What a fracking joke!! We have so much electricity in Quebec we don’t even know what to do with it but all of a sudden the government will fund hydrogen?? Obviously (to me anyways) they must be getting kickbacks somewhere. Following the money should produce the usual suspects.
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sakimano
Active Member
what's wrong with alternative energy sources? You guys sound like the paranoid fossil fuel industry guys denouncing electric cars.
If hydrogen works, is that really that bad for us all?
Sure it's inefficient and expensive as hell right now. Newsflash...so is electricity for automotive propulsion and it was even more so 5 years ago. Give them a chance to make it work. If it sucks and doesn't work, it will die off.
the irony is incredible
If hydrogen works, is that really that bad for us all?
Sure it's inefficient and expensive as hell right now. Newsflash...so is electricity for automotive propulsion and it was even more so 5 years ago. Give them a chance to make it work. If it sucks and doesn't work, it will die off.
the irony is incredible
Hydrogen is not an energy source and for practical purposes doesn't exist naturally on earth.
fsch
Member
In principle yes. In practice, H2 is produced out of methane or other organic gases. It requires less energy so it's much cheaper. But the process produces CO2.
Because that's NOT how hydrogen is made. 95% of hydrogen is actually made from natural gas. A process that produces yes, carbon.
Hydrogen Production: Natural Gas Reforming | Department of Energy
Also, you take electricity, use it to make hydrogen, transport the hydrogen, store the hydrogen in cooled pressure containers, then use that hydrogen to make electricity again. The entire process is less than 30% efficient. The most efficient gasoline cars (the Ioniq, Prius) are 40% efficient. So, hydrogen is less efficient than gasoline engines.
If you have ridiculous amounts of clean electricity on hand and you don't know what to do with it, it might be an option. Then again, you sell the electrolysis hydrogen and use your remaining electricity to power your BEVs 3x more efficiently than with fuel cells.
I say sell because what's the point of using it here if you already have so much water behind dams you can't even turbine enough of it that you have to dump it off, if you're going to transform energy, better sell it off (and make a premium on it) than waste it here. If we can't sell Hydro to Massachussets, maybe they'll buy H2? We'll keep the more efficient use of electricity for our domestic needs.
Sell because hydroelectricity is a clean energy. If H2 can help somewhere else get cleaner we should be going for that.
I say sell because what's the point of using it here if you already have so much water behind dams you can't even turbine enough of it that you have to dump it off, if you're going to transform energy, better sell it off (and make a premium on it) than waste it here. If we can't sell Hydro to Massachussets, maybe they'll buy H2? We'll keep the more efficient use of electricity for our domestic needs.
Sell because hydroelectricity is a clean energy. If H2 can help somewhere else get cleaner we should be going for that.
Electrolysis is horribly inefficient. It's so bad it's more economical to use natural gas to make the hydrogen.
There's a huge longstanding thread on Hydrogen vs. Battery with all the gory details.
It takes a huge amount of energy to compress the hydrogen into a high pressure tank that can be carried by a car. That pumping energy alone is a good percentage of what an electric car would need to drive the same distance.
Hydrogen fuelling stations have to make the hydrogen on site because it's not practical to deliver it. So they can only fuel a couple of dozen cars a day.
Rolling out hydrogen infrastructure across the country would cost untold billions, whereas electricity is already everywhere and at most would require minor infrastructure enhancements. And plugs.
Hydrogen embrittlement is a big problem - it eats metal. All it takes to use the wrong alloy for one part and your refuelling station is a ticking time bomb. Yes despite the tiny number of stations in existence one has already blown up.
Hydrogen is incredibly flammable. It has the greatest range of concentrations that are flammable of any gas or vapor, by more than an order of magnitude. It also burns invisibly.
In order to store hydrogen in a car it has to be stored at crazy high pressures. This could be very dangerous in an accident or even if there is simply a failure.
Fuel cells are still very expensive, and require rare elements as catalysts. They're easily damaged by contaminants... things that you find in air for example.
Hydrogen cars still need batteries because the fuel cells can't provide much power for acceleration.
So hydrogen power is inefficient, expensive, and explosive. There are several technical breakthroughs that would be required to make it practical, and it's not even apparent that said breakthroughs are even possible.
So unless there are several miracles... hydrogen is the fuel of the future, and always will be.
There's a huge longstanding thread on Hydrogen vs. Battery with all the gory details.
It takes a huge amount of energy to compress the hydrogen into a high pressure tank that can be carried by a car. That pumping energy alone is a good percentage of what an electric car would need to drive the same distance.
Hydrogen fuelling stations have to make the hydrogen on site because it's not practical to deliver it. So they can only fuel a couple of dozen cars a day.
Rolling out hydrogen infrastructure across the country would cost untold billions, whereas electricity is already everywhere and at most would require minor infrastructure enhancements. And plugs.
Hydrogen embrittlement is a big problem - it eats metal. All it takes to use the wrong alloy for one part and your refuelling station is a ticking time bomb. Yes despite the tiny number of stations in existence one has already blown up.
