peak) intervals for the whole day
| bluGill wrote:
| Split shift is a stupid idea that needs to die. It only
| works for people who always work '9 to 5'. Work a
| different shift and you drive. Need to go shopping - just
| drive. Have a day off - drive to whatever you do. Going
| to church one sundap - drive. Have a kid who might get
| sick at school - you better drive everyday.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| In cities with working public transport it aligns the
| schedules to accommodate the ridership. Which sucks a bit
| in the late evening when headways might become a bit
| long.
|
| The absolutely largest peak is in the morning and then a
| smaller one in the afternoon.
|
| So you might have a baseline like every 10 or 15 mins and
| then in rush hour it is every 3 or 5 mins.
| bluGill wrote:
| again. Stupid. Complete nonescense that comes from people
| who drive themselves and think of transit as for 'lesser
| people'.
|
| humans have places to be. They shouldn't wait for
| transit. and they mostly won't.
| Retric wrote:
| The critical bit for infrastructure is generally peak
| load not simply is anyone using it for anything. A few
| solar panels and a few batteries on-sight can create a
| lot of freedom here.
|
| City busses don't need that much energy because as they
| don't move quickly, the cargo is light, and regenerative
| breaking offsets stop and go.
| discardable_dan wrote:
| Luckily, humans are rather expert water-boilers at this point
| in time.
| smeeger wrote:
| a lot of people like to laugh very, very loudly at the idea
| of upgrading the grid to handle EVs. simply remind them that
| at one point in time there _was no grid at all._ the grid is
| not some magical entity that cant be changed
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's a bit like the difference between building a new
| house, vs renovating an old one. Different skills are
| required and the renovation project can actually be more
| complex than new build.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Thats the genial thing about trolleybuses with batteries -
| there is alread a substantial city wide charging network,
| that is even distributed and enables on-the-go charging. :)
|
| Sure, for regular battery buses without trolley collectors,
| indeed some new transformers might be needed. But even here,
| I wonder if you could make it somewhat distributed, with some
| charging happening at the line terminus where the drivers
| also often have to take a break anyway.
| crote wrote:
| You wouldn't need 300kW chargers, though!
|
| Battery buses have a battery capacity of around 400kWh.
| Assuming they are stabled for 6 hours overnight, that's only
| a charging power of 66kW. Suddenly your depot needs a
| connection with a peak capacity of 3.3MW instead of the
| proposed 15MW.
|
| This can get significantly better in practice. There's a peak
| transit demand during commute hours, but that means there are
| quite a few unused buses in the middle of the day. Those can
| charge at the depot to take advantage of cheap daytime solar.
| A lot of bus routes are timed, with a waiting time of 5 to 10
| minutes at the turnaround point. Place an overhead charger
| here, and the charging demand can be distributed across the
| day. As a bonus, this also reduced the battery capacity
| needed - and the associated lower weight reduces total energy
| demand as well.
|
| Sure, bus depots are going to need beefy connections, but
| that's hardly an insurmountable obstacle. The ongoing rapid
| rollout shows that it simply isn't a such a big issue in
| practice.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| > you would need a whole new infrastructure for hydrogen
| powered buses, while keeping a lot of the downsides of fossil
| fueled air breathing vehicles (eq. air filters filters
| regardless of if you burn the hydrogen or use it in fuel
| cells).
|
| Unless you burn the hydrogen, you aren't producing any
| emissions... unless you count water as an emission. Fuel cells
| don't produce any emissions.
|
| Burning hydrogen though, does produce some emissions, however
| it's pretty minimal. I believe it's only NOx, and even then at
| far lower rates compared to gas vehicles. No CO2, CO, or any
| other stuff from gas or not-fully-burnt gas.
|
| That said, I agree hydrogen has seemingly no place in something
| like buses. Frankly, the only places that I see hydrogen has
| any future is either going to be for planes and boats, or
| potentially for intermediate storage akin to batteries (i.e.,
| create hydrogen with excess solar/wind power).
| vardump wrote:
| Don't fuel cells require air without any contaminants, thus
| air filters?
|
| So you still need filters, this not for the exhaust, but for
| the intake.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Is that a real problem here? Air filters on ICE cars are
| easy and not that frequent. You need cabin air filters
| regardless for passengers, so changing those at the same
| time isn't that much different. Filters are cheap unless
| fuel cell ones are super expensive for some reason.
| vardump wrote:
| The air purity requirements for fuel cells are rather
| demanding. Impurities will destroy them.
|
| ICE air filter would destroy them in no time.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Hm, I looked up how much a Toyota mirai filter is and
| they're quite expensive. $270 it looks like from a 3rd
| party? It's every 36k miles though. Not every year/12k
| like a normal air filters.
| 7e wrote:
| Yes, hydrogen cars clean the air as your drive them.
| vegavis wrote:
| Fuel Cells have a lot in common to ICE. They require a
| significant balance of plant that helps provide air to the
| fuel cell, coolant for many of the components, electronics
| controller and significant electrical harnessing, bracketry
| for support, filters, coolant pump, air source, radiator...
| etc.
|
| in one way it is a downside since its more parts and
| complication than maybe a pure EV architecture, but the
| similarities to ICE arch means that its an attractive option
| to transition to for both the OEMs and a tiered supply base
| used to working on ICE vehicles. If you can get economies of
| scale going and bring cost down for fuel cell its a great
| replacement for many (not all) ICE archs.
|
| They are preferred solutions for larger vehicles because of
| the weight of lithium ion batteries. also because theyre
| optimized for power density while electric architectures
| excel with energy capacity/storage. But if you can implement
| infrastructure at the locations where these larger Class A
| vehicles are (or busses), then you dont care about capacity
| for the known universe's lightest (resting mass) fuel as much
| since H2 refuel times are fast.
|
| You are correct about boats though, it is also a good
| solution set there. Planes will only work if we can achieve
| air cooled hydrogen fuel cells and eliminate the expensive
| and heavy balance of plant (Hysata).
| deepsun wrote:
| I drove hydrogen Mirai, and it feels pretty much electric
| in every way but fueling. It drives off battery, no hybrid
| transmission, hydrogen is only there to charge the battery.
| cenamus wrote:
| Are those new in Brno? Can't remember them from the last time I
| was there, but sure sounds interesting
| m4rtink wrote:
| That started showing up maybe ~5 years ago ?
|
| Googling a bit I found this article about the first series
| produced parcial trolley busses (eq. battery equiped) being
| delivered in 2018:
| https://www.bmhd.cz/aktuality/aktualita.php?1481
|
| Since then it certainly expanded a lot & there are now
| regular lines that have the trolleybus go part of the line
| under its own power, like the recently introduced line to
| Sobesice: https://brnensky.denik.cz/zpravy_region/brno-mhd-
| prvni-linka...
|
| Thanks to this you can go watch them stow/deploy their
| collectors at the Kralovo Pole nadrazi stop at about any time
| during the day. :)
| satiric wrote:
| Do the poles fall off the wires a lot? Our trolley buses in
| Seattle have a bit of a problem with that. According to the
| folks I know in San Francisco, theirs do too. They're great
| otherwise though. Seattle's newer trolley buses can operate
| off the wire for about 3 miles/5 kilometers (on a LiFePO4
| battery) which helps a bit.
| misswaterfairy wrote:
| > you would need a whole new infrastructure for hydrogen
| powered buses, while keeping a lot of the downsides of fossil
| fueled air breathing vehicles (eq. air filters filters
| regardless of if you burn the hydrogen or use it in fuel cells)
|
| Australia kind-of already had 'hydrogen' infrastructure and
| supply chains already, in LPG or 'autogas'. LPG (or dual
| petrol/LPG) used to be a popular option for small vehicle fuel
| in Australia in the 2000s though has slowly declined due to
| petrol/electric hybrids coming along.
