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.

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨L4s@lemmy.world [bot]⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://insideevs.com/news/708156/shell-closes-california-hydrogen-stations/

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.::The oil giant is one of the big players in hydrogen globally, but even it can’t make its operations work here. All seven of its California stations will close immediately.

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AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Looking forward to the upcoming Toyota announcement that they believe in the future of hydrogen more than ever

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- jabathekek@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Toyota, and Japan as a whole, are in a tricky situation with their electric grid. It’s been developed separately by nine different companies in each region; the southern regions use 60 Hz supply cycles, where-as the northern regions (including Tokyo Electric) use 50 Hz. Add to this the populations reluctance for nuclear power after Fukushima, and you get a very fragile supply grid with limited capacity. Toyota is gunning hard for Hydrogen because Japan itself can’t support EVs and for some reason it doesn’t want to/can’t manufacture both.
  
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  - zurohki@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Okay, but if they don’t have the electricity for EVs they definitely don’t have enough electricity to waste 2/3 of it turning it into hydrogen and back.
    
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  - AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m not sure I buy that. Yes, their electrical grid is a mismatched nightmare, that they should have taken the hit on decades ago. However I see that small chargers for things like phones can adjust to pretty much any electrical grid: why shouldn’t we expect the charger in the car to be equally flexible? Either way, it’s converting to DC
    
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- Zron@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  They also recently announced an anhydrous ammonia engine.
  
  They really really don’t want to do an electric car. Anhydrous ammonia is insanely toxic. You ever spill a like a few drops of gas at the pump and get it on your pants or shoe? Annoying but not a big deal. Do that with anhydrous ammonia and you’ll be in the hospital.
  
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  - ISometimesAdmin@the.coolest.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It can also be used to make methamphetamine.
    
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- SeaJ@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Going to guess this will not change their goal of 200k hydrogen vehicles by 2030. They currently have about 14k out on roads.
  
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june@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I was excited for hydrogen back in the day but it seems like we’ve known for years that it isn’t the way to go. Why is anyone still fucking with it? Do these cars get 2,000 mile range or something?
  
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  - zurohki@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨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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  - barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨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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  - hamsterkill@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨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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  - linearchaos@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨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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  - june@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨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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  - ShepherdPie@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨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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  - weew@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨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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- frezik@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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?
  
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  - echodot@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That’s it of course isn’t it the hydrogen is generated through fracking so they’re just trying to maintain the existing business model.
    
    That alone is the reason that no one should have ever paid attention to it it wasn’t ever intended to actually work it was supposed to just look like it might work so that they would continue to get some money.
    
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- daqqad@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - Tattorack@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    And where are you gonna get the hydrogen from? You have any idea how power inefficient electrolysis is!?
    
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  - SkyNTP@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    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.
    
    The idea of being your own gas station, from the grid, or from your own solar, is really compelling. No one likes being at the mercy of fluctuating energy prices, or, as in this case, unreliable and scarce availability of fuel.
    
    Many people don’t like going to gas stations (e.g. women and personal safety). Totally doable outside of road trips.
    
    If you are generating your own electricity you will need batteries anyway. Might as well put wheels on them: two birds one stone.
    
    Even if you don’t generate your own power, you still want power security during outage. Since the battery is on wheels, you can drive it to a place that does have power to top up.
    
    Again, I can see that these are less compelling points if you live in a super dense area and utilities and supply chain are really dependable. But this is hardly everywhere.
    
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  - jaemo@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - frezik@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Hydrogen is better for cars VS batteries in every meaningful way in 2024.
    
    Lol, no.
    
    severely underdeveloped technology of batteries we have today.
    
    Lol, no.
    
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  - wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - june@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Sure. All that’s great.
    
    But I’m talking about infrastructure, not technology.
    
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  - Kecessa@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Instead you rely on Shell to provide hydrogen to you when there’s no pre-existing infrastructure to deliver it and… Oh, looks like they decided to put an end to it, have fun with your brick on wheels 🤷
    
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  - Ejh3k@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Not to mention all the ecological damage mining for battery components does. I’m with you, hydrogen is the way to go
    
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- Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - Virulent@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Hydrogen never made sense. It is simple thermodynamics.
    
