Electric Vs Hydrogen

[GORDON STREETER]

I read an interesting article that stated that electric vehicles will never be accepted as a genuine replacement for the ICE and will only be around for about 10 years.
From 2030 (or sooner) Hydrogen celled cars will be the next generation with cheaper and greener build costs and a lot more mileage.
If I am still alive I doubt if I will still be driving so I wont be bothered anyway

[GTRMagic]

Hydrogen has a wonderful exhaust product.... water...

The real issue is the hydrogen station.. its not currently economic to put fill stations everywhere as they are like a mini nuclear reactor in complexity, and therefore cost and compliance.

That said... in Queensland... there is a University trial of 15 Hydrogen powered vehicles, all filled from one of these new whizz bang BOC hydrogen fill stations located on the campus.

Here's hoping it is successful

[Mike Bell]

Yes, the main issue in the U.K. is that there are apparently only 6 fuel stations in the whole country able to refuel your FCEV! If you think service stations finding a location on their forecourts for EV chargers is difficult for them, it’s easy compared with storing hydrogen....

And let’s be clear, the hydrogen fuel cell is producing electricity to power the car, so it’s still an EV. The two on the market in the U.K. (Toyota and Hyundai) still have a battery pack, but obviously this can be smaller than a BEV pack. But then the high pressure hydrogen storage tanks and fuel cell have to be incorporated......

It’s great technology, and am sure will become more refined, cheaper and popular. But you won’t have the convenience of topping up at home overnight, if you are able to do so with your BEV, and the supply infrastructure will be more of a headache than the electric chargers are now!

But, like Gordon, it is unlikely to be of concern to me....

[Johno.UK]

When we talk hydrogen powered it's important to distinguish between hydrogen fuel cell vehicles where the fuel cell basically replaces the lithium battery in an electric vehicle and vehicles that burn hydrogen in an internal combustion engine.

The latter still produces harmful NOx emissions as part of the combustion process unless the power output of the engine is reduced to a level far below that of a comparable fossil fueled car (roughly half).

The biggest issue with hydrogen is the amount of energy it takes to produce the stuff in the first place plus the usual storage and transport problems.

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by Johno.UK

The biggest issue with hydrogen is the amount of energy it takes to produce the stuff in the first place plus the usual storage and transport problems.

This is the point that I've seen brought up by EV experts. The amount of energy required to produce hydrogen is far in excess of what an electric vehicle uses. And that makes sense when you think about it - you're doing more energy conversions with a hydrogen vehicle, so the energy is lost from the fuel. As Mike says, hydrogen is being converted back into electricity in the car anyway. So with an EV, you use electricity. With a hydrogen vehicle, you convert the electricity to hydrogen, drive the hydrogen about the country, put it in the car and convert it back into electricity. It's very inefficient.

Hydrogen cars are like nuclear fusion generators. They're always 10 years away. Even in the 90s, hydrogen was the wonder fuel that we'd all be using. We're 25 years later and haven't really made significant progress in this.

In the amount of time that hydrogen cars have made very little progress, EVs have gone from nothing to being produced by all major vehicle manufacturers. Battery tech has gone from a little bit of extra range on a hybrid to over 300 miles. Charging has gone from 12 hours to an hour. Whilst EVs are not there yet, they're making far more rapid progress than hydrogen cars have.

Hydrogen has several major advantages, but by the time that tech is ready, we'll already be on EVs anyway. It has no advance at a decent rate because otherwise, it's too late. By 2030 EVs will have taken over. And with renewable energy systems requiring battery backups, we're finding all sorts of good uses for ex-EV battery packs too.

[GregUK]

Originally Posted by Mike Bell

Yes, the main issue in the U.K. is that there are apparently only 6 fuel stations in the whole country able to refuel your FCEV!

Actually 17 - but it's still not enough.

