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A bit more this week on Harry’s Garage about EVs – range, battery degradation, depreciation, etc. Also this rather interesting remark from head of Toyota.
I agree with Toyota. Definitely a good approach.
Oh and someone mentioned 80A fuses. Just for clarity, an 80A fuse gives you a 100A supply
Electric car charging installers don't see it like that.
I can only have a fast charger if I give up my electric shower on the incoming set up I have so they say.
Shower kettle toaster- a perfectly reasonable trio to be on at the same time.
If the car were also to be charging for some reason . Uno wahalla and a heat pump only compounds that.
Is there a push for hydrogen cars? I’ve not heard much about them for ages.
There was one came into the Cazoo site I was working on for repair/refurbishment, and my first thought was where the chuff is the plater who comes to pick it up when finished going to find somewhere to fill the bloody thing up?
EV’s weren’t a problem, we had a bunch of charging stations around the outside of the workshops, but one LH2 vehicle out of thousands that went through the workshops meant no justification for any kind of facility for the fuel, as of this time last year there seems to be only six LH2 filling stations open in the U.K. down from ten in March ‘22, three within the M25, one in the Peak District and two in Scotland!
I can’t say that that’s a ringing endorsement for the industry…
Well Mr Toyota is right about customer choice as chinese customers are choosing his products so much anymore.
Must be about the time of month to announce a new miracle engine/battery/solid state battery/hydrogen cell/hydrogen burning technology
I'd agree with Harry garage that good information on degradation on used cars would be useful
So Toyota, who seem to have rather missed the boat with the current wave of BEVs and who make one of the few hydrogen cars that you could actually buy right now, say that hydrogen cars have a big part in the future of transport.
Well that's a surprise.
So, the company I worked for manufactured H2 and also ran an H2 refilling station in southern Germany.
The H2 was mainly made from methane and the carbon is removed at the start of the process: so you are just moving the CO2 emissions upstream. (Green H2 can be made but has lots of barriers to making it in the industrial quantities needed to power vehicles in the short term).
In all the visits I did to the office where the H2 filling station was located I never saw it being used. I guess it was there to demonstrate the technology is possible and to supply the handful of H2 demonstration vehicles the car manufacturers run.
only six LH2 filling stations open in the U.K. down from ten in March ‘22
doesn’t surprise me at all.
PS I think the H2 filling stations will be for high pressure compressed H2 not LH2: liquid hydrogen is quite problematic to handle.
Hydrogen is more energy dense than petroleum? Really?
… yes? By… lots.
I see this has been debunked above - no it's not. Per kg, yes it's energy dense. You are not going to get many kilograms of hydrogen in a car though.
For comparison, 50L of liquid hydrogen contains about 500MJ whereas 50L of petrol (well octane) about 1800MJ. And that assumes you can get 50L of Hydrogen into a tank in a car - that would be quite a feat compared to 50L of petrol.
I believe the hydrogen filling stations store liquid H2, and turn it to highly pressurised gas form as required. The high pressure H2 is then used to fill the car BUT there is a problem around the deliquification can't be done super often as the kit gets too cold to work.
None of the independent sources agree with the nat grids assessment of the situation.
As far as I'm aware national grids assessment of the situation (Graeme Cooper - head of futures or new technologies or something) is that the network can handle EV adoption with some local DNO infrastructure updating in areas. Mass domestic electric heating adoption is the big problem.
The reasons behind this are obvious and made sense to me, they can control encourage and incentivise ToD car charging, they can't control when everyone wants to turn their heating up to max at the same time. Igm on the previous page (who appears to be in the industry) is saying the same thing.
Have you got any examples of reputable, credible and qualified independent sources agreeing otherwise (ie not the daily mail and Sun)
I can't decide if Zoolander 3 will be better or worse with hydrogen cars?
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I believe the hydrogen filling stations store liquid H2
Three different strategies are used: external supply by liquid H2 and storage in a vacuum insulated tank, external supply of gaseous H2 and storage in tube trailers, or on site production by electrolysis and storage as high pressure gas.
Each method has its own pros and cons and as it’s is such a young technology there is not yet a single industry standard method.
If a hydrogen car takes 3x as much electricity as an equivalent EV car to cover the same distance does that mean all these anti-EV folk I see on social-media will have to drop their "the grid can't cope" theories?
This popped up today (good explainer?) https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/13/will-hydrogen-overtake-batteries-in-the-race-for-zero-emission-cars
Will most hydrogen be grey, with some token blue and green? Green doesn’t even seem to make sense given you could use the electricity directly for other things. It does store the energy but its quite "lossy"
By chance today the Guardian (how very STW) have a good analysis of H2 vs EV:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/13/will-hydrogen-overtake-batteries-in-the-race-for-zero-emission-cars
Their answer is EV has already won the race for cars, but H2 is a good contender for large vehicles.
does that mean all these anti-EV folk I see on social-media will have to drop their “the grid can’t cope” theories?
No - because it’s the internet: It’ll be a conspiracy by the big evil EV manufacturers.
