Can be doesn't mean it is. According to the DOE 95% of hydrogen comes from natural gas.
Hydrogen Production: Natural Gas Reforming | Department of Energy
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Will Model 3 & Chevy Bolt Be The 1-2 Punch That Kills Fuel Cell Vehicles
- Thread starter Patrick0101
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Hydrogen Production: Natural Gas Reforming | Department of Energy
Some people have more vision to think just beyond the "foreseeable future"
15 years ago ev were not seen as ridiculous due to low mileage and long range driving problems.
Daimler quote. "For now" I don't think it is a state secret that ev have a lead and an advantage "for now"
At some point ev charging was also viewed as a waste of money "right now" since we have plenty of gas stations
And at some point gas stations were viewed as a massive waste of money "right now" since horses didn't need gas and not that many cars were sold.
AlanSqB
Dog Chauffeur
Because 0 down/$199 month is ok for a short range, city car. I have one, we love it. Great for carrying dogs around and going to work.
$7000 down/$1000 month is not ok for a short range, city car.
AlanSqB
Dog Chauffeur
Gas was originally sold by drug stores as a side business. Kind of like EVSE's sitting outside Walgreens.
Getting to those sorts of charge times is going to be very difficult. Rechargeable batteries have a chemical process that needs to go on to charge. The faster you try to charge, the more heat you produce and the higher the risk of a very fast release of energy, called an explosion.
What will more likely happen is the range of batteries will get better and better to a point that the average driver can get an entire day's driving on a road trip on one charge and overnight destination charging at hotels will be the focus.
The US already has the most built out rail network in the world. More electrified rail is a possibility.
We are moving to a more and more virtual society. Millennials tend to be poorer than Gen X and Boomers were at their age, but they also show a lot less interest in collecting stuff than previous generations. Ordering online has also reduced the number of trips people are making to shop and it is more efficient to order online and have it delivered than each person drive to the mall.
We will probably see a continued decline in retail shopping.
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
I hypothesize a causative association.
My two children are recent college grads and new to work. Neither felt the pain of unemployment but they both know they were lucky, and they are surrounded by friends that are a mixture of poor, in debt, or unemployed. My daughter took the message to heart that good fortune is not guaranteed and is already stuffing her retirement account; my son lives for today.
They are a microcosm of my observation that economic depression and deep recessions tend to polarize the next generation.
You keep talking... and yet you haven't come up with any actual reasons why hydrogen fuel cell is a worthy endeavor to spend a few million or billion taxpayer dollars on... so how about it? Why should we use hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, what carbon emissions would come from it, how much would it cost to implement, and so forth?
BEVs deserve support for widespread adoption because it is within the foreseeable future. No one I know is against hydrogen fuel cell research such that one day, practical widespread adoption could be in the foreseeable future.
As far as I can tell, there are a total of 12 H2 stations in current operation in all of the US combined. Most have been abandoned.
Time to call the plumber, it's circling the drain ... (stolen from wifey's TV show)
Number of EV refueling stations is the number houses and businesses with 120v or 240v electricity, and all the remote chargers.
People keep screaming INFRASTRUCTURE, and while I do agree remote EV refueling needs more attention, it's at about 10,000,000 times better than Hydrogen availability is right now.
Why California is handing out $5000 a car for FCEVs is suspicious since the Fed stopped their credits. California has the best state government that money can buy.
Time to call the plumber, it's circling the drain ... (stolen from wifey's TV show)
Number of EV refueling stations is the number houses and businesses with 120v or 240v electricity, and all the remote chargers.
People keep screaming INFRASTRUCTURE, and while I do agree remote EV refueling needs more attention, it's at about 10,000,000 times better than Hydrogen availability is right now.
Why California is handing out $5000 a car for FCEVs is suspicious since the Fed stopped their credits. California has the best state government that money can buy.
It was already taking steady punches from all directions, and the Bolt and Model 3 will indeed knock out fuel cell cars.
Batteries have improved far faster than anticipated and HFCV dependency on public refueling makes it an all-or-nothing technology. I don't want work on HFCV to stop, I just want it to go back to the lab where it should be remain until the costs drop enough to make it worth considering.
