Comment by b112
4 days ago
H2 from electrolysis is wildly expensive. H2 from natural gas is more affordable.
Irrelevant. It seems like everyone who argues against H2 is stuck on "now". Had that been the case with battery powered cars, they'd have never got off of the ground.
Batteries were terrible, wildly expensive, extremely unreliable. It's only been the immense research poured into them, that has brought their costs down.
Meanwhile, the cost of storage on an H2 car is nothing, compared to the immense and exorbitant cost of all those batteries. Batteries which make a car extremely heavy. Batteries which cannot be charged below -20C, and require heaters. Batteries which are incredibly dangerous in car accidents. Batteries which are costly, and damaging to the environment to create, difficult to recycle, and damaging to the environment to recycle.
Compared to battery tech of any type, H2 is a dream from the gods.
Yet because there hasn't been 17 trillion dollars of cash thrown into h2 generation tech, people prattle on about how expensive h2 generation is.
And it doesn't matter where h2 comes from now. It matters where it can and will come from. The goal isn't to make sources of power to generate h2 clean, the goal is to get end-polluters, cars, clean.
If the only goal was "clean", then most electric batteries charging right now, would fail that very goal. After all, there are still coal and gas power plants this very moment, and if we pulled all electric cars off the road, those would close.
No, the goal is to work towards more and more solar power, wind, etc. And in parallel, get cars ready for the day when power they're charged from isn't polluting.
The myopic view of what I deem hyper-environmentalists, is disturbing to me. It is paramount that we don't let short sighted views fog the reality around us.
Anyone arguing 1000lbs of batteries, all environmentally damaging in their construction, recycling cost, and disposal, is superior to h2, is arguing from a pedestal of sandy, earthquake prone, unstable support.
What I don't understand is why we would use H2. It's not like batteries are not getting better all the time. Not just the getting H2 for a good price but the whole system seems so much more complicated than just using a battery. What is it that H2 can do so much better that we would even spend the time and money to develop better solutions? Tell me what is the killer feature?
Because it must be a really killer feature to justify wasting about 50% of the electricity you put in and developing a distribution network and building cars that can handle H2 and even using the H2 for driving instead of steel mills or other places that might need green H2. Not to forget about the hassle of refueling with gasses that is totally different from a normal gas pump where you have to create a high pressure seal and the handle gets to cold to touch.
Also comparing a technology that will be only useful in many years with the battery technology from today is an odd choice, to say the least. Not only is the content of problematic materials constantly shrinking, the number of batteries that need recycling is currently so low that there is very little need for a big industry. But it is very likely that just like with the classic car battery recycling the more recent batteries will definitely be stripped for their precious materials.
What I don't understand is why we would use H2.
You're asking questions that were answered in the very post you responded to. You're also simply inventing costs, such as 50% power loss.
What is the precise cost? You don't know. If you research the precise cost, my post discusses "what about the future after research", but this upsets you too.. for, researching things is a waste, you say.
(Even though you realise h2 is used elsewhere, and any improvements would help those industries?!)
For power, a real world example is that charging a car, tends to result in ~15% power loss. Some is converted to heat. There is also power loss in keeping the battery warm, when it's cold out (-20C). There is power loss when it is very hot outside, when draining the battery too. There are also transmission costs related to power infrastructure, upwards of 15%. When generating h2, the stored gas is simply transported as is, 30% plus loss of gas seems unlikely.
Batteries also age, and as they do, they are less and less efficient at discharge/charging. They lose range:
https://www.slashgear.com/2008627/tesla-owners-reported-batt...
Losing significant capacity is unhelpful for range. Further (same article), most car companies recommend not full charging on a regular basis, to extend battery life. So you lose range over time, and you're not really supposed to charge to full. Great. So much for that range!?
You ignored my comments on recycling, by simply saying there aren't many batteries to recycle?! This is an absurd response, absolutely absurd. The point is adoption, and every car requires recycling at end of life. We're comparing car tech side by side, and your response is "well there's only a few of these horribly polluting battery cars!". What? Recycling a horribly polluting tech is just that. It's amazing how the most environmentally conscious among us, simple ignore that electric cars are cesspools of 1000s of pounds of polluting materials.
Lastly h2 works perfectly right now. It is useful right now. It has range as long as electric cars.
These are the sort of arguments that are constantly leveled against h2. Ones without any real research, with made up figures, and not comparing battery tech in the same light. Ones ignoring the downsides.
If people had this attitude when modern battery based cars appeared on the market, no one would have tried a single one.
> What is the precise cost? You don't know. If you research the precise cost, my post discusses "what about the future after research", but this upsets you too.. for, researching things is a waste, you say.
