Hydrogen powered production Hyundai Nexo does 778km on 1 tank.

drunkmonkey

No hydrogen-powered production car has gone further on a single charge.
Hyundai has set a new distance record for production hydrogen-powered vehicles with the Nexo.

Driven by French aeronaut and president of the Solar Impulse Foundation, Bertrand Piccard, the car completed 778 kilometers (483.4 miles) across northern France on a single refuel, and still had 49 km (30.4 miles) of range left at the end of the journey.

Full story https://www.motor1.com/news/386621/hyundai-nexo-hydrogen-distance-record/

You can buy a nexo now in the UK we just don't have any hydrogen fuel stations yet. https://mobile.hyundai.co.uk/new-cars/nexo

Will Hydrogen be a treat to electric dreams over the next few years, we'd certainly have to invest a lot less in putting chargers everywhere as range isn't such an issue.

MrMusician18

I'd be surprised now if hydrogen isn't heavily promoted since it allows the taxation and motoring economics system to essentially stay the same.

Now I'm sure we will have the EV fanbois on shortly shiting on about efficiency and the like but efficiency doesn't actually matter to the consumer (see current ICE vehicles as a case-in-point).

liamog

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Will Hydrogen be a treat to electric dreams over the next few years, we'd certainly have to invest a lot less in putting chargers everywhere as range isn't such an issue.

How'd do you figure out that one? Every single hydrogen mile requires a hydrogen filling station, 85% of EV mileage is done by charging at home.

Del2005

liamog wrote: »

How'd do you figure out that one? Every single hydrogen mile requires a hydrogen filling station, 85% of EV mileage is done by charging at home.

What happens when people who can't charge at home need to buy a new vehicle? Current EV owner can still be considered early adapter's, look at them trying to get etiquette for using the public charging network. To become mainstream they need to reduce the recharge time or people will continue to buy fossil fuel vehicles, which is what is happening as EVs are still mostly being sold on subsidies and people still don't want them.

liamog

Del2005 wrote: »

What happens when people who can't charge at home need to buy a new vehicle? Current EV owner can still be considered early adapter's, look at them trying to get etiquette for using the public charging network. To become mainstream they need to reduce the recharge time or people will continue to buy fossil fuel vehicles, which is what is happening as EVs are still mostly being sold on subsidies and people still don't want them.

They'll probably have an easier time finding a charger than a Hydrogen station.

Pretty much every EV on the market at the moment has a waiting list, in my opinion, the real thing holding back sales is the lack of choice. The top 3 cars this year (according to beepbeep) are the Corolla, Tucson, and Qashqai. There isn't really a decent EV alternative for the Tucson or Qashqai. The closest alt for a Corolla is likely an Ioniq and that has a waiting list.

Ireland has a much lower perecentage of on-street parking than most European countries, meaning home charging going to cover the majority of usage.

If we wanted to go to a full H2 fleet, we'd basically need to replace every single petrol pump with a H2 pump, I'd say that would be a far bigger waste of money.

drunkmonkey

liamog wrote: »

Pretty much every EV on the market at the moment has a waiting list, in my opinion, the real thing holding back sales is the lack of choice.

What's holding back sales is crazy prices and lack of range, incentives are propping up sales, those incentives aren't sustainable as we've already seen the one for business users axed. The days of free driving are over with the introduction of fines and charges. The cost to fuel and EV is only going up.
Germany is ploughing ahead with hydrogen stations nearly opening one a week, EV bus services are being shut down no talk of replacing them with more lithium batteries, it'll be hydrogen if anything.
https://www.electrive.com/2019/12/04/technical-problems-halt-long-distance-flixbus-e-bus-services-in-germany/

liamog

drunkmonkey wrote: »

What's holding back sales is crazy prices and lack of range, incentives are propping up sales, those incentives aren't sustainable as we've already seen the one for business users axed. The days of free driving are over with the introduction of fines and charges. The cost to fuel and EV is only going up.
Germany is ploughing ahead with hydrogen stations nearly opening one a week, EV bus services are being shut down no talk of replacing them with more lithium batteries, it'll be hydrogen if anything.
https://www.electrive.com/2019/12/04/technical-problems-halt-long-distance-flixbus-e-bus-services-in-germany/

Sales aren't held back, every available EV has a waiting list.
Last year sales doubled, this year it's looking like tripled.
There is no point selling an affordable model when you can instead sell a high value and high margin car.