Graeme Cooper – head of futures or new technologies or something
I know Graeme, was on a panel with him then a few follow up meetings. He's at Jacobs now.
National Grid Transmission, and all the DNOs, are fully aware of the challenges and model different scenarios well into the future (alongside the Electricity System Operator/soon to be National Energy System Operator). Yes, there's a huge amount of work to be done (look up "The Great Grid Upgrade") at both transmission and distribution levels but I'd trust the views of people who do this for a living.
Anyway, article on hydrogen cars in Guardian today. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/13/will-hydrogen-overtake-batteries-in-the-race-for-zero-emission-cars
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Michael Liebreich is well worth following on LinkedIn, he's quite direct with his views so there's often some interesting debate on his posts and with his comments on other posts.
apparently there's an article in the guardian today. The race for green fuels for cars is only eclipsed it seems by the race to post the link to the article 😉
As it happens I was at a lecture yesterday; every year there is an internal competition for the best paper published by a staff member and this year it was won by a new measurement technique for measuring the (voltage) potential profiles in electrolyser technologies which in combination with new materials had the (actual) potential to substantially reduce the capital cost of the kit and the reliance on scarce metals, etc.
Doesn't answer the electricity need but there is a lot of research in the area and it's definitely not being given up on.
It will be presented at an IOP public lecture in April as well - tickets FoC in link below, along with the runner up and the Early Career award. The runner up in particular is a great speaker and with some 'wow!' science as well (nothing wrong with the others but Giuseppe is fab)
https://www.npl.co.uk/news/npl-celebrates-excellent-scientific-research
https://www.iop.org/events/national-physical-laboratory-rayleigh-award-celebration#gref
I asked a question about energy costs (electricity) needed to create green hydrogen, even if the kit gets cheaper and more efficient. A knowledgeable speaker in the room reckons that will eventually be overcome not least because renewable electricity will eventually become efficient and abundant enough that at times it will be free. So there won't necessarily be a problem that it's up to 3x less efficient than using it directly, if it's going spare.
Doesn't overcome issues of infrastructure to build and store the gas somewhere, so that's not necessarily the fix but was an interesting intervention.
So there won’t necessarily be a problem that it’s up to 3x less efficient than using it directly, if it’s going spare.
But 3x the windfarms and solar panels won't be free either in monetary cost or land usage etc.
You can store electricity in battery cars better than you can store it in hydrogen to then put in cars. I'm sure there's a big role for hydrogen but I don't think cars is it.
You won't necessarily need 3x the windfarms, because in order to meet peak demand you will need have to work on average case generation, etc. When off peak, or when above average generation is being achieved then that excess needs to be used and while you could put it into battery storage you could also be then using that 'free' electricity for hydrogen.
I think short term (short as in NZ terms, not next year) then you're right, cars won't be the big users but technology has a long development and gestation period and hence hydrogen isn't off the table is what I took away from it. Info from people far cleverer and closer to the action that I am, so I tend to listen to them.
Info from people far cleverer and closer to the action that I am, so I tend to listen to them.
People with a vested interest in the technology tend to overlook the downsides even if they are very intelligent when it comes to solutions. I'm not saying that's happening here because I wasn't at the lecture, but it happens.
What I'm not exactly clear about is this: when you have BEVs, what problem are H2 cars solving? It seems like a hell of a lot of extra effort and money just to save a bit of time for some people on long trips. I mean cars here specifically.
A knowledgeable speaker in the room reckons that will eventually be overcome not least because renewable electricity will eventually become efficient and abundant enough that at times it will be free. So there won’t necessarily be a problem that it’s up to 3x less efficient than using it directly, if it’s going spare.
Doesn’t overcome issues of infrastructure to build and store the gas somewhere, so that’s not necessarily the fix but was an interesting intervention.
It's a fine theory, but as said before you only need ~1.2x to do it with batteries, not ~3x. And while batteries are heavy, bulky and hard to store/transport, so is hydrogen. The problem with large volumes of free off-peak electricity is that people are still bidding for it, and suppliers are under no obligation to supply it (no point wearing out your wind turbines gearbox, they can be feathered and switched off). 1kWh of electricity @ <25p/kWh is a good deal to a battery user, so they'll buy it and sell it back to the grid at 30p during a peak. So the market will have to saturate all that demand first, before the hydrogen users get a look in at 10p or whatever they need to make it worthwhile. [there's charges to be paid, differences between the buying and selling prices, etc, but those apply equally to both].
At the moment hydrogen is a solution looking for a problem. I still think the biggest it's ever going to be is a niche, someone will figure out a way to generate it from low grade waste heat in a powerplant or similar, and it'll be used to fuel copper smelting* or something.
*hydrogen won't reduce iron oxide or I'd have gone with blast furnace.
I suspect synthetic fuels will become more useful than H2 for transport or other portable applications.