Batteries have improved far faster than anticipated and HFCV dependency on public refueling makes it an all-or-nothing technology. I don't want work on HFCV to stop, I just want it to go back to the lab where it should be remain until the costs drop enough to make it worth considering.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
The difference is cars provided a revolutionary advantage over horses and EVs provide a revolutionary advantage over ICE vehicles. Thus there was a justification for waiting. The only thing hydrogen provides is faster refueling, and to provide that, it requires ridiculously expensive infrastructure and fuel (and multiple times lower efficiency if using electrolysis based hydrogen).
Given that, hydrogen deserves to be put on the back burner, rather than holding back on EV development to wait for it (as Toyota keeps suggesting). If Toyota feels like throwing their own money into building infrastructure, rather than having our government do it, that is fine by me, but obviously that is not happening.
Without a driver, the truck can be moving or recharging 24 hours a day, so cargo will likely move further per day, even if the truck needs to make many stops to recharge.
Electric aircraft are not a good application of battery technology. With aircraft weight is factored into everything. With liquid fuels, the plane gets lighter the further it goes, batteries don't get any lighter as they discharge. Just lugging the extra weight reduces range, even if batteries had the same energy density.
The density of some fuels (in KWh/Gal space):
Hydrogen (compressed at 700 bar) -5.9
Diesel / Fuel oil-37.9
Jet fuel (Kerosene)-39.6
Gasoline (petrol)-36.2
Ethanol fuel (E100)-22.2
Methanol fuel (M100)-16.5
Lithium-ion battery-0.95
As you can see, yes highly compressed H2 is 6X the energy density of Li-Ion batteries, but it is way behind all liquid fuels. Hydrogen has major storage problems (it leaks out of any container, no matter how stout), it has to be kept are extremely low temperatures or under fairly high pressure, and an entire infrastructure has to be built for it that is far more expensive that liquid fuel infrastructure.
Aircraft will probably be the last area where petroleum is used. The energy density of the fuel is so critical to range that even ethanol cuts the range in half.
With ships topside weight is a critical factor. Plastering solar panels across the top of a ship would make it top heavy and potentially unstable in rough seas. Plus it takes a tremendous amount of electricity to run hydrolysis of water. If someone was going to go to the trouble of mounting all those solar cells it would be much more efficient to have the power run electric motors directly.
Since the 1970s there have been some ideas floated about to bring back sailing ships, but this time with the sails controlled by computers and backed up with some kind of powered engine. Nobody has done it though, all the extra complexity with the sails and management systems probably isn't worth the gain.
The military has already done some weird things. The armor on the Abrams tank is made of uranium. It's spent uranium which isn't glow in the dark radioactive, but it is still radioactive.
Fuel cells are useful for some specialty uses like the space shuttle used some and the crew drank the "exhaust". For a mass market product, it's a horrible idea when you start looking at the numbers. Scroll down the the graphic about 20% down:
Why Hydrogen Cars are Less Efficient Than Electrics - The Green Optimistic
If you start with 100 KWh of energy, the graphic says a renewable source, but it can be any source, then go through the steps to get it into a vehicle and on the road, with hydrogen you only get 19-23 KWh of usable energy in the car where with an electric car you get 69 KWh.
And to get this car fuel that is 1/3 as efficient as BEVs into the hands of consumers, you need to spend billions building very expensive fueling stations in close to the same density as gas stations all over the world and build out a parallel distribution network to gasoline. On the other hand, BEVs have fuel anywhere there is a power outlet. Without fast chargers it's slow, but its there. If your hydrogen car runs out of fuel and there are no stations nearby, you are in for a long ride in a tow truck. If your BEV runs out of fuel, there are few places where you're not going to find at least a 110V outlet.
There are some limited uses for fuel cells, but mass market vehicles is not one of them.
People like me who needed a second car immediately and didn't care about range since it was just a second car, or people who just don't drive very far. Given a choice I would not have purchased the Leaf, but there wasn't a choice because size mattered (not too big was a requirement). Europe and Asia have far better public transportation than North America so car usage is different and can't really be compared.
Short range EVs are really '70s thinking when there was no possibility of a longer range.
But that's a lot. 4X or 5X. For every 100 km in an HFCEV you could go 400 or 500 km in a BEV. And then there's the "Don't use after date" sticker on the car. Older HFCEVs will be a serious safety problem.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
I understand all that, but my comment was in the context of comparing LNG/CNG vs hydrogen for long haul trucking. I'm just saying LNG/CNG can use renewable sources at the same efficiency as hydrogen. I'm not making a comment on comparing to batteries.
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