Hydrogen as a vehicle fuel is completely and utterly daft. It's an absolute dead end as a method of propelling vehicles. I'm calling it now, and I'll look back on this comment in a decade and I'll still be right then. :-) *
*N.B. I thought the internet was "just a fad, the CB Radio of the '90s" so that's at least once I was very, very wrong.
RevRico said:And keep in mind, the people at NASA are engineers and literal rocket scientists who have studied, designed the process, and trained in it.
Also keep in mind that NASA is using LIQUID hydrogen, at -453F (20K). That's an entirely different class of problems from compressed gaseous hydrogen.
flat4_5spd said:Hydrogen as a vehicle fuel is completely and utterly daft. It's an absolute dead end as a method of propelling vehicles. I'm calling it now, and I'll look back on this comment in a decade and I'll still be right then. :-) *
*N.B. I thought the internet was "just a fad, the CB Radio of the '90s" so that's at least once I was very, very wrong.
I agree wholeheartedly. The whole refueling process of the hydrogen station is a complex process as well as refueling the hydrogen car. It's lengthy and complex. Whereas an EV you pull up and plug in which is even more simple than refueling an ICE vehicle.
In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
But some problems are shared. It loves to leak and it loves to burn.
In reply to 02Pilot :
You should see what happened when they filled one with gasoline!!!
(I was trying to figure out if I should say gasoline or gasoline vapor, either way, silly.)
I have a Tesla and a couple of gas cars.
I was all in on electric when I bought the Tesla three years ago but reality hit hard. the Tesla is low mileage because it's just not very good at anything but short trips.
tesla superchargers, I know, they're better than all other chargers but that's not saying much.
having to stay within an approximate 100 mile radius after getting to your destination on a road trip really sucks.
I ended up buying a gas car to handle anything other than my daily commute as I found myself staying home all the time because the car needed to charge on my level 2 for hours.
I should sell the Tesla but it's worth peanuts compared to my purchase price so it hurts to much to admit it was a stupid mistake and sell it.
no more EVs for me until there are as many charging stations as gas stations.
this means I will likely never have another ev and good riddance.
i thought Toyota was crazy a few years ago but their hybrid strategy seems like a winner to me at this point.
If hydrogen is going to take off as a fuel, it's going to be in the industrial/heavy work sector first. Those are the duty cycles that batteries struggle most with (think long distance towing), and those vehicles often operate in locations without charging infrastructure (construction or agriculture).
The infrastructure is the sticking point when it comes to wholesale use of hydrogen as a transportation fuel. Generation, storage and distribution at a mass scale are pretty much at stage-0.
Where I might see it being workable is in trans-oceanic shipping. Those ships would have to space for large hydrogen storage containers and ports are generally set up for awkward bulk transfers of somewhat dangerous materials. But I repeat: might... The actual mass-scale generation would still need to be done and in such a way that doesn't require large quantities of fossil fuels - otherwise it kinda defeats the point.
Personally, I am still in a holding pattern regarding an EV, hybrid or whatever. Since my on-site assignment ended, my monthly miles have dropped from over 3K to under 1K, thanks to being back to mostly WFH. I haven't had a car payment in almost 3 years and I'm in no rush to change that.
There's $ in the IRA for 7 clean hydrogen hubs.. and they are actively being worked on. End uses for all those projects are different but some include transportation, but are more likely to be heavy duty truck, port vehicles, public transit as far as motive applications go. They will also feed h2 into green ammonia for fertilizer, steel production, chemical feedstock, refining (ha!). There is a line item in the gulf coast one for marine fuel, but it's less defined so far. I would think ammonia or methanol based shipping to be more likely using some air captured carbon for the methanol, as it's not a long put.
Waiting on my current vehicles to die and have good, not high cost options. Don't really care what they are but the current offerings aren't there yet. From a use standpoint BEV seems fine for around town but unless battery/charging get significantly better, a different long haul option will be needed (fuel cell h2, direct h2, syn fuels, etc)
I have an acquaintance who's a whole bunch smarter than me suggesting that we need to develop silicon based batteries instead of lithium. Dunno how that would work, but he seems to think it's viable.
