Hydrogen is the future, not BEVs?

[DonkeyApple]

We's be using British hydrogen though, not soft foreign stuff.

[TheDeuce]

gangzoom said:

I found a picture the 7.3kg 'wreckage', exhibit g, it appears to be a shredded alloy wheel which now looks like a massive Shuriken that's flown nearly 40 meters. I cannot imagine how much damage that would do to soft flesh in a school, shopping centre, work car park, basically any where with people.

Do people seriously want these things driving around on public roads? How big a blast radius would one of the hydrogen HGVs produce if this was what a Hyundai can do? It's literally an IED disguised as personal transportation.

Edited by gangzoom on Sunday 2nd June 21:45

What about exhibit h?

That's the remains of one of the tanks!? 50+ metres... I guess that's actually not that far given the remaining half of the tank was effectively a rocket at that point. Imagine being a fire crew called out to what is basically a giant frac grenade waiting to explode! "be lucky" chaps, try and avoid the bigger chunks..

[autumnsum]

Be interesting to know what would happen if one was crushed between 2 HGVs.

[dvs_dave]

autumnsum said:

Be interesting to know what would happen if one was crushed between 2 HGVs.

[TheDeuce]

autumnsum said:

Be interesting to know what would happen if one was crushed between 2 HGVs.

I'm thinking of all the old movies where the mob put a guy in his car, in a car crusher.

Imagine the surprise in the future if they fail to realise it's a hydrogen car

[heebeegeetee]

Morning all. This week's Autocar letter of the week, on green hydrogen, may I invite informed comment please?

https://x.com/andyps1275/status/179698464977371965...

[TheDeuce]

heebeegeetee said:

Morning all. This week's Autocar letter of the week, on green hydrogen, may I invite informed comment please?

https://x.com/andyps1275/status/179698464977371965...

Well it's just nonsensical isn't it? The article getscas far as pointing out that excess green energy can be used to extract hydrogen, and that storing it that way is cheaper than batteries. That's no doubt true, from a centralised perspective - they don't want to spend billions buying batteries to attach to the grid.

But it fails to account for the fact that collectively, EV's are going to be adding billions worth of batteries to the grid - achieving the very same thing.

And with less wastage in terms of the amount of energy that ultimately goes on to power the car.

All the pro hydrogen articles such as that can ever do is waffle on about how one part of the problem is solve able, at the expense of ignoring the other problems doing so exacerbates.

[otolith]

There is a large industrial market for green hydrogen, large enough to eat any surplus generated.

If you are going to use it as an energy storage mechanism for renewables, you will probably want to keep it on site and push it through a fuel cell there when demand exceeds supply.

There are other mechanisms for storage of surplus energy against which it has to compete.

To make it viable as road fuel you need a substantial installed base of H users to maintain a usable distribution network. You then need to feed that installed base all the time, at a considerably higher energy demand than battery cars. Is there enough green hydrogen spare from surplus generation after you have provided for the grid at high demand to support that?

Why would anyone want an electric car which is objectively inferior to a battery one save for slightly faster refilling?

[GT9]

otolith said:

Why would anyone want an electric car which is objectively inferior to a battery one save for slightly faster refilling?

Pretty sure Andy is hoping it means we can all drive around with Yamaha V8s poking out the bonnet.

Anyway, what do I know, these Moroccan guys have ditched the fuel cell for a V8 I believe, not that it's at all clear on their webpage.

https://www.namx-hydrogen.com/en/namx-hydrogen-car

You can ever drop a bag of sand now for delivery in 3 years if you want.

[DonkeyApple]

otolith said:

There is a large industrial market for green hydrogen, large enough to eat any surplus generated.

Bingo. A utility company issues bonds and equity to raise the funds to use surplus renewable energy that may randomly appear from time to time to desalinate seawater and then split that water into O2 and H2. Suddenly, industrial users of grey hydrogen who are facing massive carbon tax penalties notice the utility company is producing some green hydrogen so picks up the phone and agrees to buy it all and beat any price they could get from storage arbitrage.

Except neither the utility or the industry are doing either because the economics don't work even at that level yet and can't for a very long time as we need to reach the point of regular renewable surplus first.

Until that point any excess will just be sold not stored. Because again, it is much more profitable.

[GT9]

heebeegeetee said:

Morning all. This week's Autocar letter of the week, on green hydrogen, may I invite informed comment please?

https://x.com/andyps1275/status/179698464977371965...

Andy makes valid points about harvesting excess and does specifically refer to HGVs.

What I'd like to hear from Andy, or anyone for that matter, is to put some meat on the bones of statements like 'it's cheaper to use hydrogen to store excess electricity' and 'it doesn't have the same catastrophic impacts on the world'.
These sweeping statements are the result of confirmations bias that is so common in these hydrogen conversations.
Desperately wanting to believe something doesn't make it true.
If It is true, let's see the evidence.
I'm talking about 50 page peer-reviewed open-book studies that look at all aspects of the entire chain of matter and energy involved, not single page newspaper articles.

[TheDeuce]

DonkeyApple said:

otolith said:

There is a large industrial market for green hydrogen, large enough to eat any surplus generated.

Bingo. A utility company issues bonds and equity to raise the funds to use surplus renewable energy that may randomly appear from time to time to desalinate seawater and then split that water into O2 and H2. Suddenly, industrial users of grey hydrogen who are facing massive carbon tax penalties notice the utility company is producing some green hydrogen so picks up the phone and agrees to buy it all and beat any price they could get from storage arbitrage.