I can imagine something like an off-grid energy generation system in a remote location that has lots of sun - you could create the H2 via solar power when the sunshines and generate power when you need it. But again, this is a lot more complex and expensive than simply using a battery. Given the work being done on battery tech, I reckon the downsides of current battery tech (rare metals etc) will get solved before the problems with hydrogen.
Also, BEVs are flying off the shelves right now. There's a long running thread where loads of people are asking about BEV purchases every week - I haven't seen one person considering an H2 car.
I’m not sure I entirely believe that article in the guardian. To suggest there is only a 6% loss in energy in the equivalent phase of “well to tank” strikes me as entirely optimistic. My understanding is that all forms of renewable are not that efficient at extracting energy from their source be that wind or solar. Equally I don’t believe any electricity generated by fossil or nuclear is that efficient so it’s not a like for like comparison. If the energy used in separating petrol from oil is included then surely the energy lost generating electricity from the source should also be included.
As I've said before in this thread electrolysers, fuel cells and adapted engines to burn H2 and other alternative fuels are very much being developed for multiple use cases. Cummins, who I work for have quite a bit published on this under our "accelera" brand name - some links below.
https://www.accelerazero.com/fuel-cells
https://www.accelerazero.com/electrolyzers
I suspect synthetic fuels will become more useful than H2 for transport or other portable applications.
Ultimately, it will be a matter of finding the most efficient way of storing and distributing energy for different purposes. You can create synthetic fuels by using electricity to produce hydrogen, then produce methane (CH4) or methanol (CH3OH) from hydrogen and CO2. For commuting in a city, a battery EV will be much more efficient, but for uses such as aviation or the military, chemical fuels have some big advantages.
All the energy we use comes from either nuclear fusion (the sun), nuclear fission, or residual heat in the earth's core (geothermal). Also, a significant proportion of geothermal heat comes from nuclear fission of naturally occurring radioisotopes, so nearly all our energy ultimately comes from nuclear fusion or fission. Fossil fuels were created from plants that converted solar energy to chemical energy, hydroelectric comes from solar energy that increases the gravitational potential energy of water. Wind energy also comes from solar energy. So, basically, we are talking about finding the most efficient way to use nuclear energy from either the sun or from nuclear reactors on Earth. Using biomass to create sustainable chemical fuels is one way, using a solar array to create hydrogen and then convert that to synthetic chemical fuel is another way to doing the same fundamental thing. It's just a question of what is the most efficient way.
Focusing on hydrogen is a red herring - the hydrogen is just one possible way of storing and transporting the nuclear energy that has been collected. The more important question is what mixture of different storage and transportation systems will be needed for the different end uses.
Methanol you say?
A knowledgeable speaker in the room reckons that will eventually be overcome not least because renewable electricity will eventually become efficient and abundant enough that at times it will be free.
"Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter…" Lewis L. Strauss 1953 🙂
My understanding is that all forms of renewable are not that efficient at extracting energy from their source be that wind or solar.
then surely the energy lost generating electricity from the source should also be included
Why... because some wind, or some sunlight, or some tidal movement, or some wave energy, is not captured? I genuinely don't get your point.
I'm not saying they were right, just feeding back an (expert) opinion. What problem does it solve that BEV's have? IDK, i'm not the expert but charging infrastructure / time to charge, degradation, limited supply o fthe materials needed for batteries, etc..... and I'm not talking in the next 5 years, I'm talking decades eventually, probably.
People with a vested interest in the technology tend to overlook the downsides even if they are very intelligent when it comes to solutions. I’m not saying that’s happening here because I wasn’t at the lecture, but it happens.
We're a metrology lab, we don't develop the technology particularly but support people to understand how well it works. Of course we do have knowledgeable people that are also aware of the market / future market - we have to build capability to be able to support the right areas.
I can imagine something like an off-grid energy generation system in a remote location that has lots of sun – you could create the H2 via solar power when the sunshines and generate power when you need it.
A bit like this? (a real project) https://www.cummins.com/news/releases/2021/05/24/cummins-selects-spain-its-gigawatt-electrolyzer-plant-partners-iberdrola
Effectively it’s the “front half” of your description. In an area with plentiful sunshine and lots of empty space it makes sense to generate a lot of solar power - this could be distributed via cables but in this case will be turned into Hydrogen for use by applications than need its benefits vs batteries or simple cables and the business case is strong enough to pay the premium vs using the electricity directly (so likely to end up in mobile industrial equipment etc).
I think it could work for cars, but it'll rely on commercial vehicles building enough infrastructure (ie filling stations) for the cars to be feasible. Which is probably at least a decade out
Why… because some wind, or some sunlight, or some tidal movement, or some wave energy, is not captured? I genuinely don’t get your point.
The article uses as its starting point for fossil fuel as the point the fuel left the ground up until it hits the fuel tank of the vehicle. For electricity it claims only 6% loss for the energy hitting the solar array, or the turbine blades or coal, gas or nuclear energy being extracted from the ground to make electricity is simply not that believable. Are they really trying to suggest that only 6% of energy is lost between gas coming out of the ground and electricity coming into the car battery, same with coal or nuclear as it doesn’t discriminate as to how the electricity is generated
For example say 100w of energy hits a solar panel or a wind turbine to the pint that energy gets into the car only 6w is lost? If 100w worth of cost or gas come out of the ground and used to make electricity 94w of it will go into the car?