In reply to Paul_VR6 (Forum Supporter) :
Yep. Details on the plans for each hub can be found here. It's almost entirely focused on industrial use like steel/glass manufacturing, energy production, agriculture, and heavy duty transportation.
[random rant directed at no one]
The problem I foresee with H2 is that making it is a problem unto itself. The amount of energy you get by combining H2 and O2 in combustion is the exact same energy it requires to split it. It's a law of physics. Right now we can dig up pre-existing HCs and distill it into gasoline or diesel at the expense of killing the planet, and people are making massive money on that market.
I agree that we need to stop burning HCs for energy, but replacing it with an incredibly explosive gas that requires massive amounts of energy to produce is not a net win.
I've read a few books on biofuels because nerd reasons. Even if we converted every single U.S. farmed plant into alcohol, (this was a book from about 10 years ago), it's estimated that we would not only not have any food in the U.S., we would still fall short of demand by 30x. We're a thirsty bunch.
If we converted all of the farmed fats into bio diesel, we would still be way behind. You have to remember that at best, you can only get about 13% of a crop yield as alcohol. It's a time and labor-intensive process. Using some algaes, you can get up to 60% of crop yield as bio diesel, it takes a few hours, and emits no CO2.
Here's my main thinking: We are taking carbon from below the biosphere, burning it, and dumping it IN the biosphere. No amount of cleaning it up is the answer. The answer is taking the carbon from here, then we can burn it with near impugnity because whatever we burn has A) already existing up here for billions of years, and B) first had to be scrubbed OUT of the air by plants.
I'm all for bio fuels like alcohol, but it's far from sustainable. Bio diesel is much closer to sustainable, but still not enough. H2 requires as much energy to produce as you get back by combusting it, and even then most of what you combust is lost to friction, heat, and pumping. EVs provide a nice step, but until we get away from our primary electrical source being burning fossil fuels, it's not a proper end game.
The only solution I see as sustainable is EV and a massive infrastructure change to renewable energy, which so far has been mostly thwarted by big oil. For a long time there was a billboard on the turnpike that read "Sun sets. Wind dies. Clean coal power is the answer." Really? A few million years of history shows that the sun comes back every morning, and the wind won't just disappear forever... unlike coal. They coal industry is still pushing the narrative that sending workers into a deadly mine to harvest dead carbon is the sustainable answer.
This whole thing kind of boggles my mind. When we discovered that Asbestos was dangerous, we didn't have the Asbestos Local 212 go on strike, and manufacturers didn't scream "who will think of the jobs?" They were like "E36 M3, we gotta stop killing people."
[/rant]
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:[random rant directed at no one]
This whole thing kind of boggles my mind. When we discovered that Asbestos was dangerous, we didn't have the Asbestos Local 212 go on strike, and manufacturers didn't scream "who will think of the jobs?" They were like "E36 M3, we gotta stop killing people."
[/rant]
From Wiki:
Since asbestos-related disease has been identified by the medical profession in the late 1920s, workers' compensation cases were filed and resolved in secrecy, with a flood of litigation starting in the United States in the 1970s, and culminating in the 1980s and 1990s...In 1988, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) issued regulations requiring certain U.S. companies to report the asbestos used in their products.[101]
We tend to take a minute or two to react, here is unfortunately no different.
alfadriver said:But, as I said before, I'm not willing to pick a winner right now. Your perception of why H2 is bad isn't shared with people in Toyota who are heavily working on fuel cells.
Toyota is working on it because the Japanese government required it. Same for Honda. the fact is, for all the reasons mentioned, it'sa dead end.
You want 15 year old, 10,000 psi hydrogen fueling nozzles being used by the average driver in their beater hydrogen car? When they already do this?
nakmuayfarang said:I have a Tesla and a couple of gas cars.