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-19/lpg-cars-disappearing...
|
| That said, it's possible to convert diesel engines to burn a
| 90% hydrogen/10% diesel mix, which could dramatically alter
| those numbers: https://www.unsw.edu.au/news/2024/08/converting-
| diesel-engin...
|
| It shouldn't be too difficult to bring back 'autogas'
| infrastructure in Australia. And if we can, I don't see why
| others couldn't deploy it made sense to do so. Liquid/gas fuels
| make much more sense in very-low to moderate density areas with
| long distances between populated centres. Batteries make much
| more sense in high population density areas with relatively
| short trips.
|
| Whilst I agree it's not as ideal as a true zero-emissions
| thing, it's certainly a stepping stone to greatly accelerate
| the decarbonisation of our fuels, by allowing many to convert
| internal combustion engines to use much cleaner fuels, without
| having to buy brand new vehicles.
|
| Given that petrol and diesel these days are usually almost
| double the cost per litre of LPG in Australia, and that a lot
| of decently sized long range EVs are still very expensive in
| Australia, especially considering cost-of-living pressures and
| the distances many Aussies have to drive in rural and remote
| areas where EVs just aren't practical, I'm a little surprised
| LPG hasn't made a comeback.
|
| Australia has since kicked off a project to construct a large
| green hydrogen generation plant in Western Australia, due to be
| producing by 2029 and fully operational by the end of 2031, so
| hydrogen could become a pretty big deal in by 2030.
|
| https://research.csiro.au/hyresource/murchison-hydrogen-rene...
| perilunar wrote:
| > many Aussies have to drive in rural and remote areas where
| EVs just aren't practical
|
| I'm currently in rural NW NSW, and it seems to me that BEVs
| would be ideal out here once they get a bit cheaper. Plenty
| of sunlight. Plenty of rooftop solar -- every second house
| and farm shed has solar panels already. Powering farm
| vehicles from local solar instead of imported diesel seems
| logical and inevitable really.
| dalyons wrote:
| Battery and charging technology are getting better
| constantly. That low density niche won't last long enough for
| hydrogen to compete, it's going to be all EV soon enough.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Incomplete because of https://dialog.hochbahn.de/bus-in-
| zukunft/neue-brennstoffzel... and
| https://www.hochbahn.de/de/presse/pressemitteilungen/brennst...
| and https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/hamburg/Hamburger-Hochbahn-
| st...
|
| (jooze tranntzlayshun zorvizzass!)
|
| TL;DR: Hamburgs mobility provider is trying it again, after
| failure in 2019 with 5 Busses, with 5 Busses (Fuel-Cell) again,
| this time allegedly 'mass production ready'.
|
| With the intent of max. 10% of the fleet based on this 1, or
| similar, in 2030, which is their target for carbon neutrality.
|
| Got a little bit more range, refuels faster (in 15 minutes), than
| the few hours E-Busses (currently) need.
|
| Regarding infrastructure this has to be seen in the context of
| Hamburg wanting to be a hydrogen hub, because of its harbour,
| shipping, processing and such.
|
| Shrug? We'll see...
|
| 1 actually the Hamburger Hochbahn isn't the only provider, about
| the other half comes from VHH ( https://vhh-mobility.de ) which
| don't use or intend to use hydrogen, instead going for battery
| electric exclusively. Which in the context of 'Hydrogen Hub
| Hamburg' mentioned above, seems logical, because they operate
| lines far out of that also.
| detaro wrote:
| There's a few companies and labs in Germany who still manage to
| somehow sell hydrogen as a "local innovation" to government
| grants every now and then... Hydrogen busses, hydrogen trams,
| hydrogen trains. It never sticks, unsurprisingly.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Yah well... _,,Gruner Wasserstoff" aus Hamburg: Senat weicht
| der Frage nach den Kosten aus_
|
| https://www.mopo.de/hamburg/hamburg-bei-gruenem-
| wasserstoff-...
|
| _shrug_ Who am I to judge? ;- >
| rsynnott wrote:
| I think battery buses have comprehensively won this one, to be
| honest. The biggest hydrogen bus fleet seems to be 35 vehicles;
| there are many BEV bus fleets in the hundreds and some in the
| thousands.
|
| As a certified old person, I'm having trouble getting used to
| them. It is unnatural for a double-decker bus to pull up near-
| silently, and then move off smoothly when you get on. They are
| _supposed_ to vibrate violently and sound like they might explode
| at any moment; it's traditional.
|
| (One of the bus route closest to me has a mix of fancy BEV buses
| and ancient diesel things from 2007, so I get an interesting
| selection. The other is mostly plugin hybrids, which are extra-
| disconcerting, as they're either silent or very noisy depending
| on mode.)
| dugditches wrote:
| >Regionalverkehr Koln (RVK) has become the largest operator of
| hydrogen fuel cell buses in Europe, with a fleet that reached
| 101 vehicles by late 2024 and is expected to grow to 160 by the
| end of 2025.
|
| I mean, right from the second section of the article.
| api wrote:
| Where I live in the US my kids still take "cheese buses" to
| school that haven't changed a bit. They're diesel and you can
| hear them blocks away. When they pull up with their air brakes
| going off and their diesel shifting to idle it sounds like one
| of those spice miner things from Dune going to work.
|
| If they ever go electric I'm not sure how we'll know it's time
| to take the kids out. Won't be able to hear them coming.
| sightbroke wrote:
| > If they ever go electric I'm not sure how we'll know it's
| time to take the kids out. Won't be able to hear them coming.
|
| I'm sure they'll just have an app.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| How about playing a ditty just like an ice cream truck?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| My school district has some that are electric and they are
| quite noisy also. sounds like gear noise mainly, so they must
| have a reduction gear or some sort of transmission. They also
| still have air brakes so you hear the compressor and the
| PSSSSHT of air when they stop.
| Androider wrote:
| It wasn't easy, but the bus company managed to make their
| EV leak oil and need gear maintenance.
| deepsun wrote:
| You'll see the bus on your phone / home hub. Like ridezoom
| company does, you see whenever your kid checked in/out of the
| bus, and the bus itself on a map.
| linedgolyi wrote:
| Hopefully in a way not tied to some commercial third party.
| People should be able to reliably go to public school
| without having to accept an arbitrary third party contract
| Angostura wrote:
| They'll simply use ice-cream van style chimes :)
| linedgolyi wrote:
| There's a similar danger with very quiet and/or electric cars
| where people near the school barely hear them coming and need
| more attention to keep themselves safe. Avoiding an older gas
| or diesel car is practically automatic as you can hear their
| speed, acceleration and location comparatively far away. I
| think EV manufacturers have added some sort of noise to low
| speed driving, but I haven't heard anything beyond one being
| right behind me
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| I thought they all had AVAS fitted? Are there markets where
| this isn't the case?