For example say 100w of energy hits a solar panel or a wind turbine to the pint that energy gets into the car only 6w is lost?
That's massively off the mark. The conversion efficiency of solar panels has some fundamental limits so about 40% is more like it. But that doesn't really matter. What matters is the cost per kw/h for a given location. A near the equator with a lot of sunlight hours will be more economically efficient than somewhere near the poles with a lot of cloudy weather.
With fossil fuels, what really matters is how much total CO2 is produced for the energy output at the end. Low grades of coal will be much worse than natural gas, for example. If you need to use earthmoving equipment to dig coal out of the ground, the fuel for those machines counts towards the CO2 footprint.
I’m not sure I entirely believe that article in the guardian. To suggest there is only a 6% loss in energy in the equivalent phase of “well to tank” strikes me as entirely optimistic.
And that would impact Hydrogen cars more than EV's as it needs 3x the electricity.
The conversion efficiency of solar panels has some fundamental limits so about 40% is more like it. But that doesn’t really matter
Indeed - average solar energy landing on every single square metre of earth is 341W. The amount of renewable energy available is astronomical. Think about those giant offshore wind farms, then think about how much air is moving around the earth but not going through those turbine blades.
That’s massively off the mark. The conversion efficiency of solar panels has some fundamental limits so about 40% is more like it. But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is the cost per kw/h for a given location. A near the equator with a lot of sunlight hours will be more economically efficient than somewhere near the poles with a lot of cloudy weather.
it doesn't really matter though - as there's no "cost" from the 900W or whatever is just bounced off the solar panel back towards the sun. Once the energy is in the power grid it starts being counted (I'd assume after inversion) and thats the point at which total consumption is of interest.
I suppose you could argue that a new 600W panel and an old 400W panel of the same size take the same maintenance and cleaning , and therefore the carbon footprint of that is relevant. But really you're talking the differences between very small numbers, and really small numbers.
To suggest there is only a 6% loss in energy in the equivalent phase of “well to tank” strikes me as entirely optimistic.
Sounds about right TBH, around 5-10% of oil is used up in the processing depending on the feedstock.
So when people say "Oli companies' carbon footprint is .......... , why should I reducer mine", really yours (as a consumer of the oil companies' products in your car and home) is about 10-20x bigger than Shell's
With fossil fuels, what really matters is how much total CO2 is produced for the energy output at the end. Low grades of coal will be much worse than natural gas, for example. If you need to use earthmoving equipment to dig coal out of the ground, the fuel for those machines counts towards the CO2 footprint.
But this article assumes that all electricity that goes into cars is produced using renewables and that is simply not true and won’t be for a long long time, we are still building nuclear power stations that will be operational for the next 50 + years. If they are counting the energy used to frac oil into petrol then they should include the energy to create electricity from one renewable sources for it to be a true comparison.
But this article assumes that all electricity that goes into cars is produced using renewables and that is simply not true
I don’t understand your point here. Your comment is true, but in an EV vs H2 discussion it just means H2 will continue to be a highly polluting power source for the long term and so no good for CO2 reduction.
it just means H2 will continue to be a highly polluting power source for the long term and so no good for CO2 reduction.
Why? As I posted earlier, some very innovative technologies now in development for producing green H2 from cheaper / less environmentally damaging electrolysers and also potentially much cheaper green electricity to fuel the 3X need in the longer term.
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/ee/d2ee00876a
As I posted earlier, some very innovative technologies now in development for producing green H2 from cheaper / less environmentally damaging electrolysers
No. If the elecity is not renewable then the H2 is not green. How efficient the electrolyser is compared to current electrolysers is irrelevant.
No. If the elecity is not renewable then the H2 is not green. How efficient the electrolyser is compared to current electrolysers is irrelevant.
If the electricity is not renewable then the EV is not green. What’s your point? Plus no one has come up with a way to make the battery green, or even recycle them once they are useless for powering a vehicle
What’s your point?
While renewable energy is still in reality scarce, and fossil fuels are still in use to generate electricity (which they will be for a few years yet... or potentially a decade or more if the Tories win the next election), then using H2 instead of EV vehicles means more use of fossil fuels because it requires much more electricity generation per a mile. If we ever get to the point where we have more electricity generated by renewable than we need (not impossible, but will need a change of mindset from all of us... why generate energy you can't sell in a market driven society) then using that to power H2 cars, or home heating, might make sense. But it's far more likely at that stage that the excess will be used in industry (including via H2), to encourage production to move to the UK (or wherever has got ahead of domestic demand with their renewable energy infrastructure first).
My business is investing most of our profits into a variety of low carbon alternatives to our current business. So I have a fair amount of insight into the alternatives available. But I don’t claim to be an expert at all. Here is my simplistic take:
- Batteries seem to work well for cars. (Although I honestly personally struggle to see batteries as a good long term Green solution).