I was all in on electric when I bought the Tesla three years ago but reality hit hard. the Tesla is low mileage because it's just not very good at anything but short trips.
tesla superchargers, I know, they're better than all other chargers but that's not saying much.
having to stay within an approximate 100 mile radius after getting to your destination on a road trip really sucks.
I ended up buying a gas car to handle anything other than my daily commute as I found myself staying home all the time because the car needed to charge on my level 2 for hours.
I should sell the Tesla but it's worth peanuts compared to my purchase price so it hurts to much to admit it was a stupid mistake and sell it.
no more EVs for me until there are as many charging stations as gas stations.
this means I will likely never have another ev and good riddance.
i thought Toyota was crazy a few years ago but their hybrid strategy seems like a winner to me at this point.
I've had gas cars for decades. I bought a Volt PHEV back in 2013 (an EV with training wheels) and loved it. In Jan. 2020, we added a Bolt EV. It not only became the normal daily driver, it became the default road trip car, with many trips from here in Baltimore up to my kid's house in eastern CT (Preston) and back, as well as trips down to TN to visit my brother in law (my wife took it on one trip there and back, herself). It was just too good for that. Sold the Volt at the end of 2020 as it had only had 300 miles put on it in that year. In '22 I traded the Bolt EV in on a Bolt EUV and now that one is the default road car (my MINI is just for weekend, top down use). My wife has driven it down to TN and CT herself, as well as Myrtle Beach and back. We're taking it down to Daytona in a week to watch the Daytona 500.
We have a Level 2 EVSE. it's never kept us from going ANYWHERE. Certainly never kept us home. Like the average driver, I drive about 12-15k miles a year, which averages out to about 40 miles a day. I can go for days without plugging in, then once or twice a week, plug in overnight and am ready to go in the morning again. if I have someplace farther away to go in the next day or so, I simply make sure it's plugged in before then so it's at 100% when I get ready to leave. For 99.9% of us, long road trips are neither unplanned nor spontaneously occurring. And hurricanes don't arrive on your doorstep unannounced. It's easy to be ready ahead of time.
I'm so goddamn tired of people saying they can't be used on road trips or are only for around town driving. It's ignorant. There doesn't HAVE to be as many charging stations as gas stations. With a gas car you HAVE to go somewhere else to fill up, no matter what, so there has to be a gas station near your house to go to. That's not necessary with EVs for the vast majority of the country. So you're replacing local gas stations with outlets at home. You only need charging stations on travel routes. the main issue, and one that is being covered in new government regulations, is uptime/broken chargers. A lot of companies had been given grants and incentives to put in DC fast chargers all over, but no stipulation had been put in contracts about specified uptimes and maintenance contracts. That's changed now. So we should be seeing wuite a bit of improvement on that front.
Hydrogen transport and storage has its own issues that need to be solved with expensive metallurgy.
H2 molecules are smaller than the openings between some metal's molecules and therefore are constantly having containment losses. If the fuel cell is in your car you don't want hydrogen gas leaking into the cabin or trunk ready to detonate at the first spark.
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:The amount of energy you get by combining H2 and O2 in combustion is the exact same energy it requires to split it.
[/rant]
(assuming a lossless process).
I'm no fan of H2, but I just want to point out that in all of the fueling scenarios, the best case scenario is that input and output energy are equal.
In reply to Chris_V :
I have a friend who reps a number of lines of bicycles and gear. His territory is most of California and Nevada. He's a motorhead and was the one who introduced me to autocross. His work car? A Tesla model Y. Calls it his "refuge". If there was anyone who'd bitch about EVs limitations, you'd think it would be him due to the many miles he drives in big bites. But nope.
In reply to Chris_V :
I agree with you about home charging being the main advantage and that you don't need gas stations on a daily basis.
the reason I mentioned charging options being as plentiful as gas stations is because of the road trip issue. Have you ever been on a turnpike where everyone is forced to share a single gas station every 45 miles or so? Even with 20 plus pumps and 5 minute or less fill ups, long lines form.
