Comment on Shell Is Immediately Closing All Of Its California Hydrogen Stations | The oil giant is one of the big players in hydrogen globally, but even it can't make its operations work here.

• zurohki@aussie.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think this highlights it perfectly. The other reason teasing hydrogen was so popular with the established fuel companies, is that it meant we’d still “need” them, because it used similar distribution networks.
    But the other side of their money making systems meant that they didn’t move quickly enough, and we may have just moved on past now.

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  • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You also have to get hydrogen in any significant hydrogen from natural gas wells, which is why Shell was behind it. It was not a true solution.

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• barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • kent_eh@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Also of note: European car manufacturers at least seem to be completely fine with there being fewer cars on the streets.

    That’s a lot easier in countries whose cities are closer together and were devolved centuries before the car was invented.

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    • barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s a lot easier in countries whose cities are closer together and were devolved centuries before the car was invented.

      You should look at pictures of Amsterdam in the 70s, 80s, completely car-dependent. Europe made the same mistakes as the US regarding the car, difference is we noticed the mistake and what you see now is decades of rolling back those decisions.

      Also cities being further apart is actually an argument for more trains.

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    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah, I would love to have fewer cars on the streets too.

      Unfortunately it looks like most Americans are going to be priced out of private car ownership long before we have any sort of suitable alternatives.

      That’s not something I’m looking forward to. When enough people can’t afford to get to work but have no other way to get there.

      Can’t be investing in new mass transit or walkable cities when the highways are in a state of disrepair. Nobody even takes mass transit anyway.

      I would. Believe me I hate the 1.5 hour drive into the office and 2.5 hour drive back. Except they changed the train schedule on me so there are no routes that work with my schedule, and once I add in the slowdowns and congestion on the subway, it’s almost faster (and certainly more convenient) to drive. And then everyone else has the same idea and then the highways are even more congested. And then there’s less funding for mass transit because nobody wants to use it.

      So glad I get to work from home 99% of the time. I’m not going back to that drudgery.

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  • redfox@infosec.pub ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I am also interested in the flow batteries.

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  • scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

    I’m curious how you see hydrogen being used in smelting. Hydrogen fuel cells do just produce electricity. Are you talking about something else, like combusting the hydrogen?

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    • barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Iron ore + hydrogen = Iron + water. It’s used to tear oxygen off the ore. Currently that’s done with carbon, generally of fossil origin. thyssenkrupp is already doing it at scale. Not all the hydrogen they use right now is green but unlike the old furnaces the new ones are ready to be carbon-neutral, they just have to switch over fuel sources no need to mess with the furnaces themselves.

      It is possible to do the reduction directly with electricity but that’s less energy-efficient than going via hydrogen.

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• hamsterkill@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I thought for a long time that aviation might be the application where hydrogen actually wins out. Density-to-weight is crucial. But I don’t see much activity on that front. It has the same problem as all other applications: you’d need the hydrogen infrastructure to be available everywhere. Batteries will always have one benefit: they’re easier to transition to because we already have electricity pretty much everywhere. Electric autos haven’t been overly handicapped by the lack of charging stations because many can just charge at home. Hydrogen aviation would require large regional or even international coordination to ready the fueling infrastructure. And that little issue about the compressed flammable gas keeps nagging… seems like it would make surviving a plane crash even harder.

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    • hamsterkill@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      There’s a lot of activity on the hydrogen-fueled aviation front.

      popsci.com/…/hydrogen-fuel-cell-aircraft-explaine…

      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.

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      • scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yep I saw that story as well but it kind of makes my point: the first flight took until 2023 to happen. Thats not what I call “a lot” of activity.

        You’re succeeding at favorably comparing the infrastructure challenges of hydrogen aviation to the infrastructure challenges of hydrogen for private cars, but that’s not really the bar to meet. All air infra is more consolidated than that of ground transport. The argument works for batteries just as easily.

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• linearchaos@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • Janovich@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • frezik@midwest.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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      • Janovich@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Oh absolutely. Rail is a better option for almost everything. However, some stuff will always need trucking (oversized, dangerous cargo, rural, etc.) but also the US is currently so overrdependent on roads it’s at least an intermediate tool.

