When the first people where trying to invent the airplane, they where not deterred by pessimists saying “why bother? There ain’t any airports around anyway”
Not the same situation. The first aeroplanes were not substitutes for an existing technology.
For substitutes to be viable, they have to have some combination of these attributes: lower up-front cost, cheaper to use, more convenient, more performant, more reliable, and/or more durable than their competitors, from the point of view of the end user.*
So which of these apply to hydrogen vs battery-electric?
* Or have better network effects, where users directly benefit from other people using the product (not a consideration here), or be advantaged by government decree.
The same arguments were made against EV, but the infrastructure was built out nonetheless and now it's quite feasible to do cross-country trips. We know that carbon-based combustion isn't an option moving forward, I for one think it's valuable for both the risks and benefits of these emergent substitute technologies to be socialized.
Could you imagine trying to tell someone before the internet that we would run cables across the ocean to digitally connect separate continents? There's a reason the internet started as gov-funded research, and it's precisely because "market forces" are triangulating on the most profitable solution, not necessarily the most efficient one
> It probably made it that far out of necessity as that happened to be the shortest distance between the two nearest hydrogen fueling stations.
Not so long ago the same argument was made regarding EVs and charging stations, and hydrogen refueling is far less disruptive than plugging a EV to a socket.
I don't know, this seems to me like a full electric car. Only the electricity comes from fuel cells rather than batteries. I personally don't have a problem with that.
Let’s be serious. No one is going to build out hydrogen based infrastructure when everything points to having electricity as the common energy source and then concentrating investment into multiple ways of creating and optimizing that source.
Like a lot of other people I didn’t know they are actually full electric and that they convert hydrogen to water to create the electricity, instead of having lithium-based batteries.
They have the advantage of very fast refueling (because the fuel is liquid) but the disadvantage of not-yet-developed infrastructure (just like battery EVs were a few years ago)
Three years ago, everyone in my home town would mock EV cars with comments like:
What do I do if I have a 100km trip to do and the fueling station is 150km away?
Do I start asking people around, “sir, please, can I borrow a car charger” like it’s a phone?
Nowadays, a lot of people there are considering buying an EV as their next car and some even started saving money for that.
Some want them because they are quiet, some because you don’t pay CO2 taxes on them. Some even like EVs because you can charge them at home (which is another disadvantage of hydrogen cars).
Nevertheless, both battery and hydrogen EVs are improvements that we need in the future and we have to understand that there’s always a transition phase for new technologies.
The hydrogen fuel cell car requires 2-3 times more energy to drive the same distance, as the overall Well-to-Wheel efficiency is from 25-35%, electric cars can achieve an outstanding overall Well-to-Wheel efficiency of 70-90%.
As you said, hydrogen cars are basically electric cars with more hardware. The only group who seems to want this is to be used is old car OEMS and politicians which we can assume have been lobbied for years to be for hydrogen.
H2 cars make no sense due to total system efficiency. I think agriculture, forestry, and long distance shipping could all make use of H2, but battery prices have dropped so far (and keep dropping) no one will pay the premium for fuel cells in passenger cars.
> They have the advantage of very fast refueling
It is not fast. H2 can't be pumped. It is held in a large tank and then super-pressurized in a smaller tank. When you connect your car the pressure is allowed to equalize between the tank and your car, transferring H2 in the process. Building up the extreme pressure takes time, so if a H2 station gets used heavily there is a 10-15 minute pause while the pressure rebuilds. It's not like getting gasoline at all.
An auto journalist I follow had a nightmare experience with the new Mirai. Trip from LA to Santa Cruz, somewhere you'd expect to have the best H2 experience possible. Only one station on the I5 corridor and it was out of H2 on the way up. They had enough range to go to San Jose (out of the way) and get H2 there. Several stations broken, finally found one that worked. Waited in line behind 2 cars. Each took 10 minutes to fuel and then the station needed 15 minutes to re-pressurize, so it was nearly an hour to get H2. He was promised the I5 station would have H2 delivered before they headed back to LA so they set off. Arrived needing fuel and it hadn't come yet. Had to stay in a hotel overnight and truck didn't come till noon the next day. 5-6 car line up waiting to fuel. Between the time to pumpH2 into the station from the truck, fuel each car, and re-pressurize in between it was 3 hours before he was able to leave.
Be aware that the 845 miles was achieved by a person who specializes in driving cars efficiently. It is not reasonable to expect a typical driver to attain this distance on one tank of hydrogen. The EPA estimate for this vehicle is about 420 miles and may decrease with weather and road conditions as well as fuel cell and battery age.
I recently had to travel cross country for the weekend (I live in Greeece it isn't as big as pe USA) but was thinking whether we as a family with a very young kid could make a switch to EVs. How much time does it take to charge an EV for 400km?