Except neither the utility or the industry are doing either because the economics don't work even at that level yet and can't for a very long time as we need to reach the point of regular renewable surplus first.

Until that point any excess will just be sold not stored. Because again, it is much more profitable.

Getting to the point of regular renewable excess is going to be a very long time away. For every wind or solar farm that comes online, there are hundreds of thousands of EV's being sold, all of which will happily hoover up any excess and in doing so make the cheapest and cleanest, most efficient use of that excess power possible.

Using renewable power to make something 'green' doesn't work if the same power can be used to make something else greener still - hence, there is no such thing as green hydrogen. There is no part of sequestering or using H2 that isn't itself wasteful.

[dvs_dave]

heebeegeetee said:

Morning all. This week's Autocar letter of the week, on green hydrogen, may I invite informed comment please?

https://x.com/andyps1275/status/179698464977371965...

Classic simple thinker who’s completely ignorant of the physics, practicalities, and nuances of the topic.

Andy probably drives a Meriva and likes to loudly proclaim that “he says as he sees” whilst talking ste to his gormless mates in a flat roofed pub.

[heebeegeetee]

dvs_dave said:

heebeegeetee said:

Morning all. This week's Autocar letter of the week, on green hydrogen, may I invite informed comment please?

https://x.com/andyps1275/status/179698464977371965...

Classic simple thinker who’s completely ignorant of the physics, practicalities, and nuances of the topic.

Andy probably drives a Meriva and likes to loudly proclaim that “he says as he sees” whilst talking ste to his gormless mates in a flat roofed pub.

No, in fairness Andy is very much a motoring enthusiast and journalist.

[GT9]

heebeegeetee said:

No, in fairness Andy is very much a motoring enthusiast and journalist.

Petrolhead and marketer according to him.

Andy finishes his letter saying there is much hope for hydrogen.

The most common isotope of hydrogen is protium, 99% or something.

Combining the words hope and protium makes hopium.

A coincidence, you decide.

[TheDeuce]

GT9 said:

heebeegeetee said:

No, in fairness Andy is very much a motoring enthusiast and journalist.

Petrolhead and marketer according to him.

Andy finishes his letter saying there is much hope for hydrogen.

The most common isotope of hydrogen is protium, 99% or something.

Combining the words hope and protium makes hopium.

A coincidence, you decide.

I'm not sure what exactly the petrol heads are hoping for when it comes to FCEV though.

You can have a BEV which is fast, simply packaged, supremely cheap to run and can be filled up at home while you sleep.

Or...

You can have a FCEV which is less fast, compromised packaging, quite costly to run and you have to find a filling station to fuel it.

Hmm ..

[dvs_dave]

heebeegeetee said:

dvs_dave said:

heebeegeetee said:

Morning all. This week's Autocar letter of the week, on green hydrogen, may I invite informed comment please?

https://x.com/andyps1275/status/179698464977371965...

Classic simple thinker who’s completely ignorant of the physics, practicalities, and nuances of the topic.

Andy probably drives a Meriva and likes to loudly proclaim that “he says as he sees” whilst talking ste to his gormless mates in a flat roofed pub.

No, in fairness Andy is very much a motoring enthusiast and journalist.

Either way, Andy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but thinks he does.

[tamore]

i can kind of get why some get excited about hydrogen ICE, not matter how ludicrous that option would be. it's just a different combustable fuel.

but as people have said, the excitement about fuel cell drivetrains in passenger vehicles is baffling. it's just a bad EV! i guess there's a belief that it can be refuelled in the same time as petrol….. unless it's humid and the nozzle freezes to the car.

[GT9]

It's not been a great month for Toyota's hydrogen efforts.
US sales of fuel cell cars have dropped over 90% compared to the same quarter last year, and the Mirai is now being offered with about 50% cash back.
Less than 100 hydrogen cars sold for the whole of the USA in 2Q24.
To add to their woes a class action suit has just been filed in California against Toyota for lack of refuelling facilities which were promised to be 'widely available'.
In Europe, the choice by the Olympics organisers to use 500 Mirai cars as official vehicles has been met with criticism for misleading the public that H2 is a sustainable and viable decarbonisation option for cars.
Over 100 people including engineers, scientists and academics wrote an open letter stating that this choice would damage the reputation of the Olympics by promoting a clearly inferior decarbonisation technology currently powered by almost 100% unabated fossil fuel.

Here is the letter, and no, I'm not one of the signatories.

https://www.csrf.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/...

[bigothunter]

GT9 said:

It's not been a great month for Toyota's hydrogen efforts.
US sales of fuel cell cars have dropped over 90% compared to the same quarter last year, and the Mirai is now being offered with about 50% cash back.
Less than 100 hydrogen cars sold for the whole of the USA in 2Q24.
To add to their woes a class action suit has just been filed in California against Toyota for lack of refuelling facilities which were promised to be 'widely available'.
In Europe, the choice by the Olympics organisers to use 500 Mirai cars as official vehicles has been met with criticism for misleading the public that H2 is a sustainable and viable decarbonisation option for cars.
Over 100 people including engineers, scientists and academics wrote an open letter stating that this choice would damage the reputation of the Olympics by promoting a clearly inferior decarbonisation technology currently powered by almost 100% unabated fossil fuel.

Here is the letter, and no, I'm not one of the signatories.

https://www.csrf.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/...

Excellent informative letter from the scientific community - I've forwarded it to several colleagues.

Thanks for posting