| linedgolyi wrote:
| Maybe? Problem is either that it can be and is always
| disabled by driver, or it's very quiet, because I as a
| healthy man in their 20s, hear the pavement tire noise
| before any other noise, and the car is already really
| close at that point
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| In the EU and UK markets we don't have an option to
| disable the AVAS noise generator.
|
| It self disables above something like 10kmh when, as you
| say, tyre roar is the predominant sound a car makes
| (unless someone is revving the engine I suppose).
| fluidcruft wrote:
| Most pedestrians have airpods in nowadays and probably
| couldn't hear an ambulance.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| I had a silent moped and I had to pass near a school when
| kids finished school to get to university. It was
| absolutely dangerous if I was going at a sane speed (less
| than the limit). I learnt to get very slow before
| approaching that
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I'm surprised hybrids are so under-represented in this
| considerations.
|
| Maybe I'm missing something but I would think at the scale of a
| bus, a hybrid is even more appealing than at the scale of a
| sedan.
|
| Even locomotives and one or two earthmoving off-highway trucks
| have electric transmissions, making them series hybrids (With
| very small batteries not used for traction)
| m463 wrote:
| I wonder if diesel electric locomotives are efficient at all.
|
| I think the electric is for infinite torque to get lots and
| lots of cars moving. But to slow down, "electric" brakes are
| to bleed off power into resistor banks, not re-capture the
| electricity.
|
| Meanwhile an electric bus actually has to be efficient, which
| means batteries and regenerative braking.
| hakfoo wrote:
| As I understand it, straight electric locomotives would use
| the 'dynamic' braking to send current back up the wires.
| Apparently this would make for entertaining economics-- a
| section of the rail network where most of the tonnage went
| downhill could produce a net negative power bill.
|
| With diesel-electrics, there was nowhere to the braking
| power, so resistor grids were the order of the day. I
| wonder if it would be possible or worthwhile to outfit them
| with battery tenders to recapture the current with modern
| batteries and power-management circuitry.
| kalleboo wrote:
| An example of such a line is in Sweden
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ore_Line
|
| > From Riksgransen on the national border to the Port of
| Narvik, the trains use only a fifth of the power they
| regenerate. The regenerated energy is sufficient to power
| the empty trains back up to the national border.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| Similar thing happens in Australia:
| https://www.jalopnik.com/these-electric-trains-never-
| need-re...
|
| The twist: these trains aren't connected to the grid.
| They use regenerative braking to charge batteries when
| carting ore to the coast, and the batteries power the
| trip back to the mine.
| masklinn wrote:
| IIRC there are mine trucks set up similarly in some
| locations, they're loaded at the top, regen downhill, and
| that's sufficient to power them back up the hill when
| empty.
| morsch wrote:
| On the other hand, pure electric trains seemingly have had
| regenerative braking for a hundred years.
| nine_k wrote:
| A diesel electric locomotive has no serious batteries, and
| no room for enough batteries to consume the energy of
| slowing down a train.
|
| At least it can dump it as heat without also producing fine
| dust, like mechanical brakes do.
| hylaride wrote:
| They can (and do) have room if they're designed from the
| ground up for it. The engines for diesel electric trains
| are so large because they need to be sized to drive power
| for peak energy (usually accelerating and hills). If the
| energy can be stored, the engines for hybrid locomotives
| themselves can (and are) smaller.
|
| So far you're only seeing hybrid locomotives for trains
| that stop/start a lot (shunting trains and passenger
| rail). The cutover for freight will likely take decades
| because A) locomotive lifetimes are measured in decades
| and B) longer range freight usually has less stop/start,
| making it's economical delta less.
| foobarian wrote:
| I would imagine long range freight would be more likely
| to have long stretches of uphill grade which would mess
| with the minimum battery size
| hylaride wrote:
| Yeah, that could be a problem. Even modern trains often
| now have multiple locomotives (including in the middle of
| train sets) to deal with range/weight, so who knows.
| There's no reason hybrid trains can't have multiple
| locomotives or battery bank-cars for those situations.
|
| As I mentioned above, the freight lines are very
| conservative with new tech and amortize equipment over
| decades (often to the point where many rail cars are
| unsafe, especially outdated tank cars), so even if it
| exists we won't see it in practice for awhile yet.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Some diesel electric trains now have large batteries and
| can recapture the braking power. Though this is seen as a
| bonus; the primary goal of the batteries is generally to be
| able to switch off the engines in station to reduce local
| diesel emissions.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, hybrid buses are common. Dublin Bus's fleet is about
| 900 conventional diesel, 300 plug-in hybrid, a trivial number
| of light hybrid (they never committed to these), and 150
| electric. But hybrid buses also don't seem to have a future
| (at least as urban buses); at least here the plan is to buy
| no more diesel or hybrid buses; the current fleet will age
| out.
| crote wrote:
| Hybrids are attractive when a short battery range is enough
| for daily use but you still do semi-frequent long-range
| driving. Rather than hauling around a heavy and expensive XL
| battery pack on your daily commute you haul around a tiny
| combustion engine. It's a great solution for people with
| range anxiety.
|
| Buses have a completely different use case. They drive a
| well-known distance, and every day is practically identical.
| It is fairly easy to scale its battery pack to closely match
| the actual range needed. Running a true long-distance route
| like a Greyhound or Flixbus, which physically can't be
| battery-based yet? Just stick to diesel for now.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Hybrid buses were a huge win around cities before fully
| electric became viable and I expect they will continue to
| be important for rural routes.
|
| Buses stop frequently so regenerative breaking is
| meaningful and crucially they avoid the horrible cloud of
| diesel particulates as they pull off. It was really
| noticeable as a cyclist. About 40% co2 savings over diesel
| in London.
| mmooss wrote:
| > The biggest hydrogen bus fleet seems to be 35 vehicles
|
| From the OP:
|
| _Cologne is one of the few relatively good news stories for
| hydrogen bus fleets. Regionalverkehr Koln (RVK) has become the
| largest operator of hydrogen fuel cell buses in Europe, with a
| fleet that reached 101 vehicles by late 2024 and is expected to
| grow to 160 by the end of 2025._
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| Still, their point was directionally correct. London has 1397
| electric buses and Moscow has over 2300.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_emission_buses_in_London
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_buses_in_Moscow
| mmooss wrote:
| Nobody doubts EVs are more popular now. You should see the
| numbers for ICE buses too. The discussion is about the
| future.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Do you expect any problem to appear for batteries at the
| next century or so? What king of change do you expect on
| the future for it to not repeat the lessons we learned at
| the present?
|
| Fossil fuels are on the way out because we do expect
| problems. Do you have something similar for EVs?
| mmooss wrote:
| Efficiency is always a problem. EVs wouldn't exist if
| they weren't more efficient than ICE vehicles, but there
| is still a cost to EVs - power generation, manufacturing,
| waste .... A new technology could increase efficiency.
| kleiba wrote:
| Germany has this recurring fixation on hydrogen for
| whatever reason. Even when Tesla had already long hit the
| mainstream market, German car manufacturers were still
| arguing against EVs in favor for hydrogen-powered cars that
| would theoretically be vastly superior. Well, we all know
| how that turned out for Mercedes, BMW, and the so on.
