Green hydrogen has a lot of advantages for cars compared to batteries: quick refuelling, much less weight, better range. Compared to CO2 emitting fuels (including non-green hydrogen), no contest.
It’s especially good for heavy vehicles. It’s the only way we can currently use non-carbon fuels for air travel. It’s much more feasible for trucking than batteries.
Green hydrogen is more like a kind of battery than a fuel. It’s a good way to store renewable energy that cannot be used immediately, or that needs to be used off-grid. How hydrogen is transforming these tiny Scottish islands
quick refueling only matters if your travel distance exceeds your battery’s range (which for 95% of driving is less than 100 miles)
I would agree on the weight issue only if you don’t engineer the hydrogen storage to properly survive car crashes.
Range is of no practical use if it vastly exceeds your needs.
I find trains better for heavy transport and fixed route power lines would cover that problem in a more efficient manner.
Hydrogen would take double conversion loses if used like a battery and a flywheel would be more efficient at storing renewable energy at a grid level.
Off-grid energy storage can be done in heavy weight battery chemistries which can last forever without the maintenance cost that must occur with combustion. (heck even Nickel–iron batteries from 1901 would work)
I will grant you that hydrogen has many useful and wonderful applications.
Home energy storage and transportation are not one of them.
quick refueling only matters if your travel distance exceeds your battery’s range (which for 95% of driving is less than 100 miles)
This is such a non-argument. I cannot have one car for short distances and another one for road trips.
There are no electric cars that can get me to my Dad’s and back without recharging. He does at least have off-road parking but he doesn’t have a safe charging point. I don’t have off-road parking so charging at home is not possible. Yes, I can pay over the odds to charge while I do my supermarket shop, but I wouldn’t usually use my car for the supermarket shop and I don’t want to use my car for the supermarket shop. The only option for long journeys is to take an annoyingly long break.
Hydrogen is very inefficient, for sure. But there’s no other way to get an electric plane that can replace existing passenger aircraft. Batteries are a non-starter for heavy transport because they’re too big and too heavy to be practical. That’s why we’ve been rolling out hydrogen buses for a couple of years now.](www.greencarfuture.com/…/how-hydrogen-buses-work)
FCEVs are a scam. The mirai is heavier than BEVs with similar range, bulkier, and has a much smaller internal volume. BEV busses are volume limited not weight limited and are already capable of covering most routes with only overnight charging (so hydrogen is worse there). Fuelling time in real world situations favours the vehicle that is sitting at 80-100% full every morning over the one you have to visit a fuelling station for. Heavy trucking is cost limited, not time limited – so filling the trucj with the cheap electricity directly at 4x efficiency is better even in the low production season.
It’s also not “the only way” for air travel because there are no planes that use it, volume constraints limit use cases to those that mostly overlap with batteries (and don’t replace liquid fuels) and battery aircraft are much closer to production (albeit limited in niche so far).
Every single use case of hydrogen has better alternatives.
Fuelling time in real world situations favours the vehicle that is sitting at 80-100% full every morning over the one you have to visit a fuelling station for.
Not unless the batteries have enough capacity to last all day. And hydrogen refuelling stations are being built at bus depots because obviously they are. Do you imagine carbon-fuel busses head to their local filling station when they run low?
You forgot to read the section on hydrogen storage, infrastructure and safety problems.
But I guess you are correct that we are from an engineering perspective able to make hydrogen powered cars but I would argue that it combustion is not a good solution to transportation when proper infrastructure would be able to do without those risks.
greengnu@slrpnk.net 10 months ago
Actually you would never want hydrogen powered cars from an engineering perspective.
Ideally this would only be producing hydrogen for chemical processes which require a hydrogen feed stock.
JoBo@feddit.uk 10 months ago
Green hydrogen has a lot of advantages for cars compared to batteries: quick refuelling, much less weight, better range. Compared to CO2 emitting fuels (including non-green hydrogen), no contest.
It’s especially good for heavy vehicles. It’s the only way we can currently use non-carbon fuels for air travel. It’s much more feasible for trucking than batteries.
Green hydrogen is more like a kind of battery than a fuel. It’s a good way to store renewable energy that cannot be used immediately, or that needs to be used off-grid. How hydrogen is transforming these tiny Scottish islands
greengnu@slrpnk.net 10 months ago
quick refueling only matters if your travel distance exceeds your battery’s range (which for 95% of driving is less than 100 miles) I would agree on the weight issue only if you don’t engineer the hydrogen storage to properly survive car crashes. Range is of no practical use if it vastly exceeds your needs.
I find trains better for heavy transport and fixed route power lines would cover that problem in a more efficient manner.
Hydrogen would take double conversion loses if used like a battery and a flywheel would be more efficient at storing renewable energy at a grid level.
Off-grid energy storage can be done in heavy weight battery chemistries which can last forever without the maintenance cost that must occur with combustion. (heck even Nickel–iron batteries from 1901 would work)
I will grant you that hydrogen has many useful and wonderful applications.
Home energy storage and transportation are not one of them.
JoBo@feddit.uk 10 months ago
This is such a non-argument. I cannot have one car for short distances and another one for road trips.
There are no electric cars that can get me to my Dad’s and back without recharging. He does at least have off-road parking but he doesn’t have a safe charging point. I don’t have off-road parking so charging at home is not possible. Yes, I can pay over the odds to charge while I do my supermarket shop, but I wouldn’t usually use my car for the supermarket shop and I don’t want to use my car for the supermarket shop. The only option for long journeys is to take an annoyingly long break.
Hydrogen is very inefficient, for sure. But there’s no other way to get an electric plane that can replace existing passenger aircraft. Batteries are a non-starter for heavy transport because they’re too big and too heavy to be practical. That’s why we’ve been rolling out hydrogen buses for a couple of years now.](www.greencarfuture.com/…/how-hydrogen-buses-work)
schroedingershat@lemmy.world 10 months ago
FCEVs are a scam. The mirai is heavier than BEVs with similar range, bulkier, and has a much smaller internal volume. BEV busses are volume limited not weight limited and are already capable of covering most routes with only overnight charging (so hydrogen is worse there). Fuelling time in real world situations favours the vehicle that is sitting at 80-100% full every morning over the one you have to visit a fuelling station for. Heavy trucking is cost limited, not time limited – so filling the trucj with the cheap electricity directly at 4x efficiency is better even in the low production season.
It’s also not “the only way” for air travel because there are no planes that use it, volume constraints limit use cases to those that mostly overlap with batteries (and don’t replace liquid fuels) and battery aircraft are much closer to production (albeit limited in niche so far).
Every single use case of hydrogen has better alternatives.
JoBo@feddit.uk 10 months ago
It’s very hard to work out how much you know and how much you are making up.
World’s first hydrogen-powered commercial aircraft takes to the skies above Bedfordshire
Not unless the batteries have enough capacity to last all day. And hydrogen refuelling stations are being built at bus depots because obviously they are. Do you imagine carbon-fuel busses head to their local filling station when they run low?
oldGregg@lemm.ee 10 months ago
You wouldn’t want the water to hydrogen plant inside the car but a hydrogen powered car would operate fine
greengnu@slrpnk.net 10 months ago
You forgot to read the section on hydrogen storage, infrastructure and safety problems.
But I guess you are correct that we are from an engineering perspective able to make hydrogen powered cars but I would argue that it combustion is not a good solution to transportation when proper infrastructure would be able to do without those risks.
schroedingershat@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Sure if you want a range of <150km and to need a complete teardown and engineer-certified replacement of the fuelling system every 5 years for safety.