- Batteries are a really bad solution for larger vehicles and industrial machines. The weight is simply unmanageable. And the range is very limited. So for large Lorries etc, batteries are not generally viewed as a decent long term solution. So, in my own personally opinion, cars will probably remain EV, while larger vehicles will almost certain go hydrogen.
- storing energy is a huge issue, since there are basically no green ways of doing so currently, except for hydro. (I don’t consider enormous banks of lithium batteries an acceptable green solution).
- hydrogen is not easy to produce. But it is one of the only/best ways of storing electricity that we have found so far.
- the greenest way to make electricity currently is wind or solar. But the big problem is that they are often unavailable when electricity is needed. Equally, they often sit idle when there is wind/sun available, because the demand is not there at that time. So in my simplistic opinion, H2 is the perfect solution to this. Use the electricity from wind farms, when there isn’t enough demand for electricity, to store the surplus electricity generated that can’t be consumed.
- the H2 market isn’t really about todays world. It is really aimed at 3-5+ years down the line. Several countries in Europe are investing a lot of money in setting up distribution for H2. This is understandable since there is really no realistic, current alternative to fossil fuels for large trucks and lories (and construction equipment).
The article uses as its starting point for fossil fuel as the point the fuel left the ground up until it hits the fuel tank of the vehicle. For electricity it claims only 6% loss for the energy hitting the solar array, or the turbine blades or coal, gas or nuclear energy being extracted from the ground to make electricity is simply not that believable. Are they really trying to suggest that only 6% of energy is lost between gas coming out of the ground and electricity coming into the car battery, same with coal or nuclear as it doesn’t discriminate as to how the electricity is generated
For example say 100w of energy hits a solar panel or a wind turbine to the pint that energy gets into the car only 6w is lost? If 100w worth of cost or gas come out of the ground and used to make electricity 94w of it will go into the car?
You're maddeningly ill informed.
For a car, you need to extract which requires a pumpjack or oil rig, you then need to move it which requires pumps or tankers, you then need to refine it which requires heating and chemicals, you then need to move it again which requires pumps or trucks or tankers, you then need to burn it, to get energy for movement. ALL of the above requires input energy to get you to the point of having chemical energy which you later change into kinetic energy. Your total input energy here is hugely relevant as you have to use a massive amount of what you refine to provide power to get you more input material to the chain. Every step is a loss, every joule used to extract/move/refine/move/move is detracting from efficiency.
For an EV (using solar or wind) you harness photons or wind, to turn a turbine which generates electricity, you then transmit the power (resulting in a 1-2.5% loss), you then directly use that power to charge an EV, which gives a 3-5% loss (in theory it could be as high as 25%, but in reality, it just isn't) You're total input energy is irrelevant as you're not using your output energy to generate wind or solar, it's just there as light or kinetic energy generated by the sun and the weather, you're not making either.
Yes, A solar panel is around 22% efficient and an inverter is 97% efficient, but who cares - you're not going to deplete the sun, you're not taking that energy from elsewhere, so the efficiency is meaningless except for in terms of size.
Check this out: [url] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-much-energy-needed-power-combustion-car-petr-benes/ [/url]
My point is that the majority of the electricity is not produced from renewable sources. Trying to say there are virtually no losses in ev electricity is simply not true until the vast majority of electricity is produced from renewables. When it is that same clean energy can be used to create clean hydrogen which can be stored and doesn’t require batteries made from unpleasant and non recyclable materials.
If the elecity is not renewable then the H2 is not green. How efficient the electrolyser is compared to current electrolysers is irrelevant.
It's almost like you're ignoring the second point in the proposal; in fact you snipped that out in the way you've quoted my post.
Of course it's not green hydrogen if the electricity used to generate and compress/store it is fossil fuel based. But, IN THE LONG TERM efficiencies and scale are believed BY SOME AT LEAST to mean that electricity will become so abundant and cheap that the fact it is a 3x equation is neither here nor there. As Daffy said, we won't run out of wind or sun.
If we ever get to the point where we have more electricity generated by renewable than we need (not impossible, but will need a change of mindset from all of us… why generate energy you can’t sell in a market driven society) then using that to power H2 cars, or home heating, might make sense.
Definitely not impossible, as i said PSTM are suggesting that will happen. Yes, it will require a mindset change, that we don't turn stuff off in order to keep prices higher and instead use whatever we can create to store in other forms while we can. Maybe that's yoghurt weaving sort of thinking, but the longer we don't think like that, the bigger the hole we're digging for ourselves.
When it is that same clean energy can be used to create clean hydrogen
One comes well before the other. Enough renewable energy to power all new cars if they are EV will be here well before enough renewable energy to power the same number of hydrogen powered cars. So we crack on with moving to new cars being EV ASAP, and develop H2 solutions for later (when renewables are at even greater scale) aimed at where batteries don’t work, be that shipping, steel production, air travel, whatever.
My point is that the majority of the electricity is not produced from renewable sources.