| mmooss wrote:
| If people followed that reasoning, there would be few EVs
| now because EVs had been tried for decades without
| success; so were airplanes and AI.
|
| If people quit as easily as you say hydrogen car
| manufacturers should, we wouldn't have much of anything.
| kleiba wrote:
| Right. But at some point, you should acknowledge reality.
| That's why I'm not currently trying to collect VC money
| for a new start-up on BetaMax recording technology.
| philjohn wrote:
| Yes - but Hydrogen vehicles have not proven to match or
| even beat EV's in a lot of key metrics that matter.
|
| The biggest one is efficiency. 40% efficient is one
| figure I saw, versus 80% for EV's.
|
| Yes, you can refill quicker, but time to "refuel" EV's is
| dropping precipitously as well, and it's just all around
| safer than tanking around highly combustible liquid gas.
| grapesodaaaaa wrote:
| Let's not forget that the highly combustible liquid gas
| either needs to be stored with complicated cooling or
| under immense pressure (feel free to disprove me if I
| haven't kept up with technology).
|
| It can be done safely, but adds a lot of complexity on
| top of all the complexity needed for ICE engines.
|
| Your points are also great.
| filmor wrote:
| How is that efficiency calculated, respectively?
| philjohn wrote:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/fuel-
| cell-e...
|
| I believe all Hydrogen vehicles are using proton exchange
| membranes still, which have roughly 40-50% efficiency.
|
| And that's before you take into account that even the
| most cutting edge hydrogen refining processes are around
| 70% efficient.
|
| So 1kWh of energy input (electricity) will net you 3X the
| motive power when used directly in a BEV than first being
| coverted to hydrogen, and then converted back into
| electricity.[1]
|
| [1] 0.5*0.7 = 0.35.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| BEVs aren't 100% efficient though so it's closer to 2x
| rather than 3x.
| philjohn wrote:
| I've also gone for the max efficiency figures for the
| Hydrogen car.
|
| And that's before we get to the fuel costs - PS90 to go
| 400 miles in a Mirai, versus PS5.50 to go 300 in an EV6.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I don't think any hydrogen vehicle in actual use has a
| fuel cell (and if there's any, it's an incredibly rare
| exception). They are all internal combustion engines.
|
| Proton exchange membranes are very unreliable and
| expensive. They are also not power-dense, one that powers
| a bus will be very large.
| ch_sm wrote:
| It's actually the opposite: some hydrogen cars that use
| combustion exist, but they are really, really rare.
| Almost all hydrogen cars that are road legal use a fuel
| cell in combination with BEV parts to smooth out/extend
| power delivery.
| pipodeclown wrote:
| That is completely incorrect, it is the opposite.
| praseodym wrote:
| > Yes, you can refill quicker
|
| Unless the hydrogen fueling nozzle freezes to the car,
| which is apparently quite common in high humidity weather
| and/or when multiple cars are fueled consecutively. See
| e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0
| 36031992...
| petertodd wrote:
| That's just a minor problem, not a fatal flaw. Obviously
| you can fix that with a small heater for negligible
| energy cost.
| Filligree wrote:
| Now you have a heater in immediate proximity to hydrogen
| gas.
|
| It's not impossible, but I think you're underestimating
| the complexity of doing that safely.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Hydrogen ignition temperature is 535degC.
| anotherhue wrote:
| Did you never do the science experiment? One small
| spark...
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Don't smoke while fuelling your car. Unless it's a diesel
| that is...
| praseodym wrote:
| Commercially available solutions seem to use a flow of
| nitrogen to purge condensation from the nozzle, which is
| quite a bit more complicated:
| https://www.weh.com/en_us/general-news/preventing-the-
| fuelin...
| nautilius wrote:
| Efficiency is the standard red herring of the battery
| crowd - if efficiency was the prime motivation, we would
| all be driving bicycles and SUV or sportscars would not
| exist.
|
| What are your other metrics? It's an electric drivetrain
| with all advantages, but with the range of a gasoline
| car. Refueling cNG or LNG is standard in Europe, LH2
| works just fine.
|
| Google "burning Tesla" for that ridiculous take on why
| batteries would be inherently safe.
| philjohn wrote:
| Except it's efficiency for the same class of vehicles
| we're talking about, so a bike is an apples to oranges
| comparison.
|
| Proton Exchange Membrane is 40-45% efficient. Generating
| hydrogen from electricity is 70% efficient - meaning for
| a kWh of input electricity you get 3x the motive power
| from a BEV.
|
| Then rolling out a refuelling network, with the high
| pressure tanks and expensive delivery mechanism, will
| cost far more than installing EV chargers - and that's
| before we even get onto the CURRENT penetration of EV
| chargers vs Hydrogen filling stations today (16 in the
| UK, 54 in the ENTIRE US, and not growing).
|
| Hydrogen might be the solution to emissions from haulage,
| but BEV's are more than good enough compared to the ICE
| cars they're replacing for 99.9% of motorists needs. Yes,
| I'm ignoring the "I need to drive 1000 miles without
| stopping for fuel, rest, using the bathroom, come back
| when an EV can do THAT" people.
|
| And on burning EV's, they catch fire at rates 20x lower
| than ICE cars, and LFP chemistry is far more resistant to
| thermal runaway.
|
| Now lets talk cost - over the life of the car the BEV
| will be cheaper to run. Filling a Mirai in the UK will
| cost you around PS90 for 400 miles of range. Charging my
| EV6 from 0 to 100 will cost me PS5.50 for 300 miles of
| range. We're talking near orders of magnitude difference
| in cost per mile here - it's almost an unfair advantage
| that you can charge an EV at home off peak for next to
| nothing.
| crote wrote:
| Range is almost entirely irrelevant.
|
| The average commute distance is 16 miles, and commutes
| over 50 miles are quite rare. This means a car with a
| range of 100 miles would cover the vast majority of use
| cases. Add some buffer for emergencies and cold weather,
| and even the 150-mile-range Nissan Leaf is more than
| enough.
|
| You could also look at once-a-year road trips, of course:
| a range of 250 to 300 miles is becoming quite common for
| mid-level SUVs. With current technologies that means a
| charging session of 30 minutes or so every 3.5 to 4 hours
| - and it's only getting better. For context, the EU-based
| commercial truckers have a 45-minute break every 4.5
| hours, because non-stop driving for even longer than that
| poses a safety risk.
|
| BEVs aren't stuck in the 1990s anymore. Their range has
| significantly improved over the 60-mile range of the GM
| EV1. If 2025 BEV range is an issue for you, you are the
| outlier.
| pipodeclown wrote:
| Efficiency doesn't matter when you're literally pumping
| energetic liquid from the ground. It does matter when you
| need to build 150% more solar panels to produce the
| energy to create your energetic liquid/gas.
| philwelch wrote:
| It's not really fair to compare the efficiency numbers
| directly that way. The efficiency for hydrogen is
| measured from the hydrogen fuel directly, but the
| efficiency of the EV is measured from the wall. In
| reality, generating electricity is about 40% efficient at
| best. Yes, there's also an efficiency cost to refining
| the hydrogen, but if we compare apples to apples and take
| a ton of LNG and use it to power an EV versus a hydrogen
| car, I doubt the EV is going to get more milage.