In my Tesla model 3 SR+ not that long. Batteries charge slower the more charge they have, so rather than 0-100% charge it's much better to do 2 sessions of 5-60%. In my car 5-60% is going to be about 15-20 minutes. 60% of the battery is a little over 200 km range at highway speeds, so 400 km would be about 30-40 minutes of total charging time. You have to think about it differently from gasoline though, since the car charges unattended. When I road trip in the car by the time I go to the bathroom and stretch my legs a little the car is ready to go.
Charging at home in the garage is a game changer though, since you always have a 'full' battery when leaving on a road trip. Yesterday was Canadian Thanksgiving so I travelled to visit family. I did 320 km total during the day at various points. I had enough battery to just reach home with an estimated 3%, but stopped for a quick top up just to be safe. I went from 37-50% battery in under 5 minutes and had a 20% buffer.
> a school administrator explained to the CDT researchers. “[W]e found this [student activity monitoring software]. We could also do a good job with students who might be thinking about bullying … [I]f I can save one student from committing suicide, I feel like that platform is well worth every dime that we paid for [it].”
You know what would deter people from involvement in most domestic abuses? Installing government mandated surveillance cameras in every home. When will we get that?
18 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 51.1 ms ] threadFor substitutes to be viable, they have to have some combination of these attributes: lower up-front cost, cheaper to use, more convenient, more performant, more reliable, and/or more durable than their competitors, from the point of view of the end user.*
So which of these apply to hydrogen vs battery-electric?
* Or have better network effects, where users directly benefit from other people using the product (not a consideration here), or be advantaged by government decree.
Could you imagine trying to tell someone before the internet that we would run cables across the ocean to digitally connect separate continents? There's a reason the internet started as gov-funded research, and it's precisely because "market forces" are triangulating on the most profitable solution, not necessarily the most efficient one
Not so long ago the same argument was made regarding EVs and charging stations, and hydrogen refueling is far less disruptive than plugging a EV to a socket.
Like a lot of other people I didn’t know they are actually full electric and that they convert hydrogen to water to create the electricity, instead of having lithium-based batteries.
They have the advantage of very fast refueling (because the fuel is liquid) but the disadvantage of not-yet-developed infrastructure (just like battery EVs were a few years ago)
Three years ago, everyone in my home town would mock EV cars with comments like:
Nowadays, a lot of people there are considering buying an EV as their next car and some even started saving money for that.Some want them because they are quiet, some because you don’t pay CO2 taxes on them. Some even like EVs because you can charge them at home (which is another disadvantage of hydrogen cars).
Nevertheless, both battery and hydrogen EVs are improvements that we need in the future and we have to understand that there’s always a transition phase for new technologies.
The hydrogen fuel cell car requires 2-3 times more energy to drive the same distance, as the overall Well-to-Wheel efficiency is from 25-35%, electric cars can achieve an outstanding overall Well-to-Wheel efficiency of 70-90%.
As you said, hydrogen cars are basically electric cars with more hardware. The only group who seems to want this is to be used is old car OEMS and politicians which we can assume have been lobbied for years to be for hydrogen.
> They have the advantage of very fast refueling
It is not fast. H2 can't be pumped. It is held in a large tank and then super-pressurized in a smaller tank. When you connect your car the pressure is allowed to equalize between the tank and your car, transferring H2 in the process. Building up the extreme pressure takes time, so if a H2 station gets used heavily there is a 10-15 minute pause while the pressure rebuilds. It's not like getting gasoline at all.
An auto journalist I follow had a nightmare experience with the new Mirai. Trip from LA to Santa Cruz, somewhere you'd expect to have the best H2 experience possible. Only one station on the I5 corridor and it was out of H2 on the way up. They had enough range to go to San Jose (out of the way) and get H2 there. Several stations broken, finally found one that worked. Waited in line behind 2 cars. Each took 10 minutes to fuel and then the station needed 15 minutes to re-pressurize, so it was nearly an hour to get H2. He was promised the I5 station would have H2 delivered before they headed back to LA so they set off. Arrived needing fuel and it hadn't come yet. Had to stay in a hotel overnight and truck didn't come till noon the next day. 5-6 car line up waiting to fuel. Between the time to pumpH2 into the station from the truck, fuel each car, and re-pressurize in between it was 3 hours before he was able to leave.
Charging at home in the garage is a game changer though, since you always have a 'full' battery when leaving on a road trip. Yesterday was Canadian Thanksgiving so I travelled to visit family. I did 320 km total during the day at various points. I had enough battery to just reach home with an estimated 3%, but stopped for a quick top up just to be safe. I went from 37-50% battery in under 5 minutes and had a 20% buffer.
You know what would deter people from involvement in most domestic abuses? Installing government mandated surveillance cameras in every home. When will we get that?