Comment on Norway on track to be first to go all-electric
Wanderer@lemm.ee 1 week agoI think the only logical conclusion would be EV actually work better in the cold than what you have been told. Maybe that’s the same for charging stations or maybe Norway builds to a standard that fits their climate and doesn’t cut corners.
It’s not just what I’ve been told. I’ve personally experienced the issues, as have thousands of others dealing with EV extreme cold problems the past couple of weeks in the eastern US.
scientificamerican.com/…/electric-vehicles-arent-…
If anyone has any further info, I’d love to find out what Norway could possibly be doing to address a fundamental issue with the technology.
My own prejudice against hydrogen is around manufacturing.
Most of the world current hydrogen made isn’t green at all, and the message is “we’ll figure it out once demand is up”
And the companies pushing the most for hydrogen are petrol companies.
I’m not a chemist, but it doesn’t seem to add up to me.
I say that as an EV owner living in Canada. I need to use a fast charge station about 4 times a year due to cold related battery issues, and all of those time are because of extended road trips.
It’s not impossible to produce hydrogen in an environmentally friendly way. We just need to further increase efficiency, and move the energy source to renewables and nuclear to power the electrolysis. The EV charging stations have the same issue, often being powered fossil fuel plants.
But it is impossible to manufacture EV batteries in an environmentally friendly way. We’re just expected to accept it.
Plus the performance of EV’s vs hydrogen always uses data gathered in ideal conditions, but hydrogen is leaps and bounds more efficient in extreme weather. We need to be highlighting that, as climate change begins to make extreme conditions the norm and ideal conditions disappear.
It is literally physically impossible to increase the efficiency of electricity-> hydrogen -> electricity above 30%, and that’s if everything is perfect.
EVs are above 70% efficient in the real world btw.
Hydrogen will be useful to decarbonise some parts of heavy industry where electricity cannot be directly used, but that’s about it.
There is a reason why fossil fuel industries are pushing hydrogen, because it means that the car makers can keep selling combustion cars until hydrogen is ready, which it never will be.
And even if hydrogen cars were somewhat ready in 10 years, EVs and the charging stations would also be much better than they are now.
And hydrogen has such a low density that a tanker truck could only carry hydrogen for around 100 car refills, compared to 600-900 that a normal tanker truck does. So every gas station would have to be connected to a hydrogen pipeline, which will realistically never happen.
As far as I’m aware, the most impact around EV batteries is obtaining lithium and other componenets.
Components that can and are already being recycled from older EV batteries.
I’m curious to learn if there is other things I’m not aware of though!
I dont think making a parallel between ev charging and hydrogen manifacturing is valid though: my understanding is that electrolysis is an option, but that most of the current creation is a byproduct of fossil fuel refinement, like plastics (which explains why petrol campanies push it).
We can probably improve on electrolysis efficiency, but my hunch is that it simply won’t happen if petrol company can meet demand. Which I’m sure they will for just a bit cheaper than electrolysis costs to keep controlling the market.
If we can produce green electricity, as long as electrolysis efficiency is not as good as the average battery efficiency whatever efficiency of the hydrogen engine itself doesn’t matter: it’s still less efficient than a battery because of the extra manufacturing step. And then there’s transport and all on top of it.
electric vehicle (EV) drivers to wait in line for hours at charging stations last month; some even found themselves stranded when their battery died while they waited in the queues.
I’m sure “some” ICE cars have also ran out of fuel while queueing, seems like a bit of a nothing statement. More stations are needed and range does get lower in colder conditions that is known. Waiting until you have 30 miles left when you know electric cars lose 15% of range isn’t smart.
Norway does winter testing on their vehicles and I’m sure people ask other people about car performance.
It could be as simple as the equivalent of a “block heater” that you would use on a ICE in a cold climate. These are not new technologies, many use these simple devices for cars in places where it gets cold, and I can’t imagine installing a correctly engineered device into the battery coolant system would pose much of a problem. Automatically turn on at a predetermined departure time or below a certain temperature while charging.
Yeah, most of what I’ve seen is just heating the battery. Which is also dramatically reducing the efficiency.
There’s no way around sacrificing range to heat the battery at this time. Only mitigating some of the loss with a preheat.
Bronzie@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
A charger that doesn’t work when EV’s need them the most is a terrible bussiness idea when people pay per kW/h !