| pipodeclown wrote:
| Sure but you should be comparing the goal end state, a
| world in which out energy consumption and generation is
| green, that's the whole point of our move to bev's and
| hydrogen. So you should be comparing energy generation by
| green means to power a BEV or using green energy to
| produce hydrogen to power a hydrogen car. In that world
| the whole energy production and consumption chain is
| about 3x as efficient for BEV, which in my mind means
| there is no way hydrogen is going to be competitive and
| we shouldn't waste valuable resources on persuing it.
| mmooss wrote:
| > Hydrogen vehicles have not proven to match or even beat
| EV's in a lot of key metrics that matter
|
| Not yet. That is the nature of technological R&D - if we
| had the answers, we wouldn't be doing R&D.
|
| AI before the last decade or so didn't beat other
| computer technologies in key metrics; should they have
| stopped developing it? Fusion power doesn't beat fission
| and other options in key metrics; solar didn't beat other
| sources in key metrics, including costs, ... - should
| humanity have stopped developing those things?
| lesuorac wrote:
| > Yes, you can refill quicker, but time to "refuel" EV's
| is dropping precipitously as well, and it's just all
| around safer than tanking around highly combustible
| liquid gas.
|
| I always think of I, Robot where the protagonist gets on
| a motorcycle and immediately their passenger complains
| about how dangerous gasoline is.
|
| While not for everybody, EVs have a really great property
| of being rechargable without much effort on your part.
| Just spend ~10 seconds plugging it in at home/work and
| then ~10 seconds unplugging it before your next time.
| Compared to waiting 20 minutes in line at Costco Gas to
| save 1 dollar.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| EV has been tried with great success since the moment the
| electric motor was invented. Trams, metros, trolleybuses.
| The bottleneck for free range was always the battery -
| which was solved by the mobile phones. The electronics
| industry had the money to invest into batteries because
| of the premium that people were willing to pay for even
| minor battery improvements. And the economy of scale
| pushed it down to where a battery pack was costing less
| than the GDP of Australia and so viable in a car.
|
| Hydrogen cars will become available only when hydrogen is
| used as a temporary storage for renewable energy. But
| probably even there converting it to electricity in
| industrial scale fuel cell will make more sense.
| masklinn wrote:
| > The bottleneck for free range was always the battery -
| which was solved by the mobile phones.
|
| I wouldn't say solved here. Significantly improved into
| usability yes, but there are still big issues with
| batteries:
|
| - their low energy density means it's essentially
| impossible to have a long range in a small car, every
| long range EV is necessarily quite large, yet still has a
| shorter range than a city car
|
| - specific energy remains meh, contributing to weight
| inflation (though by no means the only factor here)
|
| - low temperature performance remains dreary and
| something you have to manage (and possibly hack / work
| around e.g. if your car only does automatic battery
| conditioning)
|
| - while I think fast charge times are a bit overblown as
| a single driver on long trips (because stretching /
| resting every 2-3 hours is a good idea anyway), if you
| have relief drivers and can relay they're a significant
| impediment
|
| Not that I think hydrogen has any future mind. But EVs do
| have a lot of drawbacks. And the amount of power you need
| available to charge a bus fleet in reasonable time is
| significant if you do pure battery.
| atoav wrote:
| Reasons I can think of for that fixation are:
|
| 1. Germany's existing industrial capacity in terms of
| machining is a much closer match to hydrogen than to EVs.
| So in short it is wishful thinking mixed with a kind of
| self-preservation.
|
| 2. There seems to be a (somewhat unfounded) worry about
| energy storage when it comes to EVs, that many German
| technologists think is easier to handle and solve with
| hydrogen.
|
| 3. Germans culturally have a slight tendency to be
| fascinated by intricate and complex systems (which can
| also be a bad thing, see bureaucracy). Electric vehicles
| are conceptionally very simple, so the opposite. Hydrogen
| is a little bit more involved.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Germany has this recurring fixation on hydrogen for
| whatever reason.
|
| Hydrogen would enable a lot of very rich and powerful
| businesses to just pivot their business model a bit: the
| fossil fuel industry would have a destination for "grey
| hydrogen", pipeline owners could repurpose natural gas
| pipelines and bunkers for hydrogen, you'd still need
| refineries, tanker trucks to refill gas stations, you'd
| still need a nationwide network of gas stations in the
| first place...
|
| In contrast, electric cars cut out a lot of the middlemen
| - once you got the car and a solar panel on your roof,
| you don't need _any_ of these industries any more. And
| you can't have that.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| And Minsk in Belarus has more than 1000 electric buses, of
| which 150 to 180 are powered by supercapacitors rather than
| batteries!
| rsynnott wrote:
| Ah, I was going on the table in the article, which has
| Cologne at 35; it seem to be out of date, though.
| nopelynopington wrote:
| There's a very large drop off after that one example
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Fundamentally battery buses are going to be cheaper to run.
| Regardless of initial outlay costs electricity that goes directly
| in with no conversion is achieving near 100% efficiency. Whereas
| with hydrogen that same electricity is being used to do
| electrolysis to get the hydrogen to begin with, compressing into
| fuel containers, travelling the fuel around the country and then
| pumping the fuel back in and then all the conversion losses from
| hydrogen to electricity to drive the vehicle. That chain is at
| best about 30% efficiency so its going to cost 3x as much at
| least.
|
| While it gets you better fuel density for added vehicle
| complexity its pricey to run even when the infrastructure exists,
| which it currently doesn't. Hydrogen is notoriously difficult to
| store because its the smallest element in the periodic table it
| just wafts through whatever container we try to put it in too
| causing a constant loss of fuel.
|
| There might be circumstances where its the right thing to do and
| the extra cost is worth it, public transport is unlikely to be
| that scenario. Its got value mostly for remote locations where
| the nearest electricity is quite far away, although the issue
| then becomes can you get the hydrogen there. If it never reaches
| proper economies of scale and infrastructure deployment it might
| always be a dead end and there really aren't that many people
| using vehicles so remote to have no access to electricity but are
| carrying fuel cells to get the range they need.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > same electricity is being used to do electrolysis
|
| Nowhere in the world is electrolysis done at scale. Industrial
| hydrogen almost exclusively comes from steam methane reforming
| (SMR).
| SoftTalker wrote:
| What do they do with the carbon?
| londons_explore wrote:
| either release to the atmosphere or inject into an oil well
| to increase well production.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| So H2 fueled vehicles are just indirectly methane fueled,
| and not carbon-neutral.
|
| Why _not_ electrolyse water? It 's not efficient, but if
| you use solar energy who cares? Set up a plant near the
| ocean and just let it run. All the inputs are essentially
| free.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Electrolysis uses a lot of electricity. Solar energy is
| not free, others pay money for the energy. What are you
| going to do with the hydrogen? It is better to use the
| electricity.
|
| Green hydrogen only makes sense when everything is
| electrified and electricity is cheap. It might be needed
| for things like industrial heat or shipping where need
| fuel.
| deanishe wrote:
| > Nowhere in the world is electrolysis done at scale.
|
| Not yet. I know Siemens has some pilot plants
| running:https://www.siemens-
| energy.com/global/en/home/products-servi...
| class3shock wrote:
| From the article, "A second obvious theme is the prevalence of
| hydrogen buses in industrial regions and cities that bought into
| the hydrogen for energy narrative that's falling apart now.