An example of this is the recent charging issue at JFK.
I have waited 30 plus minutes to get access to a supercharger on road trips because very single one was in use and vehicles tend to stay in the spot for 20 minutes plus each.
its a nightmare and it added 3 plus hours to a 10 hour road trip.
now imagine what it would be like if evs had a higher market penetration.
hence a plethora of charging options is necessary to make it as convenient as gas vehicles.
Keith Tanner said:
I am making the assumption that a plug-in hybrid (of the sort I'm describing) will have a non-trivial EV range, enough to allow it to perform normal daily use. That's why I was using "mild" to describe a vehicle that really can't go very far at all on battery.
If I could have a plug-in hybrid with 40 miles of BEV range during winter, that would be adequate for 90% + of my driving needs. Frankly, I could probably get by with 30 miles.
02Pilot said:I cannot be the only person who hears "hydrogen vehicle" and immediately thinks:
[Zeppelin I album cover]
I live near where the Delaware River turns into the Delaware Bay.
I see where the oil tankers are docked right up against the refinery. I also see where the CNG tankers are docked waaaay out at the end of a long skinny 1/4-mile pier to keep the blammo away from shore.
I realize CNG != H2. But I really don't want to think what an H2 refueling station would be like, especially in an emergency. Or a discount, independently-operated H2 station running 20-year-old pumps.
nakmuayfarang said:In reply to Chris_V :
I agree with you about home charging being the main advantage and that you don't need gas stations on a daily basis.
the reason I mentioned charging options being as plentiful as gas stations is because of the road trip issue. Have you ever been on a turnpike where everyone is forced to share a single gas station every 45 miles or so? Even with 20 plus pumps and 5 minute or less fill ups, long lines form.
An example of this is the recent charging issue at JFK.
I have waited 30 plus minutes to get access to a supercharger on road trips because very single one was in use and vehicles tend to stay in the spot for 20 minutes plus each.
its a nightmare and it added 3 plus hours to a 10 hour road trip.
now imagine what it would be like if evs had a higher market penetration.
hence a plethora of charging options is necessary to make it as convenient as gas vehicles.
Here's the deal. Due to manufacturing realities, even if all manufacturing lines were converted to just making EVs, it would still take decades to make enough EVs to replace most gas cars in the US. Decades. More than enough time to get more charging stations built as destination or roadside stations. But we'll STILL not need as many stations as gas stations now due to most driving being done on the charge received at home (when you have 250-300 miles of range, you can go a LONG time between charges at home).
My issue is people saying, "well EVs won't work because tomorrow everyone will have EVs and there aren't enough charging stations for that." When that's simply not even a possibility of happening. When EVs have a higher market penetration, it'll be quite a ways in the future. Acting like there WILL be more EVs, but the infrastructure will be as it sis right now and can never change, is ignorant at best. And I hear it all the time.
In reply to Duke :
Fortunately, it would be mostly self-extinguishing... after killing 212 people and leveling 7 square blocks in 1.3 seconds.
In reply to Chris_V :
Yup. After seeing Tesla chargers in Amish country, and watching them successfully complete One Lap, I pretty much ignore it.
Did have someone arguing that they'd be worthless until they set a cannonball run record. I asked what his record time was, face turned a few shades of purple then he walked away.
As much as I love EVs, id still exercise extreme caution when road tripping. I dont road trip often, so I dont give a E36 M3 (but I also live in an apt. now so charging is a non-starter). However, my ex* got a Polestar as a rental for a business trip to Charleston SC from Winston Salem NC, and that was a total nightmare for her. Difficult to locate chargers, broken chargers, chargers that were extremely slow, all the fun. I think she had to delay getting back an extra day because it just wasn't possible.
*this is a person who is very intelligent, but not a car or EV enthusiast in any way.
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