Hydrogen is incredibly flammable. It has the greatest range of concentrations that are flammable of any gas or vapor, by more than an order of magnitude. It also burns invisibly.
In order to store hydrogen in a car it has to be stored at crazy high pressures. This could be very dangerous in an accident or even if there is simply a failure.
Fuel cells are still very expensive, and require rare elements as catalysts. They're easily damaged by contaminants... things that you find in air for example.
Hydrogen cars still need batteries because the fuel cells can't provide much power for acceleration.
So hydrogen power is inefficient, expensive, and explosive. There are several technical breakthroughs that would be required to make it practical, and it's not even apparent that said breakthroughs are even possible.
So unless there are several miracles... hydrogen is the fuel of the future, and always will be.
Well, at least there's some chance fusion might come to pass, somehow.
Hydrogen will have its applications. Just not in passenger cars.
Hydrogen will have its applications. Just not in passenger cars.
Phillip L
Gas Passer
Doug_G if you keep this up I am gonna think you are against hydrogen.
But seriously, even with a cursory knowledge of the history of hydrogen for cars, why is any money being spent on this vs electricity? Even at the beginning of the ev revolution it was easy to decide that ev’s had vastly more potential (pardon the pun) as listed by Doug. But by this stage with ev’s being such a proven technology, consideration of hydrogen after the pathetic progress it has made in the same timeframe, is just wrong. Sometimes when a horse is lame you just have to have the courage to realize the nag is lame and just put it out of its misery.
But seriously, even with a cursory knowledge of the history of hydrogen for cars, why is any money being spent on this vs electricity? Even at the beginning of the ev revolution it was easy to decide that ev’s had vastly more potential (pardon the pun) as listed by Doug. But by this stage with ev’s being such a proven technology, consideration of hydrogen after the pathetic progress it has made in the same timeframe, is just wrong. Sometimes when a horse is lame you just have to have the courage to realize the nag is lame and just put it out of its misery.
It’s controlled, but it’s harder to break out electricity that’s being used as a car fuel as opposed to regular house use. If people see their electricity bill skyrocket, a lotta questions would get asked as to why, whereas people just grumble when gas prices go up.
mrElbe
Active Member
The big Government question is how to recover the lucrative road tax. Currently taxes are based on litres of gas or on the amount sold. With electricity it's not easy to differentiate between household and vehicle use. So they will tax us either with a flat yearly rate or on km driven. Some US states already have a flat EV tax.
If there were any sense to taxation relating to roadways, heavy trucks would pay the vast majority of the bill. They do most of the damage to infrastructure.
At the risk of creating a temporary spike in inflation I certainly agree with this. That being said, nothing such as dedicated budget envelopes exists when it comes to public services in general so you know the big truck taxes would get wasted in some other flavour of the month-type of program.
sakimano
Active Member
if you reckon the average car drives about 20,000 kms a year or thereabouts, and consumes about 10l of gasoline / 100 km that's around 2000 litres of fuel in a year.
If that gas tax is about 25 cents a litre, that's about $500/year gasoline tax.
Wouldn't be surprised at all if they levied a $500/year road tax on electric cars in a classic government contradiction of itself. Governments aren't motivated enough to save that money elsewhere in their budgets so they'll just levy taxes.
If that gas tax is about 25 cents a litre, that's about $500/year gasoline tax.
Wouldn't be surprised at all if they levied a $500/year road tax on electric cars in a classic government contradiction of itself. Governments aren't motivated enough to save that money elsewhere in their budgets so they'll just levy taxes.
My guess would be the vehicle registration fee increases by some amount relative to the estimated loss of tax revenue. Ideally a tiered system, where fees would be based on fuel economy or carbon emissions (worse fuel economy/higher emissions, higher registration fee). Currently Alberta's fuel tax is $0.13/L for gasoline. My Model S at roughly 100 mpge (2.4 L/100km) would equivalently use 480L of fuel per year based on 20,000km/yr driving, which reduces the Alberta tax revenue by $62.40 (compared to what it would be if my car was gas-powered). A 20 mpg SUV would be roughly 5 times that amount. Is the government better off eliminating the fuel tax and increasing the annual registration fee? One might argue that a $0.13/L reduction in fuel prices would encourage people (who are generally short-sighted) to purchase even more low-efficiency vehicles, so maybe the better plan is to charge EVs based on their equivalent gasoline useage and leave the fuel tax in place for those still driving ICE. Even better would be to increase the fuel taxes to further incentivise fuel-efficient vehicles. I have no problem with paying my fair share, and roads need maintenance, and the registration process already exists so it makes sense to me to just do it that way.
Of course, letting EVs pay no fuel tax or equivalent and just making up the difference by increasing fuel taxes for everyone else works for me too.
Of course, letting EVs pay no fuel tax or equivalent and just making up the difference by increasing fuel taxes for everyone else works for me too.
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