| Cologne, Aberdeen, Bolzano, Groningen/Drenthe, and Wuppertal are
| all trying to be hydrogen valleys, centers of the hydrogen
| economy's industry. That's going badly because it was always a
| bad idea, devoid of thermodynamic and economic reality."
|
| I think the last sentence speaks alot to hydrogens place in the
| sustainable energy field. It sounds like a good idea but the
| applications always seem to struggle with reality.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I fail to understand how using elemental hydrogen for storing
| energy has ever sounded like a good idea for anyone.
|
| What sounds like a good idea is using fuel cells instead of
| ICEs, but using hydrocarbons as fuel, not dihydrogen (also
| solid carbon is a possible fuel).
|
| The use of hydrocarbons can be carbon-neutral and sustainable,
| by making them from carbon dioxide and water.
|
| There have been various experiments with fuel cells using other
| fuels than dihydrogen, but the main roadblocks have been a
| lower power at a given size than with pure hydrogen and the
| need for more frequent maintenance, besides the main
| disadvantage common to all kinds of fuel cells for now, high
| cost, due to expensive catalysts or to components such as
| separators that must be replaced frequently.
|
| Nevertheless, we know that it is possible to make cheap and
| performant fuel cells, as demonstrated by any living being that
| breathes air.
| dboreham wrote:
| Hydrogen isn't chosen because it's the optimal technical
| solution (or even a solution at all). It's purpose is to
| prevent the transition to BEV technology (as a proposed
| alternative) and thereby protect the businesses making ICEs.
| It therefore can serve its purpose even if zero Hydrogen
| vehicles are made.
|
| Of course this was all for the past 30 years. Since everyone
| can see with their eyes that BEVs work, Hydrogen's job is
| over.
| chermi wrote:
| The hydrogen economy hasn't made since to me from when I first
| heard about it 15+years ago. It's one of the clearest examples of
| academics not understanding how business works.
| XorNot wrote:
| The hydrogen economy has had a lot of not very subtle backing
| from the gas industry, which is fully aware that they would
| have no problem selling hydrogen cracked out of natural gas if
| it ever took off.
| m101 wrote:
| The battery economy has had a lot of very not subtle backing
| from the government.
| XorNot wrote:
| And this is serving the nefarious purpose of?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| And they were right. Well done governments! Cheaper
| transport, cleaner air, less resource extraction, more
| flexible demand for electricity which allows more
| renewables (another government backed success story) which
| in turn means cheaper power and cleaner air.
| masklinn wrote:
| The hydrogen economy never had anything to do with academics.
| It's a fallback plan by the oil industry.
| coderenegade wrote:
| Hydrogen makes sense as a chemical feedstock for methanol and
| ammonia. It also scales well to grid energy storage, because
| you can add hundreds of GWhs at a time, and the technology is
| mature (Moss Bluff opened in 1983). You wouldn't use hydrogen
| in vehicles, because methanol is easy to make, and is a much
| better fuel for non-aero applications. Shipping is moving to
| methanol for that reason.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Hydrogen also makes sense as a reducing agent replacing coal
| for producing steel and other metals, where it makes possible
| the production of metals with less impurities.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Busses _currently_ have big engines and fuel tanks (or motors and
| batteries).
|
| That intuitively makes sense - obviously a big vehicle needs more
| energy than a small one like a car.
|
| However, typical city bus routes spend most of their time under
| 30 mph, cutting aerodynamic drag by a whopping 90% compared to 70
| mph highway cruising that a car does.
|
| With more work on rolling resistance (buying super-good bearings
| and fancy tyre designs), regen round trip efficiency, and energy
| use of the passenger cabin (heat pump heating, double glazing), I
| could see busses needing similar size batteries to electric cars
| and still being able to do a full days city work.
|
| In turn, that makes the energy source fairly irrelevant from both
| an economic and a social perspective.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The low speed means they are using the power to accelerate
| against inertia, not to maintain speed against air resistance.
| VectorLock wrote:
| Inertia that can then be recovered, which you can't with air
| resistance.
| 7e wrote:
| There is plenty of air resistance in a low speed bus, which
| is shaped like a brick and has huge frontal area. That is
| still a lot of air to push.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Sounds like there is room for improvement here too ?
| londons_explore wrote:
| 0.7 m/s^2 is a typical acceleration for a city bus - most
| people won't fall over whilst standing at that acceleration.
|
| A city bus perhaps holds 50 70kg passengers = 3.5 tons of
| cargo, and a lightweight bus design is perhaps 6.5 tons
| (typical bus=10 tons). Total = 10 tons.
|
| Peak Power required to accelerate 0.7 m/s^2 up to 30 mph = 93
| kilowatts.
|
| Which is car territory. The cheapest tesla model 3 has a 208
| kilowatt motor, so would be plenty enough power.
| 7e wrote:
| The bus is constantly starting and stopping. Regen doesn't
| recapture it all. Power isn't the issue, energy is.
|
| Also, current hybrid busses with not-so-heavy batteries
| weigh about 15 tons without cargo. You are way off.
| londons_explore wrote:
| This math is for future busses designed for city use - so
| batteries will be much smaller and therefore lighter, and
| the bus construction itself will be much lighter because,
| as you point out, with a city bus pulling away ~5 million
| times in its lifespan, the cost of energy lost when
| stopping and pulling away far exceeds the cost of
| upgrading the frame to aluminium and other weight saving
| measures.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Buses have been designed for city use for ages. The
| double deckers are not designed for motorway use.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Regen can capture during stopping most of the energy
| consumed during starting, if well designed, while in a
| non-electric bus all energy is lost.
|
| The mass of the bus does not matter, only the energy lost
| due to mechanical friction or electrical resistance, both
| of which increase much more slowly than the mass for
| bigger buses.
| rsynnott wrote:
| That's a small bus. Buses here take about 100 people and
| are 20 tonnes fully laden.
| londons_explore wrote:
| okay - well the motor from the cheapest Tesla will still
| do the job just fine.
| VectorLock wrote:
| I'm not sure how important double glazing is when you're
| opening the inner air volume to ambient air every few minutes,
| but maybe?
| londons_explore wrote:
| It's possible something could be done about that with air
| curtains, PVC strip curtains, etc.
|
| Climate control energy varies widely depending on geography -
| and appropriate door energy saving approaches will probably
| depend on where the bus operates, and possibly even the
| season (ie. winter doors swapped for summer doors), or extra
| batteries added in summer/winter to account for the extra
| energy use.
| rsynnott wrote:
| As an example, most of Dublin Bus's electric fleet have 450kWh
| batteries for a range of 320km. So, bigger than a car, but not
| as much as you'd expect given that the buses are 20 tonne fully
| laden and take a hundred passengers.
| occz wrote:
| Electric buses in the form of trolleybuses seems like the better
| option than either of these, although I do agree that battery
| buses beat hydrogen every day of the week.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Batteries are cheap. Installing lots of copper lines for
| trolley buses isn't. That's why trolley buses are pretty rare.
| Old idea, didn't really take that well. There are a handful of
| cities that have them. And they've had them for decades. Most
| of those cities now also have battery electrical buses to
| service all the areas where the cables don't go. Expanding the
| network of cables doesn't seem to have a very high priority.