>(Even though you realise h2 is used elsewhere, and any improvements would help those industries?!)
It doesn't upset me but I am struggling to see the killer argument for H2 right now. The cost I am talking about is the cost of researching improvements at this exact moment and the cost of rolling out H2 infrastructure. I can not name them but they are probably not small.
> For power, a real world example is that charging a car, tends to result in ~15% power loss. Some is converted to heat. There is also power loss in keeping the battery warm, when it's cold out (-20C). There is power loss when it is very hot outside, when draining the battery too. There are also transmission costs related to power infrastructure, upwards of 15%. When generating h2, the stored gas is simply transported as is, 30% plus loss of gas seems unlikely.
The 50% I am talking about is a very positive estimate of the "well to wheel" efficiency of H2 in a car right now. From what I read about 30-50% of the power needed to produce the H2 is available to the car. As far as I read the efficiency of BEV is more around 70-85%.
> Batteries also age, and as they do, they are less and less efficient at discharge/charging. They lose range
H2 tanks and fuel cells also degrade over time and that doesn't just mean that they have less capacity that means they have to be replaced because they get very dangerous. Both should hold for the lifetime of the car though. There was study recently that car batteries last longer than we assumed: https://www.dekra.com/en/batteries-of-electric-cars-are-more...
I do cede that very cold or very hot weather will harm range and that a H2 car has more range than a BEV car. I don't think though it is significant enough though (from what I read about 100 miles more). There is though the thing that batteries are getting are getting better. Less harmful and rare materials, better density, less susceptibility to temperature. So there is the distinct possibility that the problems you mentioned might be solved before H2 even gets to the point that it's downsides are addressed. That is what I meant when I was talking about the viability of researching H2 (for cars). It might be too far behind in adoption at this point to catch up to even make sense spending time on it.
It is good to keep in mind that BEV has and had a lot lower barrier of entry. H2 fueling will never work without specialized fueling stations. That means a hassle for the owner of the car and for the potential owner of a fueling station. As a society we went through the hassle of building gas stations everywhere and figuring out how to store and transport the fuel once. It is very unlikely that we have to do that again when there is another solution that doesn't need that. Power infrastructure is already widely available even though some upgrades might be necessary. You can charge your BEV on a normal outlet at home if time is not important.
> You ignored my comments on recycling, by simply saying there aren't many batteries to recycle?! This is an absurd response, absolutely absurd. The point is adoption, and every car requires recycling at end of life. We're comparing car tech side by side, and your response is "well there's only a few of these horribly polluting battery cars!". What? Recycling a horribly polluting tech is just that. It's amazing how the most environmentally conscious among us, simple ignore that electric cars are cesspools of 1000s of pounds of polluting materials.
I didn't mean to ignore what you said but the problem is currently that to build recycling infrastructure you have to have batteries to recycle. Most BEV cars and their batteries are still on the road. Even crashed car batteries often get a second life as home storage. There is development though regarding the recycling.
https://insideevs.com/news/787778/ev-battery-recycling-growt...
> Lastly h2 works perfectly right now. It is useful right now. It has range as long as electric cars.
I'd say we have part of it. We have a way to produce H2, we have a way to create electricity from H2 but we don't have a huge overproduction of H2, we don't have a distribution network and we don't have any widespread interest. From my point of view it only makes sense to even think about H2 in cars when we have enough green energy capacity to satisfy the industries that need H2. The previously mentioned inefficiencies in converting electricity to H2 and back mean that we need to deploy much less renewable energy sources before reaching a net neutral goal.
What BEV has now is moderate momentum and it's why I am asking for the killer feature of H2. Because whatever it is it must be so good that it overcomes the downsides of H2 as well as the momentum of BEV. In the end I do not care about what kind of power storage we use as long as it gets us to not use fossil fuels anymore and that as fast as possible. I am skeptical though if it is a good idea to split investment and research now when time is of the essence.
I don't know if I need to say this but am looking at this from a strictly zero emission standpoint. That means I don't consider H2 from natural gas as relevant.
You raise dying some good points, but hydrogen is really hard to store. It leaks out of everything. You have to very carefully design three containment vessel in order for it not to go wrong.
A statement predicated upon truth, but exaggerated and expanded with everty repeated retelling.
It's a solved problem. It's not an issue.
How is it not an issue? The physics of hydrogen being one proton and one electron means it gets through everything, so something that's air tight and water tight still won't be hydrogen tight. So then you have to be extra careful with every coupling and fitting in order for it to be transferred. By "solved" you mean "if we do everything right, it works", which sounds like it'll be a total failure in the sloppy messy real world where things get kinda shitty but you still need them to work.