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- LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I think the ideal sustainable chemical fuel would be propane generated through genetically engineered algae. Propane can easily be compressed into liquid and transported and it burns clean.
  
  Have something like solar panels filled with photosynthetic algae producing propane that is constantly extracted as a gas. Once we have done the genetic engineering of a “steady state algae panel” it would be quite low tech to have these on your roof and store them to heat with in winter.
  
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  - frezik@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Algae is, at best, around 10% efficient at converting light into energy. You can use solar power to produce hydrogen at better efficiency than that, but even that’s pretty poor. The best is to just use that electricity as it is, and second best is to put it in a battery.
    
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circuscritic@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Hydrogen will have an important role to play in the future of green energy simply because it’s a portable high density fuel, that doesn’t require a battery to work.

The trade-off is that hydrogen takes more energy to create, then you get back. That doesn’t make a lot of sense when you’re using fossil fuels, but it would in a future with significant amounts of excess green energy e.g. wind, solar, fusion, etc.

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- zurohki@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but hydrogen fuel cell vehicles do have batteries. You can’t put energy captured from regen braking back into the fuel cell, so either you have a battery or you lose a third of your range.
  
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  - 4z01235@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Fuel cell EVs can’t be fitted with charging plugs for religious reasons
    
    I really need to hear that story.
    
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  - SupraMario@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Toyota has developed Hydrogen ICE motors. So it doesn’t need to only be used as fuel cells.
    
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- scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  “Doesn’t require a battery to work” is a fairly meaningless upside when it does require a fuel cell, a moisture exhaust, and a cannister of compressed, flammable gas.
  
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  - laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    So much simpler than a brick holding the energy already in the form you need it in that can return it to the parts that need it at several times the efficiency, right?
    
    I genuinely don’t get the arguments that hydrogen is simpler or more universally compatible when it’s very easy to see it isn’t
    
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- CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You can mine hydrogen. They recently found some pretty large reserves of pure-ish hydrogen underground.
  
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sebinspace@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Yes, they can. They just don’t want to.

It’s not hard to see what’s happening here: a company that is almost solely based upon selling petroleum-based fuel put down a few hydrogen stations, then gave up, stating “it’s just not feasible! Look, we tried! Looks like fossil fuels are the future! Oh well, tee hee!”

Very weak tea indeed.

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Sanctus@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
EVs, Hydrogen Cells, Vegetable Oil, all these alternatives are here to save one thing; The Car Industry. Sounds like the problem might be mode of transport rather than fuel.

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- toofpic@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Oh, come on, I live in Copenhagen and cycle daily, but even there, cars are not going anywhere. Smelly-smokey cars, yes, but not cars in general.
  
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  - n2burns@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Cars aren’t being eliminated completely, but we can reduce their usage significantly if we look to your home city as an example. In Copenhagen, only 44% of commutes are made by car. In the Bay Area, probably the car-centric area of California, 85% of commutes are by car (I removed the 33% WFH, so 58/67=85%).
    
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  - Sanctus@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    What is the argument here? Cars are here to stay forever and ever? Most daily commuters could get used to a train. It is possible for most people to live without a car, your city was just designed in a way that requires you to.
    
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  - Tattorack@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I dunno, man. I think it’s about time Copenhagen takes a good look at how The Netherlands has been doing things the past decade. Cycling infrastructure can do with a serious upgrade around here, and The Netherlands has proven that, yes, you totally can reduce the number of cars on the street.
    
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- AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I do keep hoping one of these will succeed though: we have many different things that move and need multiple solutions to kick our fossil fuel habit.
  
  Walkable cities with train systems are ideal but will take decades to build out, plus at least in the US, we have predictions of people moving away from cities
  
  Battery seems to have won best technology for personal transportation, whether scooters, bikes cars
  
  But what about all those trucks, aircraft, construction and farming equipment, shipping, military vehicles? That’s a lot of fossil fuel usage with no solution in sight
  
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- lung@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  clearly never lived in a rural setting
  
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  - Sanctus@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m clearly talking about cities. Where most people live.
    