| Installing chargers (in depots mostly) is much easier and
| cheaper. And it's not like batteries are that expensive.
|
| With battery prices trending to 50$ per kwh, a decent size bus
| battery of 250kwh would cost about 12.5K. That's manufacturing
| cost, not purchase cost. But it drives the point home: long
| term batteries are going to dip even further. Far below
| 50$/kwh. It will drive down the cost of battery electric drive
| trains for everything with wheels to far below that of the
| traditional setup with ICE engines. And they don't need
| expensive fuel to run. Or a lot of engine maintenance and
| servicing.
|
| Currently tens of thousands of electrical buses are produced
| per year. Most of them in China. Which is of course where they
| have lots of battery factories. It's a rapidly growing
| industry.
| dvdkon wrote:
| As a counterpoint, Prague is building new trolleybus lines at
| a somewhat regular pace after having abandoned them in the
| 70s.
|
| Granted, these trolleybuses also have batteries and only
| spend about 1/2 of their journey under wires.
| masklinn wrote:
| Yep, hybrid trolleys / battery trolleys are really cool, as
| they provide the flexibility of batteries to e.g. work
| around roadworks and blockage, but allow for a more
| distributed electricity consumption thanks to partially
| fixed routes / overhead lines.
|
| The poles also make for convenient overhead charging docks,
| which you can add on a somewhat piecemeal manner. With some
| automated guidance, that means you can charge the buses at
| long-wait stops or when they wait to run the route back
| even though they're not a a depot, without the need for an
| "accessible" charging infrastructure (or the driver needing
| to move out, go open an electric cabinet, plug in a charge
| cable, then remember to unplug before going back out).
| bluGill wrote:
| Trolly wires generally work out cheaper than batteries if you
| are running frequent service. Batteries work out better
| anyway though because they allow you to go around obsticals
| (roadwork, cars illegally parked in the land...)
| preisschild wrote:
| > Batteries work out better anyway though because they
| allow you to go around obsticals (roadwork, cars illegally
| parked in the land...)
|
| The pantographs of trolleybuses are often pretty long, so
| they can switch to the other lane to avoid obstacles.
| bluGill wrote:
| Which does no good if the whole road is blocked.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Which is why many European cities have lanes reserved for
| public transportation, in order to prevent stupid car
| drivers to block the traffic.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I like how ChatGPT thinks it would take at least five tower
| cranes to constuct that little shed/shelter.
| kumarski wrote:
| Hydrogen buses limp at an EROI of 0.5 to 1.5.
|
| Losses via Gibbs free energy (237 kJ/mol to split H2O) and
| compression (20% of H2's 120 MJ/kg.)
|
| Barely cash in on the H2-O2 reaction (DH = -285.8 kJ/mol).
|
| Battery buses, powered by lithium-ion cells, hit EROI of 2 to 4.
|
| Redox heavy lithium mining (150 MJ/kg) drags it all down.
|
| Charge-discharge losses (90% Coulombic efficiency)+ 5-10%
| capacity fade after 1000 cycles.
|
| All trails diesel's 5-10 EROI and 46 MJ/kg density.
| f_devd wrote:
| By your own calculation EROI of Battery buses should be about
| 15-30 (taking diesel EROI as given as it has no source) if you
| actually apply the vehicle's efficiency; ~85% efficiency for
| E2E diesel-generator-to-EV. While diesel bus would be around
| ~21% effiency.
|
| Source/explainer:
| https://youtu.be/6c94vRmbM6Y?si=WmCvyB6uKJT7TWZ7&t=444
| m101 wrote:
| Is that hydrogen EROI number assuming lowest energy hydrogen?
| Or something like electrolysis?
| fifilura wrote:
| I am surprised that biogas (methane) buses are not mentioned in
| the comparison, they are already running in lots of places.
|
| https://www.europeanbiogas.eu/biogas-buses-better-value-elec...
| wuming2 wrote:
| With battery powered scooters, battery powered mopeds, battery
| powered quadricycles, battery powered cars and battery powered
| buses zipping around I believe big oil and power corporations
| keep up investing into the hydrogen complex system just as an
| additional avenue to sustaining their representatives in
| politics. Who can contribute offsetting all of those investments
| by keeping up the flood of public subsidies to gas, diesel and
| all other revenue streams of their sponsors.
| vegavis wrote:
| Yeah this only reveals a snapshot of the current situation. The
| truth is that lithium ion has a few more decades of serious R&D
| and successfully mass produced commercial products on the market.
| Hydrogen fuel cells arent as fortunate; they still have a high
| production cost due to low volume, the supply chain has had a
| fraction of the investment of ICE and EV, and the regulatory
| environment is even less clear than EV around the world.
|
| But the reality is our society is well on its way to fracturing
| the fossil fuel dominated infrastructure supporting us, and it
| wont just be electric to take a piece of the pie. Buses and other
| large vehicles like mining vehicles, semis, and many Class A
| vehicles will transition from their diesel engines to instead
| fuel cell, and not batteries. Battery technology is far too heavy
| to support vehicle and payload combinations at this level, and
| these applications prefer the high power density of fuel cells
| over the accessibility and storage capability of an EV only
| architecture. Hydrogen is a quicker refuel, and one can imagine a
| future where industrial sites and logistics warehouses that
| already have forklifts running on H2 will see the rest of their
| large work/fleet vehicles transition over to hydrogen as well.
|
| Unfortunately, this premonition is probably at risk of being a
| few years off thanks to the current government situation.
| Rygian wrote:
| Why so much waste?
|
| Why would a factory invest in hydrogen fueled forklifts and
| their associated refueling infrastructure if they can get
| electric ones that just plug into a wall socket?
|
| Unless research on hydrogen manages to upturn our foundational
| understanding of thermodynamics, hydrogen will be a waste of
| useful energy in most applications.
|
| For further reference, check the "clean hydrogen ladder"
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Actually all the vehicles you mention are already available in
| battery electric form and typically already far more common
| than their hydrogen equivalents. Everything from mining trucks
| to scooters. Batteries are cheaper than fuel cells. And
| electricity is cheaper than hydrogen. You are right that
| there's a lot of potential for further cost reductions with
| battery electric through innovation and numerous paths for
| doing so.
|
| With hydrogen there simply isn't any obvious path forward.
| Hydrolyzers are inching closer to their theoretical maximum
| efficiency. Same for fuel cells. A few percent improvements
| here a few percent there. End to end battery electric wastes
| far less electricity. So it's inherently cheaper to charge a
| battery than it is to fuel a hydrogen vehicle. This is a gap
| that cannot be bridged.
|
| With batteries we're looking at steep increases in energy
| density by multiple factors, new chemistries based on commonly
| available materials, cost reductions, etc. They are already
| competitive now. But it's going to get far worse for hydrogen
| very quickly.
|
| Simply put, hydrogen is dead as a door nail for anything with
| wheels. There's a lot of subsidized inertia in the market. But
| without subsidized hydrogen, there is no business case to use
| hydrogen. None whatsoever.
|
| > Hydrogen is a quicker refuel
|
| Only slightly. It's not that fast actually. The naive notion
| that you just slosh some hydrogen in a tank like you would with
| diesel is not based in reality. Pumping compressed gas through
| narrow hoses takes time and hydrogen has a lot of volume. 10-15
| minutes to refuel a truck is pretty normal. Charging can take a
| bit longer; depending on the size of the charger. And there is
| a path to making that quite a bit faster.
| j_4 wrote:
| Often overlooked but electric buses are very heavy. Here in my
| small hometown they visibly started decaying the road
| infrastructure super fast in many places since they got
| introduced. Not impossible to patch up, but not a negligible cost
| of moving to the tech.