That is irrelevant. Let me explain why, it is actually quite simple. At one end we start with a unit of electricity at a power station as our input. That might be renewable power or it might not. We have two ways of transferring that to a car's wheels, by using an EV or by using an H2 powered car.
For the EV the electricity travels through the power distribution system to your car's battery, where it is stored until used in the electric motor. Electrical transmission and electric motors are very efficient and battery storage is pretty efficient, so most of the power gets used at the car's wheels.
For the H2 car the electricity travels through the power distribution system to the H2 electrolyser at the petrol station, gets converted into H2, gets compressed and stored at high pressure (probably 300-600 time atmospheric pressure), gets pumped into the car storage cylinder (probably 400 times atmospheric pressure), gets converted into electricity in a fuel cell, and the electricity gets used in an electric motor.
So the difference between the two systems is that an EV looses a bit of efficiency storing it's electricity in a battery. But in comparison the H2 system looses a lot of efficiency electrolysing its hydrogen, by compressing hydrogen to a very high pressure, by pumping the hydrogen into the car's cylinder and by converting the hydrogen back to electricity in a fuel cell. All of those extra losses mean that of the electricity provided by the power station, in the H2 vehicle far less ends up turning the cars wheels than for an EV. You need a lot more power stations to power the nations cars by H2 than by EV. That is true whether they are renewable or fossil fuel - you need lots more of them for an H2 supply chain.
So if we want to stop our cars using fossil fuels we have to choose between building a lot more power stations and all use EVs, or build even more more power stations and use H2 cars.
My opinion is that since every non-CO2 power generation option (wind onshore, wind off shore, solar, nuclear) provokes fierce of resistance from one section of the population or the other we will have trouble getting enough green power for all our EVs and for our future domestic heating heat pumps, without the problem of needing even more green power for H2.
It is true that EVs have their problems, but technology is at least as likely to engineer solutions to building recyclable and more efficient batteries than to make more efficient electrolysis and fuel cell systems. And it is also true that EVs don't suit all use cases - it is quite possible H2 will become the least bad option for HGVs, ships and non electric trains.
It is also quite possible in the long term we will have a method of producing as much low cost renewable electricity as we want and perhaps then H2 may be more generally used. But I'll be long dead before then and I think we should start saving the planet a bit sooner than than.
https://www.bmwblog.com/2024/01/15/bmw-munich-plant-retooling-neue-klasse-hydrogen/
BMW supporting Hydrogen
I accept that part but the article was also talking about the whole process before the power station as well as the post power station. They also ignore that batteries are at best 80% efficient
It is true that EVs have their problems, but technology is at least as likely to engineer solutions to building recyclable and more efficient batteries than to make more efficient electrolysis and fuel cell systems.
At least as likely - I don't necessarily agree, but in any case it's not an either / or.
It is also quite possible in the long term we will have a method of producing as much low cost renewable electricity as we want and perhaps then H2 may be more generally used. But I’ll be long dead before then and I think we should start saving the planet a bit sooner than than.
Me too. But as well as saving the planet we need to keep it saved, and on paper at least using infinite sources of solar or wind power to generate renewable fuel in new electrolysis plants that starts as water and ends up as water sounds like a better long term solution than other finite resources needed for batteries. And if we don't start on that, we'll never reach it.
My opinion is that since every non-CO2 power generation option (wind onshore, wind off shore, solar, nuclear) provokes fierce of resistance from one section of the population or the other we will have trouble getting enough green power for all our EVs and for our future domestic heating heat pumps, without the problem of needing even more green power for H2.
That's not a technical problem, it's a political one and could be solved overnight. That of course is a massive oversimplification but if legislatively we decided to approve as many wind and solar farms as we need, there's enough wind and sun to last forever. Or at least, when the sun runs out and we can't generate electricity from it any more then the solar system and planet is ****ed anyway.
BMW supporting Hydrogen
I am sure you did not mean to use that phrase to imply BMW had switched from EVs to H2.
BMW say in the article that "Hydrogen remains an important alternative . . we have a fleet of hydrogen cars out testing and why we’re working intensively on improving the technology further".
At the same time as testing a few H2 cars, just last year 2023 BMW supplied 376,183 all-electric cars. So while they "support" H2 by keeping involved in it as an alternative , it is clear that for the foreseeable future BMW is all about the change over from ICEs to electric vehicles.
No of course not. Again you snipped out the highly relevant bit about it being a massive oversimplification, and while politicians go around in 5 year terms trying to keep the public sufficiently onside to be allowed another 5 year term then no, that choice won't get made.
But you could pass legislation to remove planning constraints on wind farms in a few weeks if you wanted to is what i mean.
When it is that same clean energy can be used to create clean hydrogen which can be stored and doesn’t require batteries made from unpleasant and non recyclable materials.
The link above explains that Lithium isn’t as dirty as fossil fuel extraction. Also, once it’s in the eco-system, it can be reused, unlike fossil fuels. . Like titanium, it’s valuable enough to be worth the effort.