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    • linearchaos@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I really wanted to see solar to hydrogen storage and then a hybrid fuel cell plus battery powerwall. Use all the solar that you get in the morning and not have to burn a battery pack out every 5 to 10 years.

      You could do the same with the car, throw a small fuel cell plant in there a couple liters of hydrogen and a decent but not too big battery pack. When you park your car at work or at home it just sits there and slowly charges when you’re not paying any attention. If it gets into a true low state or you know you’re going to need it the next day to go further you can plug it into your home electric. It’s just absolutely reasonable to put enough solar on a lot of houses that you could be completely sufficient from the grid.

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• june@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I could see it being used to power ships and aircraft, but it is way too complicated to deal with it for Joe average and his SUV. The stuff has to be a cryogenic temperatures to be usable, do you really want your average idiot dealing with cryogenic liquids when they are absolutely going to spill it on their foot?

    It’s too dangerous, youneed serious people in hard hats and yellow fluorescent jackets to deal with it safely.

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• ShepherdPie@midwest.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • wewbull@feddit.uk ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s about infrastructure. You can half-arse two things, or whole-arse one thing.

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    • redfox@infosec.pub ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I agree this is a significant factor. I saw some documentaries talking about the decisions we made with the power grid pros/cons wise when you consider ac/dc. No the band 😋

      We use so much technology that requires direct current that we have at spend a bunch of resources converting it back from ac. The whole efficiency of transportation from large central generation vs smaller local less efficient stations.

      The documentary said some industrial areas in Germany? were considering providing local grid based direct current.

      I’m curious what the cost benefit analysis says about going back to local DC and not needing so many transformers.

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      • wewbull@feddit.uk ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        A lot of things these days might benefit from a 12vDC rail everywhere, but that’s terrible for power transmission. Low volts, high current, fat cables. Not going to work.

        High voltage DC isn’t much use to anyone. You’ll still need switching power supplies everywhere to step it down. Also, connecting it to a human can be really bad.

        Yes high voltage AC is a bit of a pain, but not sure anything else is better.

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  • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    We can as long as the infrastructure is built. But hydrogen cars is a boondoggle

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  • scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Consumers adopt beeer technologies more readily when they aren’t holding back waiting to see which of two competing standards will win.

    There are efficiencies to doing things one way versus two ways.

    Plus, if one way is clearly superior, having two only adds unnecessary complexity. If hydrogen was competitive I’d say great - let’s do it all. But on its own merits it just doesn’t hold up versus the alternatives. No ones banning it but why should anyone pursue it?

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    • ShepherdPie@midwest.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Seems like the winning standard I’d ICE then as it’s worked well for over a hundred years and all the infrastructure is in place. Why should anyone pursue any other option?

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      • scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Battery electric cars win over ICE because the infrastructure is right in my house. We’ve spent centuries electrifying the world. It’s also greener and cleaner than ICE. And lower maintenance.

        Hydrogen just has a slight density edge. That’s it.

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  • frezik@midwest.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    We did explore both options over the last 10-20 years. Batteries won for cars. Holding out otherwise is silly.

    Hydrogen might be what ends up powering long haul trucking, but I’d prefer that be replaced by electrified rail, anyway.

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    • ShepherdPie@midwest.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Who’s “we” here? Seems like major manufacturers are still pouring money into both technologies, meaning nobody but you and these other closed-minded commenters feel that they have everything all figured out and hold all the answers. GM and Honda just announced new investments into hydrogen vehicles as well.

      This line of thinking is why EVs were crushed out of existence long ago until Tesla made them popular again just a few short years ago relatively speaking.

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      • frezik@midwest.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Who’s “we” here?

        Public funding for research; in other words, all of us.

        A bunch of companies connected to the oil industry want hydrogen to happen, because the oil industry knows they’re the only economical source of hydrogen. Even among them, Toyota is about the only one who was willing to do the full nose dive into the tech, and it’s biting them in the ass.

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• weew@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  No, they get shorter range at a higher price than batteries.

  People push for it because they are either middlemen who want to sell the hydrogen and get a cut of ongoing profits, or Luddites who believe EVERYTHING must operate exactly the same way gasoline cars do or else they’ll never switch.

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