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quarterlife@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
All of that coping and seething Toyota’s CEO has been doing about electric cars sure does look stupid right now.

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Linkerbaan@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Did they stop subsidizing Shelly’s greenwashing?

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- CaptainProton@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  No they’ve just been subsidizing an inferior technology.
  
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  - bwrsandman@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    No, hydrogen just requires processing methane. How superior!
    
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empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
So what I’m hearing is, if I build my own electrolysis station driven by a solar panel array, there’s quickly going to be a glut of extremely cheap hydrogen cars coming out of So.Cal…

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- zurohki@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  So what I’m hearing is, if I build my own electrolysis station driven by a solar panel array, there’s quickly going to be a glut of extremely cheap hydrogen cars coming out of So.Cal…
  
  That’s the fun thing - after you make the hydrogen you have to compress it to 10,000 PSI and cool it to -40 to actually get it into the car. And make sure the pumps, pipes and cooling gear are all made of materials that won’t be destroyed by exposure to high pressure hydrogen.
  
  It’d probably be a lot cheaper and easier to gut the car and replace the fuel cell and tanks with batteries and a charger.
  
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  - empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’ve never done any of my projects because they were cheap or good. I understand how to do proper engineering considering I have a couple years of experience, and understand what I don’t know and the fact that it’s dangerous.
    
    fuck it, we ball
    
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- CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I mean, how many people bought them even there? Isnt there like, one model that anyone has even tried to sell to the public, just from toyota stubbornly insisting that EVs wont work despite all the working EVs that already exist?
  
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  - proudblond@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I live in the Bay Area and I’ve seen a surprising number of them. But then again I think their R&D office is in a nearby city so maybe it’s just a bunch of employees driving them.
    
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- SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You have to build something they can handle 600 bar / 10.000 PSI. You don’t want to be standing close for your first test.
  
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Snapz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Didn’t they just do this to cloud the conversation on alternative fuels and the tech was never really viable? And to like, divert investment that could have otherwise gone to other more promising green technologies?

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phoneymouse@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Wonder if Toyota will take back all those Mirai’s that will be stranded on the side of the road otherwise?

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- flatpandisk@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I remember reading something that they are all leased, not purchased. So they cut their lease and own them already.
  
  Need to double check that.
  
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nexusband@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve been on the hydrogen bandwagon for years, but the fact of the matter is, E-Fuels and HVO Diesel is an actual, viable option now, especially with efficiency reaching ever higher numbers year after year. 5 Years ago, one liter of E-Fuel was around 3-4 Euros (projected), now it’s around 80 cents.

There is nothing cheaper than just changing out fossile fuels for sustainable and carbon neutral (maybe even carbon negative, because some company’s are already thinking about putting a part of the saved carbon in the ground for long term storage, because it’s going to be cheaper with co2 taxes to just put a part of that away for good)

The 25-30% of people that are going to be getting EVs are easily buffered with the existing grids.

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- jabjoe@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Land use is the issue with e-fuels. It requires land used for food production or nature. Lots and lots of it. It can’t scale. It will be just for keep classic ICE cars. Unless it can be done in vertical farms. Or we just keep it simple and use electricity and batteries.
  
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- Geobloke@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  As a petrol head, I’m keen to see e fuel that cheap but haven’t seen anything like less than than 1 euro. How much is porche doing it for now?
  
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TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

~~Hydrogen~~ Natural Gas

ftfy.

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Tristaniopsis@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
MAYBE THEY SHOULD FLOAT SOME MORE SHARES?!?!

….

HAH HAHAHAH did you see WHAT I DONE THERE?!!?

“FLOAT”!!!

YOU SEE?!?

HYDROGEN?!?

AAAAAHH-HAHAHAHAJAHA

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- sugartits@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You need to get out more mate
  
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