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| The US Government did a study in the 1950s and discovered that
| the damage done to a roadway by a car is proportional to the
| fourth power of its axle weight.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
| rsynnott wrote:
| Hrm. Dublin bus has been replacing its fleet of diesel buses
| with electric. Both old and new are around 20 tonnes fully
| laden.
| amsha wrote:
| There is a very to-the-point diagram called the Hydrogen Ladder
| [0] that classifies the usefulness of hydrogen by domain. The
| author makes a good case that, despite its versatility, hydrogen
| is almost always worse than some other clean technology for any
| use case. It's hard to make, store, and use in a scalable/cheap
| way, and even generous estimates of future progress show a cost
| curve that requires subsidies basically forever.
|
| Buses are classified as a "Most Uncompetitive" category.
| Electricity, whether wired or battery powered, is cheaper and
| easier to scale for the predicable everyday energy use of a city
| bus.
|
| 0: https://www.liebreich.com/hydrogen-ladder-version-5-0/
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| With some emphasis on the "almost" :
|
| https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/07/green-hydrogen-for-ener...
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| did the picture die or smth?
|
| edit: no, even internet archive from a year ago shows no
| picture
| mrspuratic wrote:
| "V5" article doesn't render (multiple browsers), try the
| older v4.1 version linked from it at the bottom (the faux
| "energy efficiency" graph).
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Imo hybrid trolleys are great. You don't need huge bess nor long
| charging times. The trolley will use wires in most areas and
| battery in less dense areas
| sschueller wrote:
| The Zurich transportation company also evaluated if they should
| use hydrogen or electric buses. They decided on battery buses
| even though they can only run for half a day at the current
| capacity. Since drivers have a set limit of hours then can work
| it doesn't matter as much and capacities have only been going up.
|
| I took some photos of the main garage for these new buses:
| https://sschueller.github.io/posts/74-eletric-bus-charging-s...
| bombcar wrote:
| https://sschueller.github.io/posts/74-eletric-bus-charging-s...
| m101 wrote:
| I think there's a risk of "it's too soon to say here" when
| deciding on fuel vs battery Vs hydrogen. The problem is that this
| is a highly complex dynamic system with different people
| experiencing different externalities.
|
| Reasons answering this question is difficult are, for example:
|
| - given the demands for highly valuable electricity and
| alternative use cases, why do we insist on using it in
| locomotion?
|
| - given marginal electricity pricing, everyone is subsidising
| cleaner air in cities for the benefit of air quality of only
| those living in cities
|
| - might electric buses be prevalent because of smaller up front
| costs to infrastructure, and not because it's the right thing
| longer term?
|
| - if electrification of transport in general was a bad idea
| (first bullet) then how does this change the economics of
| hydrogen given the longer run access to SMR sourced hydrogen from
| longer term fossil fuel extraction?
|
| - how sure are we that we are solving a co2 climate crisis with
| the actions we are taking?
|
| This all in the context of "greening" our economies when all the
| dirty industry and carbon emissions are exported to China, out of
| sight but not out of the true equation. And then there's the
| destruction of industrial capacity in Europe carried out by green
| agendas, all in favour of the Chinese Communist Party longer
| term.
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| I think this "debate" is largely irrelevant: China has decided
| that locomotion will be (battery) electric. That is the largest
| scale you can get, so any effects of scale for an alternative
| will at best be as large as the battery electric one.
|
| And then there are the variety of other disadvantages that come
| with hydrogen: - significant leakage and high greenhouse factor
| - heavy support equipment need (both for storage and for usage)
|
| About the only advantage of hydrogen (vs. lithium-ion
| batteries) is gravimetric energy density (where it's about a
| factor of 300). But even volumetric energy density differs only
| be a factor of 5-10. (Both numbers ignore that the storage
| thing will add significant weight). And those are _already_ not
| limiting for locomotion needs.
|
| - how sure are we that we are solving a co2 climate crisis with
| the actions we are taking?
|
| The thing here is yes: Even if we would generate the energy for
| the locomotion completely with fossil fuel! Large plants are
| significantly more efficient (10-35% vs up to 60%) and it would
| be _much_ simpler to, e.g. think about carbon capture if we had
| tens of thousand CO2 emitters rather than a billion. But we are
| not doing that!
| nopelynopington wrote:
| Ireland is investing heavily in green energy production at the
| moment, building two facilities to split water with excess wind
| energy. I guess the idea is to capture what can't be used at time
| of generation and make money from it.
|
| The idea is for "heavy transport" and "aviation" sectors to use
| these. Are there any hydrogen planes?
|
| Perhaps they mean turning it into ammonia through haber-bosch but
| that requires even further energy.
| elif wrote:
| Besides those working in the technology keeping themselves
| employed, I'm really confused who is supporting hydrogen.
|
| The infrastructure to support it is far _more_ complex than our
| current petroleum network, and hydrogen is _less_ safe than
| petroleum, while at the same time, electric is _safer_ and
| requires just 10% of the infrastructure as petroleum.
|
| It reaaalllly just feels like scientists and fossil fuel grifters
| still propping up hydrogens dead xorpse
| wolfram74 wrote:
| My impression is it's auto and fuel companies putting out this
| unworkable alternative to current technologies so they can
| appear to be concerned about climate change without having to
| actually stop making money, also if it does work they can crack
| the petro chemicals to get hydrogen out and people who point
| out it's basically as dirty as ICE engines will look like
| pedants.
|
| The scientists are just there because if you give them the
| opportunity to work on hard technical challenges, they'll take
| it. The morality is much greyer than the ones being paid to
| contrive models with the initial goal of "higher CO2 is
| actually good for everybody."
| credit_guy wrote:
| Hydrogen is difficult to store. But it enjoys the square-cube
| law. If you increase the size of a tank by a factor of 2 in all 3
| dimensions, the capacity increases by a factor of 8, but the cost
| only by a factor of 4.
|
| Hydrogen has some huge advantages over other green options. But,
| also some huge disadvantages. If you want to diminish the
| disadvantages, you need to exploit the square-cube law, and that
| means you need huge scale.
|
| In other words, hydrogen is a non-starter for cars. It has a very
| low chance of success for buses, but not zero. It could work very
| well for trains. And it could work extremely well for electricity
| generation at city scale.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| Storage is just part of the problem with hydrogen. The process
| of generating hydrogen has never been cost-effective. It's just
| not possible to make hydrogen cheaply right now. Solar energy,
| on the other hand, gets so cheap that it won't make sense to
| produce hydrogen with it, then transport it to a city and
| convert it to electricity. We should just send the electricity
| directly.
| crote wrote:
| > It could work very well for trains.
|
| Only if you completely ignore overhead wires. Electrifying main
| rail corridors is a no-brainer, and batteries are more than
| sufficient for short last-mile spurs.
| preisschild wrote:
| And trolleybuses are better than both :P
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