Hydrogen also requires substantial energy to produce, even more to compress, vast amounts more to keep as a liquid and enormous amounts of energy to move it around. It’s also damaging to the environment when it’s released, which happens all the time due to boil off and leakage.
you have to store it as a liquid as the space requirements to support even a single aspect of transportation would be so vast, it would make the idea of 1000km2 of solar panels look like a good idea.
Hydrogen will be part of the solution, but it will be made near to where it’s used. Offshore wind, access to water, gas turbine or SOFC generators, the very last thing you want to do is move it.
I work in aerospace research and we’re looking at this in depth and trust me, it’s bloody difficult. At least for power generation, it’s all on the ground so cast iron pumps (one of the only materials which works okay over long periods when subject to LH2) isn’t so much of an issue.
Oh, and round trip efficiency for a typical lithium ion battery is 92-96%. When you add thermal control to that, it rises by a couple of %. Anything that moves electrons around is pretty efficient.
Look at Airbus Zephyr. Solar powered high altitude pseudo satellite. Using only solar power, lithium sulphur batteries and electric motors, it can stay airborne and on station for ~90days. All the while surveying the ground and relaying comms. Charging and climbing through the day, descending slowly at night. You couldn’t do that with hydrogen or FF.
Solar, wind and batteries work and they work really bloody well. We just need to find a solution for when it’s neither sunny nor windy and that’s where hydrogen comes in.
I work with research engineers who are spending huge amounts of time and money looking for a viable battery. Until then it’s not viable. I agree they are better than fossil fuels but that’s a long way from a sustainable answer. Batteries are still dependent on digging up rare earth minerals which by definition finite and limited
And recyclable?
And recyclable?
Yes.
But (and I genuinely don't know) is there enough of the materials needed to be able to create the future battery requirements for an ever more industrialized planet. Not just the major western nations but for every car worldwide to be an EV? And is it accessible enough to be mined and refined cleanly, etc.
Lithium isn’t particularly rare. Nor do you actually need a lot of it. It’s the anode and cathode materials that’re rare earth and they’re already being reduced.
You need on average only 8kg of Lithium for an average EV. There’s estimated to be between 88 and 190million tonnes of lithium on land and in the ocean. 22 million tonnes of that is easily accessible, which equates to 2.8bn typical EVs. There are currently 1.4bn vehicles on the planet.
We’ve already established that lithium extraction is dirty, but not as dirty as FF. Further, we’ve established that at current energy mixes an EV will pay for its environmental footprint in two/three years. This will then reduce emissions and this number will become even more positive over time as the grid becomes more green (we did 6months last year (4000miles) just using our solar for charging) Finally we’ve determined that it’s easily resourceable with current reserves. None of the above even considers recycling.
EVs are valid right now. Battery research is currently looking to improve upon what we have but that’s no reason at all not to start down the road. It works.
Its just another greenwash. We use far to much energy moving individuals around in 2 tonne metal boxes. EV, petrol or hydrogen makes little differnce - its all energy usage and all means more fossil fuels burnt
the H2 market isn’t really about todays world. It is really aimed at 3-5+ years down the line
The people on the thread who are looking at facts and stats agree that batteries are so much more efficient that much more generation would be needed to make hydrogen a viable alternative. And that hydrogen needs to be produced with renewable electricity. In Germany , BMW's home, about 2/3 is rewable. It's rising slowly but having the kind of surplus that would make hydrogen viable is 30-50 years away rather than 3-5.
Only at the tailpipe - not overall all as every bit of electricity used in an EV ( most of the time) comes from fossil fuel burning
Check out the EV thread, TJ, the vast majority of users charge at night when in the UK at least the majority of electrictiy is renewable. Even in Germany the electricity is only 1/3 fossil and in Germany there's even more incentive to charge at night.
In France there are a few very high demand days when most of the extra is from gas or coal, they're announced on the news a few days before, I make sure I have a full battery going into those days. Living where I do I doubt my EV is charges with anything other than nuclear or renewable except when I charge on a long journey during the day.
The Japanees cars and new R5 which allow people to use the car to power the house can do even more to reduce demand for fossil fuel electricity. You can program them to charge to say 90% over night but return 20% to teh grid before you go to work to help with peak deamnd. plug in when you return from work and the grid will take power then return it overnight to reach you 90% max charge and 70% available when you go to work.
edukator - and unless there is a surplus of renewables ( which does happen sometimes) the electricity used in EVs comes from fossil fuels as increasing fossil fuel generation is the only way to increase output
Demand management is good - but fiddling around the edges.
They are still hugely inefficient ways of moving folk around. Thats the real issue.
Only at the tailpipe – not overall all as every bit of electricity used in an EV ( most of the time) comes from fossil fuel burning
Only when you employ creative and somewhat absurd accounting techniques trying to score a point you never will.
Its just another greenwash. We use far to much energy moving individuals around in 2 tonne metal boxes. EV, petrol or hydrogen makes little differnce – its all energy usage and all means more fossil fuels burnt
Not really greenwash, yes we should be a huge push to move away from car dependency but also look for alternatives fossil fuels for vehicles.
