Everfuel is quite the ironic name…
Hydrogen won’t go anywhere as long as storage is a problem.
And transportation… and production…
And safety.
Gasoline also explodes. Lithium batteries also explode.
You ever hear about “jokes”, boy?
Both make lovely sources of power for cars and lawnmowers though 😍 just don’t inhale the exhaust of the former, or the combustion of the latter 😳
The reason why the Hindenburg exploded like that was because they coated the fucking thing in what is essentially thermite. They doped those things with aluminum powder mixed with nitrate.
This image, right or wrong, is why hydrogen cars were never going to win. The public gestalt on how they thought of them mimics this photo.
Ironically hydrogen works well as a storage solution for the variability of wind and solar. When you have a large excess of them, you can run electrolyzers to generate green hydrogen. And then when the grid needs some more supply, we can use that hydrogen to make up the gap.
The same will happen to EVs after them libs still all the electricity with their solar panels. /s
Did you mean “steal”?
Shhhh, that’s exactly how the accent sounds!
This is my main problem with hydrogen cars. I think it’s a very cool concept that might eventually overtake pure electric cars but there’s almost no places to get hydrogen yet.
It isn’t going to overtake electric cars, too inefficient.
But it might be the future for airplanes, which need a lot more energy density.
But it might be the future for airplanes, which need a lot more energy density.
Specifically density by weight. By volume, which is more important to cars, hydrogen also loses.
Yes also cargo ships and possibly American sized semi trucks. Although semis are right on border of battety vs hydrogen.
It also requires dedicated infrastructure. EVs can have charging stations at basically anywhere with a power hookup (or a genset. A grocery store here puts small VAWTs to charge off of in their parking lots. And every new-ish building has added charging stations to some of their spaces.
Hydrogen cars would need refueling stations with dedicated pressurized gas hookups, tanks, and fill machines. And the tanks and the tankers to keep the tanks full.
Finally the ultimate problem is it’s rather low energy density.
And all that infrastructure is a problem that doesn’t need solving with EVs. An entire industry we don’t need to build/rebuild
Something else no one has said yet (I think) is that most hydrogen is produced from natural gas, so this is in no way a climate solution. It’s been sold as one and it’s bullshit.
While producing hydrogen from natural gas is cheaper, this company claims to produce it with electrolysis
But IMHO at the moment is a waste of energy
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Fossil fuels are the dominant source of industrial hydrogen.[2] As of 2020, the majority of hydrogen (~95%) is produced by steam reforming of natural gas and other light hydrocarbons, partial oxidation of heavier hydrocarbons, and coal gasification.
That is irrelevant to the topic.
The reason why hydrogen is produced by steam reforming is because natural gas is cheap and is needed to produce ammonia. In Norway where there is plenty of cheap electricity from hydroelectric, there is hydrogen production via electrolysis.
The advantage of hydrogen as fuel is that can be used to decarbonise things like ships, and possibly things like branch rail lines, and planes. Passenger vehicle is probably the least attractive application, but somewhat lower capital investment than a green hydrogen plant on a industrial scale.
However this can only make sense if electricity is cheap i.e. if they are running with waste electricity from renewables.
in theory yes, in practice no
Okay but you have to use electricity to do that and currently you’re generating carbon by producing the electricity.
It’s not a solution.
The same is true of electric vehicles right now
Why do you think it’ll overtake electric cars? The energy efficiency of hydrogen cars is significantly worse, as they introduce some extra steps in pipeline of energy-generation -> movement.
The only major advantage they have is “ICE-like” fuelling, which has a bunch of major caveats attached to it (as in: it’s nowhere near as simple a system as ICE refuelling. Everything from generation, to transport to getting-it-in-the-car is way more complex and thus expensive and error-prone).
I dunno, everything I’ve always seen on it made it seem like a hyper-specific solution that’s more suited to a few edge cases that could have their specific infrastructure.
For the average consumer, the recharging of EVs is actually Not A Big Deal™️. It seemed like one at first. Now all it does is ensure I take hourly short breaks which I should have been doing anyways, basically. The only big upside of Hydrogen is the ability to refill very quickly, but you pay with a whole bunch of downsides like inefficient generation, inefficient transportation, secondary infrastructure, energy inefficiency, etc.
You also can’t fill up at home!
Hydrogen also only manages fast refills with a break between vehicles. If you try and fill a lot of cars in a row like gas pumps do, you have to wait much longer while it compresses and cools the hydrogen.
So the number of hydrogen pumps you need to support fuel cell EVs winds up being similar to the number of fast chargers BEVs need, and hydrogen pumps are very expensive.
Those “edge cases” are major industrial processes that drive the modern industrial economy. Like steel making and ammonia production.
They’re still electric cars at their base. They just use a hydrogen reactor in lieu of a battery to power the motors.
I don’t see a future where hydrogen supplants electric cars, unless there’s some revolution in storage technology for it. In that case, progress in battery tech is more likely.
Is there even a possibility of better storage tech for hydrogen? It’s not like batteries where you can use different elements in the battery out of different things. It has to store hydrogen. The processes surrounding that can be made more efficient, but the storage is just a physical limitation, not chemical.
not really. It’s a gas. and a really low density one at that. physics is a bitch
I don’t think there is, but I also gave up on predicting the future a while ago.
Another problem to the already mentioned ones (expensive, expensive dedicated infrastructure needed) is the range. Hydrogen is not very energy dense. For example the Toyota Mirai has a range of 500 km (310 miles) and its a pretty big, fuel-efficient car and the fuel storage is as big as the vehicle allows it.
So while you can refuel faster than electric, you need to do it more frequently and its less convenient.
What’s wrong with that range? It’s bigger than my bladder.
500km is pretty close to the typical range for gas vehicles(500-600 usually).
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Km you numpty, not miles.
Use the context of the km from my first number.
The XLE does 410 miles. Few electric vehicle can touch that and EV ranges decline over time so almost no EV that’s more than a couple years old could match it.
Weird that this hasn’t been on the local news. I see Drivr cars all the time.
Relevant bits:
“According to the Danish Car Importers association, there were 147 fuel-cell cars on Danish roads at the end of last year, with only one sold so far this year — all of which now have no means to refuel.”
“He added: “There is no doubt that hydrogen cars are not an option in the short term and that electric cars will win the vast majority of the passenger car market.”
