What gets missed in this conversation is the transportation of hydrogen. If all cars went to hydrogen, firstly we'd need to triple at least the electricity supply that you'd need for EVs. Then you'd have to store it with crazy losses at crazy cold temperatures and crazy high pressure which takes enormous revenue and infrastructure. Then, and this is the crazy part, you'd need to have 4+x as many fuel trucks because even liquid hydrogen is 4x less volumetrically dense than gasoline. It would be $$$$$$$$$$.
As for the efficiency discussion, real numbers make this make more more clear. For hydrogen fuel call vehicles it's really just a regular EV with a battery that uses hydrogen through a fuel cell to charge the battery. So with that context, here's some real numbers you can look up yourself:
Start with 100KWk of electricity from the grid or whatever.
For ev
Lose 1-2% in transmission = 98kwh left
Lose 2-3% in local distribution = 95kwh left
Lose 10-15% in charging = 80kwh left
For HFCV:
Let's assume hydrogen made right at the point of generation so there are zero losses
Lose 20-25% in electrolizing H2O to H2 = 75-80kwh
Lose 5-35% in compressing H2 for storage and transport (plus unknown H2 that must be vented due to building during storage and losses as the molecule is storage) = 49-76kwh left
Lose 7-46% in charging stations due to fueling operations = 26-70kwh left
Then, you'd have to calculate all the extra hydrogen you'd burn shipping the hydrogen around. Trucks would require 4-12x the number of vehicles due to hydrogen being so much less dense than gasoline. It's a non starter.
The only advantage to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is they're quicker to charge. That's it. Not a single other advantage. Battery capabilities are advancing so quickly that charging times will not be
And the result of all of the efficiency differences is a massive cost difference for the operational cost of a vehicle. And since these are related to physics fundamental laws, its not something that can be helped with future research and technologies.
Relative to a current ICE engine, operating a Hydrogen powered vehicle will be about twice as expensive.
Operating a battery EV powered at home will be 1/4 to 1/3 as expensive as gas.
Overall, the hydrogen cost for a vehicle to drive a distance is about 4-6 times the cost of electricity to drive a similar vehicle the same distance.
And that's not talking about huge performance differences, complexity differences, etc, that are also fundamental.
The lack of Hydrogen Infastructure isn't a fundamental problem, but there is just no way it can compete with a vehicle that you can simply plug into a standard outlet at home.
The very few places that DID have some hydrogen infrastructure, are already removing it. Hydrogen is DEAD.
Yeah, sorry. My brain went weird and IDK why I used that wording. Electrolysis is the better word.
Other than very specific scenarios and circumstances, why would you transport hydrogen vs send electricity somewhere to produce hydrogen? It'd likely cost less to transport and be a lot faster to send the electricity vs manually transporting filled fuel cells, no?
Two reasons, both because of scale.
1) hydrolysis is only going to ever be cost competitive to do at scale. A small hydrolyzer for a single filling station simply wouldn't ever pencil out
2) you need extremely pure water or hydrolysis makes way too many impurities to use. To purify water to that extent again would be subject to scaling for cost reasons
Edit: also, the fuel cell is where the hydrogen gets converted to energy, it's a permanent part of the car. You would only ever transport very pure hydrogen, not the fuel cells
Last edited by Street Pharmacist; 01-25-2024 at 07:45 AM.
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All of both your posts make a lot of sense.This stood out to me as I just watched a video from Harry's Garage where he covers the new BMW i5 M60 X-Drive. Cliffs on the video, "Do not buy, BMW has lost their way", but one thing -- not specific to BMW -- is what he talks about at 19:00 referring to the energy you think you're putting into the battery versus what you actually get. It's about a 10% loss from what you take out of the socket versus what you put into the battery.
I couldn't imagine paying well over 6 figures for a car and having an interior that butt ugly, not to mention how unusable that touchscreen bull#### is when you're actually driving. The two main things keeping me from considering an EV for my next car right now are the obscene prices and ridiculous interiors. I'll stick with my dino powered vehicle until the automakers get their heads out of their asses
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No, because at least some of that waste goes to heat the cabin, and some of it is turned into glorious, beautiful sound energy.
The cabin heat is fairly negligible in harvesting the ~70% waste.
Hydrogen is 60% efficient in a best case scenario. 40% in a more common one.
It's just a ton of complication/overhead to be significantly worse than a BEV. As mentioned before, this really only makes sense in the use-cases where the energy density of batteries just can't cut it.
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My wife’s CX90 PHEV finally arrived, and now I’m trying to figure out how to get a clean setup with the cord. The plug is on the rear passenger fender, so middle of the garage, and I hate having the cord on the floor. Anyone with any cord management experience? Something like EV Hover arms, etc?
I think it's good we are looking into all options, technology advancements tend to cross fertilize new ideas. But I don't know if I agree that this is a worthwhile application for hydrogen. By the time these things are really nailed, I suspect recharging times will have dropped so much as to make the time gained not all that much better.
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The Cybertruck is an absolute dog of a vehicle, and once the initial wave of delusional morons have theirs, Tesla is going to have a hell of a time moving them.
Can’t go off-road, can’t go out in the rain, can’t fit anything in the box.
Great truck.
At least two of those three things don't trip up the owners of pickup trucks in general. Don't go off-road, don't put anything in the box the vast majority of the time. Hell, look how popular tonneau covers are. It's a 5.5 ft. trunk.
At least two of those three things don't trip up the owners of pickup trucks in general. Don't go off-road, don't put anything in the box the vast majority of the time. Hell, look how popular tonneau covers are. It's a 5.5 ft. trunk.
I guess they should just start designing cars then… that can’t go out in the rain.
There once was a stainless steel car that could go out in the rain *and* didn't rust.
How you have that kind of money at your disposal and cheap out on the stainless steel is beyond me. DMC was facing insolvency when John DeLorean was arrested trying to sell coke to keep the company afloat.
They didn't cheap out, they made their own alloy. But there are many trade offs as you engineer that alloy, and perhaps one of them has led to a lower threshold to rust pitting.