[GORDON STREETER]

I am actually working on the next generation of power plants, does anyone else want to invest a few quid with me ? Joking aside a guy that lived across the road to me in the UK used to manufacture clockwork starter motors that he used to flog to 3rd world countries.

[Mike Bell]

Originally Posted by GregUK

Actually 17 - but it's still not enough.

Well, my internet source was wrong then. Profuse apologies.

[GregUK]

Originally Posted by Mike Bell

Well, my internet source was wrong then. Profuse apologies.

https://www.netinform.net/h2/h2stati...U&StationID=-1

You're assuming that mine was correct!!

Seriously, I think that for the rest of my natural, hydrogen fuel cell - hybrid is the way to go.

If I was younger, well funded and fully motivated, I'd open a hydrogen filling station.

[Tel 911S]

Since the explosion at a Hydrogen filling station in Norway last month , [ there has been one in California also ] , all of the Norway stations have been closed & the Hydrogen powered cars have been withdrawn .

As well as the explosive nature of the fuel , there is the , [ already mentioned ], fact that it is not very energy efficient in production & use , it is very difficult to stop it from leaking , [ being ultra low density it will actually seep through steel ] & because of the low density requires very high pressure to have enough capacity to be of any use as a fuel .
To have any sort of range , a car will need over 5000 PSI in the tank , which leads to lots of problems with fuelling & storage .

So will probably never meet the needs of normal motoring .

[grantp]

It's a bit like the electricity market really.

If a miracle occurs at some point and a very readily available combination of cheap chemicals are discovered that hold immense charge in small and light units that also recharge very quickly and offer decent overall life ... then electric, always providing the infrastructure is in place for all prospective users, might work well enough.

To meet mandated carbon outputs nearly all of the new electrical energy would need to come from wind or solar (unless by a second miracle Nuclear becomes socially acceptable) and some way of dealing with intermittency would need to be established.

The best option for the immediate future might be to stop all of the performance crap since it is impossible to use it (legally) anyway and in most cases would be impossible to use it practically - certainly in the UK since the roads would rarely offer the opportunity.

This one might be able to create lighter transport modules that would be more energy efficient without compromising range yet helping to reduce recharge wait per mile of range times.

It might even make overnight charging via a normal household supply a reasonable option - for those lucky enough to have somewhere close to their property where they can park and run a cable to the vehicle without impeding pedestrians or running a large risk of cable theft.

Still, that might be better than hydrogen accident risks ...

[Johno.UK]

Car ownership and miles driven by those who have cars is falling rapidly among the under 60 age groups so by the time the EV changeover comes there may well be far less cars on the road anyway.

The majority of under 20 year olds I know don't have a license and a good chunk of those have no intention of ever getting one.

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by Johno.UK

Car ownership and miles driven by those who have cars is falling rapidly among the under 60 age groups so by the time the EV changeover comes there may well be far less cars on the road anyway.

The majority of under 20 year olds I know don't have a license and a good chunk of those have no intention of ever getting one.

And people being born now may find by the time they reach 20, that driving license are a thing of the past with self-driving arriving.

[grantp]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

And people being born now may find by the time they reach 20, that driving license are a thing of the past with self-driving arriving.

Only full service autonomous vehicles will be allowed - for reasons of security, ostensibly, but amongst other matters it would mean the vehicles and their supporting infrastructure could potentially be delivered with much lower levels of debt funded investment.


Far greater control over the activities of the population would merely be a fortuitous side benefit.

[Tanker62M]

I think that the fact that hydrogen cars are always "10 years away" is not really due to any limitation in technology; I'd say there are two, very simple answers.
The first one is that hydrogen is very volatile and inflammable, if not explosive. If we're talking about cars that use it as fuel (as opposed to hydrogen fuel cells), then, a car that gets into an accident could turn into a bomb, which is a danger not only to the driver and passengers of that car, but to everyone around as well.
The second is, unfortunately, the heavy lobbying of the fossil fuel industry, that blocks or, at least, slows down most advances in alternative power sources for personal cars.