this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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As two major manufacturers double down on developing hydrogen cell cars.
The complaints about electric infrastructure not being ready for widespread adoption but people championing hydrogen cell just boggles my mind.
Hydrogen was the future in the 90s, when the alternative was lead acid batteries. Nowadays hydrogen fuel cell cars don't actually top the charts on range, battery EVs have taken the crown.
Hydrogen promised to be a drop-in replacement for fossil fuels. You still needed big industry to make and distribute it, you still needed filling stations to sell it to end users, you still took your car somewhere to fill it up. Everyone could just keep doing their thing. But it was going to be so expensive to switch over that everyone dragged their heels and kept using fossil fuels, so now we're entering the post-hydrogen car era without it ever arriving.
If we'd had hydrogen fuel cell cars 30 years ago, today we'd have manufacturers putting bigger batteries and charging plugs on them to make plug-in hybrids and move away from expensive hydrogen.
You also have to get hydrogen in any significant amount from natural gas wells, which is why Shell was behind it. It was not a true solution.
Hydrogen will be a big chunk of the future but probably not in cars, or generally car-sized vehicles, unless we're talking stuff like catastrophe relief (and with that ambulances, fire trucks etc) because it's a good idea to be able to fuel those things even if the grid is down.
We'll need hydrogen infrastructure and production anyways for steel smelting as well as the chemical industry, those are things that just don't run on electricity, no way. With that in place hydrogen is going to be available pretty much all over, similar to how you get natural gas anywhere nowadays. And then you have an unelectrified railway somewhere, electrifying it would cost a fortune and not amortise, but a fuel cell locomotive? Sounds easy and reasonable. Flow batteries are also an option in that kind of operation but you really need a lot of space to get power output from those so they wouldn't work for an ambulance.
So if you're a car manufacturer with your head screwed on right you're probably not developing and selling hydrogen cars now because they believe they're the future, you're doing that to have affluent liberals pay for your ticket to play in the future market of hydrogen utility vehicles.
Also of note: European car manufacturers at least seem to be completely fine with there being fewer cars on the streets. First, they can also make money off building public transport infrastructure and running car shares, secondly, cheap everyday cars aren't that profitable, if the cars they then do get to sell are fancy with high profit margin that's completely fine with them. Their suppliers care even less, a seat manufacturer doesn't care whether the seat ends up in a car or a train.
Because batteries suck for any application where weight (ie. energy density) matters. Running long haul semis off batteries is not a super practical thing. Even with consumer cars, there are people for whom hydrogen will be a better fit.
Basically we've been in a world where the happy medium of energy density and efficiency (gasoline) was used for everything. Now we likely need to split those things up into what energy density is more important for, and what energy efficiency is more important for.
There's a lot of activity on the hydrogen-fueled aviation front.
https://www.popsci.com/technology/hydrogen-fuel-cell-aircraft-explained/
The infrastructure issues for planes are way less. You need fuel available at airports, which significantly fewer and farther between than consumers require for cars. Planes (and least of the jet variety) already use specialized fuel they keep available at airports. The phase-in is a lot easier too, since most running planes only travel between a few airports in their route — so you'd only need the hydrogen fuel available at the airports hydrogen planes are using to start.
There's certainly a lot of challenges to solve there too, but hydrogen remains the most promising solution for decarbonizing air travel.
Yea it’s such a weird direction to go right night. Manufacturing and delivery of hydrogen for fuel cells is complex, expensive, and poses some unique dangers with the temps and pressure of the hydrogen. It’s cleaner, assuming manufacturing of the hydrogen uses green energy, but right now most energy production isn’t green.
It has its advantages but some pretty big disadvantages too. I don’t think it’s the way to go just yet. Maybe eventually but not today I don’t think.
I don't understand why people think we have to pick a single solution for all vehicles on the road. We can have BEV and hydrogen at the same time.
The problem we have is energy density. Gasoline is pretty damn dense energy-wise. Storing 20-30 gallons of gas in a tank That's easy and safe to refill is hard to replace.
Lithium ion and lithium iron phosphate batteries are slow to refill.
Hydrogen is kind of neat. You can make it from splitting water with solar or nuclear. It's also a byproduct of the oil industry. And you can fill a tanker up or even an entire train and move fuck ton of hydrogen from one place to another. You can pipe it, people can generated for themselves and get a byproduct of pure oxygen.
But alas, it's still hydrogen. Give it access to the air in a little bit of fire and it makes a big boom. The infrastructure is very expensive to build out, and we're not swimming so much and renewables then it makes sense to bottle it up and sell it to people.
It can make sense for limited uses like cross country trucking (or maybe airlines) where battery will probably never have the range and you live and die by the schedule and refuel stops need to be relatively quick. Refilling semis at a limited number of truck stops with hydrogen stations can be useful if you can also get non petro-derived hydrogen. But for soccer moms and commuters it makes zero sense. Just charge smaller batteries at home and work and have a good interstate charging network for longer trips. We just need to normalize taking breaks on a road trip. It’ll help make more relaxing drives anyway and people already drive angry.
I'd just as soon see the majority of long haul trucking be replaced by electrified rail.
Likewise with a big chunk of the airline industry.
What, you don't see how great it is to have two separate sets of infrastructure with little overlap in order to have a less efficient solution pushed by the oil industry?
What part of that confuses you? Hydrogen is better for cars VS batteries in every meaningful way in 2024. Long range, quick fill ups, zero harmful emissions, don't need to live in SFH or rely on landlord/HOA to grant you the privilege of charging your car.
Hydrogen cell cars are electric cars that don't rely on severely underdeveloped technology of batteries we have today.
And where are you gonna get the hydrogen from? You have any idea how power inefficient electrolysis is!?