I work with research engineers who are spending huge amounts of time and money looking for a viable battery. Until then it’s not viable
It’s very viable, they can be recycled but yes there is are better alternatives to provide more range, faster charging and easier production.
Only when you employ creative and somewhat absurd accounting techniques trying to score a point you never will.
Actually its the EV enthusiasts that do this. You conveniently forget that making EVs is highly polluting - that much of the time the electricity comes from fossil fuel burning as renewables are maxed out and that nuclear and renewables are not zero carbon
EVs do reduce pollution yes - but they are the wrong answer to the wrong question. We need to stop using so much energy to move folk around.
The green car is the one that does not exist and is not used
That's interesting Daffy, thanks. Still a bit concerning though in the timeframes we are talking....
there are 1.4Bn cars on the planet right now and (while I agree with TJ that we should be reducing reliance on them) demand will increase overall as more countries industrialise - what is car ownership per capita in China, India, Philippines, Brazil, a lot of Africa, etc.
Most of them are ICE (26M EV currently, I looked up) and if in a future state we remove FF for other types, that's a lot of batteries needed to replace even the stock we have. Enough for 2.8Bn from accessible Lithium is 'only' two rounds of EV batteries. Of course recycling, and of course technology will improve and of course there is more to be extracted from inaccessible places - but I'm not seeing an answer to this sum that's making me think in the long term there's no issue. That's just on availability, let alone how dirty extraction is, for Li or other rare earth metals.
@TJ, a large part of the last couple of pages has been on whether / when we can be entirely sufficient on renewables. Ed's graph and post says 30-50 years, with the right intent and political support that could be (a lot) sooner. Even then 30 years is 'in my lifetime' sort of timescales and so I consider that still medium term. In the long term - my kids and grandkid's timescales - then I believe that will happen and electricity will be so abundant that the equations balance.
That's not to say - 'ah don't worry about it then, we'll find a solution eventually' - I want my grandkids to live on a hospitable planet, not some fiery hellhole but where they can have and EV or HV that's economical. So yes, we do need action now and that's why I think both EV and HV continue to be worth investment and development, and why politicians need to act sooner to drive that investment and development AND to force the hand by removing obstacles.
And so another thread ruined - diverted from the actual topic and a constructive discussion into pointless arguments, nit pickiness and point scoring - by the usual suspects.
Sigh.
https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix
In Summer the fossil part often drops to zero and in Winter at night the only fossil plants still running are the ones with long start up and shut down times. If I charged now I'd be using gas ( 7% of the mix, coal 1%) but the charge finished 05:00 when the only fossil was the coal plant ticking over because they couldn't turn it off, that in statistically the coldest week of the year.
In the late 1700/ early 1800's, slavery provided all the power we needed to do the things we wanted to do. Steam engines were around, and had some uses as an alternative technology but development was slow. We'd have got there in the end but at what cost in the meantime. Some visionary folks said that something had to be done and against the odds turned a massive tide that led to slavery being abolished DESPITE the issues that was causing - because it was the right thing to do.
That created a massive stimulus and the speed of development of engines and the industrial revolution happened (the irony that the IR is what now leads to greenhouse gases and global warming but stick with it)
If we banned all ICE cars from 2030 or 2035, then the development of the technologies needed would speed up hugely. All the barriers to windfarms would come down. There's a massive tide to swim against, just like Wilberforce had but there is already line of sight to the solution. We aren't staring at a blank piece of paper thinking 'I don't know' - we know, pretty much exactly what the solution looks like, we just need to colour in the sketch.
Over simplifies, there's a lot of hard and clever work in that but it will happen, and with the right stimulus it could happen a lot faster.
As for alternatives to the private car, TJ,there are routes from teh suburbs into Pau which are really well served by the bus and train network and have pretty good cycle paths. I rarely see more than half a dozen utility cyclists on the cycle path coming the other way as I ride out of town in th emorning (many more joggers and dog walkers), the buses run nearly empty and there's a continuous stream of cars I can ride faster than if I turn round. Any gtovernment that ries to change that won't last a month.
Macron tried a few very minor dissasive measures and it was a big diesel driving woman on social media who reacted by starting the gilets jaunes which ended with a U-turn and fuel tax reductions. You are right with what needs to be done, now you have to persuade millions to walk to the nearset public transport, wait in the cold and rain, get on when it eventually arrives late if it hasn't been cancelled because the driver has a cold, put up with anti-socail behaviour for the time of the journey, get off, change because most journeys will need a change so you now need a second driver who doesn't have a cold or a hangover, get coughed and sennzed on, eventually get off and then walk (God forbid) to your destination. I use public transport (maybe more than you do despite owing a car) it's often a grim experience. The alternative: walk 10m to the garage, get into a pre-warmed EV, chose which radio sation to listen to, get wafted by the machine to the doorstep of my destination whilst breathing air that's been through a particle filter. Y a pas photo. 🙁