Yes. Do you have any idea how much energy we're wasting because nuclear power plants produce way more than we need because they can't scale easily or that most green energy generation is at the time people don't actually need it? Hydrogen is a prefect storage solution for that power.
Because solar is free?
Guys, we can stop trying to solve climate change, we already have free energy!
Jesus, of course it's not free. Solar panels are not free, the land you put ten on is not free, construction is not free and the infrastructure needed to supply energy during the nigh (storage or another source of energy) is not free. How is this not obvious?
You're mostly right. But I don't agree on the last part. Hydrogen production can't be done in your backyard. But electricity can (and I forgive you if have no backyard, these next few points may be less relevant if that is the case).
Unlike hydrogen, electricity production is affordable, scalable, and ubiquitous. And that small detail changes the benefits dramatically.
Again, I can see that these are less compelling points if you live in a super dense area and utilities and supply chain there are really dependable. But this is hardly the case everywhere.
And then there's the build of the car itself. Honestly, I know nothing about it, but something tells me the simplicity of battery and electric motors makes those cars more practical to build, especially if the battery itself is commoditized as part of a complete electric grid solution.
Most people in the world cannot put solar panels on their roof today. Even if you exclude all the places people don't own cars I still think my statement will be true.
Whether that's true or not, it doesn't invalidate their points
Yes! A clean platform that needs METRIC GIGATONS of carbon positive infrastructure to set up and maintain. That is why I call shenanigans on your zero harmful emissions claim.
VS
We already have wires, and batteries are more than good enough for a vast swath of the everyday commuting public.
Hydrogen can be generated any time. Like when nuclear or solar or wind energy is otherwise going to waste. We don't have and likely won't have batteries that could replace it for decades.
Modern batteries are absolute shit and definitely not good enough. I think a good indication that batteries are anywhere near useful will be when you can fly on battery power across the Atlantic.
Wait, so ... They're nowhere near useful when we can already use them for daily commuting easily because of some arbitrary goalpost for an unrelated transportation method? How does that even make sense?
Infrastructure for hydrogen fueling requires production facilities, trucks to transport, and stations set up, to even start moving one vehicle let alone taking over any percentage of commuter traffic of any significance. EV fueling infrastructure requires... Pretty much the same grid we already have, at least as a functional baseline (yes, it needs improvements, but we're not switching overnight so we have the time we need to make those changes; meanwhile, it's already functional)
Wait what? How in the fuck could an HOA prevent you from charging your car or installing a charger inside your space? The charger lives inside your garage, so it doesn't effect curbside appearance and isn't within what they can control.
At absolute worst, if you have no garage and street parking, wouldn't you just be running the cord over to your vehicle? Non-commercial charging stations aren't normally weather proof, so that wouldn't be outside, and again, none of their business. If they have an issue with an extension cord running across your lawn, or a cable slightly larger than a hose, then they'd have to make sane rules about how long it can be left out, like not just leaving it plugged in for a whole weekend straight. Otherwise they're making it against the rules for people to use corded yard equipment or use a hose.
I might be missing something here, but I don't see any way an HOA could do anything against it.
No offense, but your response means you're either the luckiest person in the world and live in a utopian HOA or much more realistically have zero experience with the stupid fucking cancer that is currently infesting more and more properties.
It took me years of paying lawyers and dealing with some of the stupidest and most stubborn people on the planet to try to install a charger near my spot in a shared garage. At my expense and with all requirements met, it was still easier to move than convince those fucking assholes that we're in 2020 and cars use electricity.
No HOA on this planet will let you just run a cord even if you don't consider that this would likely restrict you to level one charging and expose you to power theft.
Lol, no.
Lol, no.
Sure. All that’s great.
But I’m talking about infrastructure, not technology.
Infra is result of people jumping on wrong tech. Batteries don't belong in cars in their current state of development.
Not to mention all the ecological damage mining for battery components does. I'm with you, hydrogen is the way to go
300kg of battery -> environmental catastrophe
The other 1,500kg of car? Made of unicorn kisses and butterfly dreams.
Also, hydrogen grows on trees apparently.
A huge portion of our battery materials come from the Atacama Desert. There is no life at all in a lot of it.
You do know that we get most of our hydrogen from burning fossil fuels, right?
that's the whole point tho, for them to sell you special fuel, that you can't get yourself, like you could with solar panels. this is more serious threat from fleets of trucks, those companies are already building their solar farms to charge their trucks. that's somewhat catastrophic for companies selling fuel nowadays. of-course they'll push their magic fuel solution, forcefully. who do you think pays the hydrogen shilling campaigns?
Shell is one of many companies providing hydrogen fuel stations. Infra may not be where it should be, but I blame that on all the people who jumped on battery powered cars at a time battery tech is years of not decades away from being good in vehicles.
I'm genuinely curious why you think battery tech is decades away from being good in vehicles when it's working very effectively in vehicles right now and over the last decade. In what way are they ineffective currently when they can have 250+ miles of range now when most people don't put that many miles on their car in a day? And at least for the people who have the option to put a charging station in their home (which is not at all cost prohibitive), refueling is a matter of plugging it in when you get home which takes like fifteen seconds rather than ten to twenty minutes (or more) to stop somewhere along the way? (This is assuming, of course, that there is a station along the way, which likely isn't the case at least right now for hydrogen)
I got the infrastructure argument when EV battery range sucked and charge times took hours. But now that EV range is getting close to gasoline cars, and charging can be done in minutes with a super charger, hydrogen doesn’t make much sense.
It could’ve been dope if only a company like Toyota made some desirable cars and built out a great station network.
Hydrogen never made sense. It is simple thermodynamics.