I think H2 has a place in transport but it's not likely to be in personal transportation. Trucks, Buses, Aircraft and Shipping are likely to be where H2 is successful.

drunkmonkey

liamog wrote: »

Sales aren't held back, every available EV has a waiting list.
Last year sales doubled, this year it's looking like tripled.
There is no point selling an affordable model when you can instead sell a high value and high margin car.

It's easy double a cent into 2 cent, it gets a hell of a lot harder to do that every day for 30 days.
Supply will meet demand early this year, you should be able to get a Tesla off the shelf in February. We should see how sustainable the model of ever increasing prices is then. One look at the second hand market and it appears there's little to no demand at current prices, dealers seem to be sitting on the best the EV world has to offer for way too long.
The id3 from VW seems to have a cancellation every day, a real world milage of 120miles in winter for 50k+ is not going to take Ireland or the world by storm.

galwaytt

liamog wrote: »

How'd do you figure out that one? Every single hydrogen mile requires a hydrogen filling station, 85% of EV mileage is done by charging at home.

Charging at home is never going to work for a huge amount of people: on-street parking, apartments etc etc.

Hydrogen has more potential for wider and easier use imho.

[edit] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/esb-ecars-advises-electric-vehicle-owners-to-disregard-its-own-app-1.4108892 [/edit]

LOLZ

They can't even tell you where and if you can charge your car now. At least a petrol/H2 station would be.

MetzgerMeister

Mazda have been working on a Hydrogen RX8/rotary engine for over a decade now and still no sign of it.

Yawlboy

Nearly £70k after government grants for a midsize SUV . This is the big problem never mind refueling stations.

Wibbs

liamog wrote: »

I think H2 has a place in transport but it's not likely to be in personal transportation. Trucks, Buses, Aircraft and Shipping are likely to be where H2 is successful.

Sure, but if it is a success in those sectors it'll mean more H2 around in general and that could well kickstart it as a tech for private vehicles. Ireland being well within the ranges of most new models and with its much more spread out private housing with private parking is near ideal for pure EV's, but in more centralised and apartment living Europe not nearly so much. H2 could well prove more suitable.

There's a hint of the betamax/VHS about this and it'll be interesting to see how it plays out beyond the early adopters.

MetzgerMeister wrote: »

Mazda have been working on a Hydrogen RX8/rotary engine for over a decade now and still no sign of it.

In fairness MM, Mazda's petrol rotary has had issues from the start. Not slagging the rotary Mazdas, bloody great cars, but with more issues than the standard piston engines.

MetzgerMeister

Wibbs wrote: »

In fairness MM, Mazda's petrol rotary has had issues from the start. Not slagging the rotary Mazdas, bloody great cars, but with more issues than the standard piston engines.

I 100% agree but those issues would definitely have been ironed out if they were developing a hydrogen version. No point in building on a flawed platform.

seamus

Del2005 wrote: »

What happens when people who can't charge at home need to buy a new vehicle? Current EV owner can still be considered early adapter's, look at them trying to get etiquette for using the public charging network. To become mainstream they need to reduce the recharge time or people will continue to buy fossil fuel vehicles, which is what is happening as EVs are still mostly being sold on subsidies and people still don't want them.

Ultimately the capital costs of charging stations are considerably lower than filling stations.
Retrofitting hydrogen into an existing petrol station is a huge cost, and the ability to do it may be limited due to location and proximity to residential buildings.

Retrofitting charging points by comparison is incredibly cheap and there are virtually no restrictions on location.

EVs have the jump on hydrogen here in reality. If retrofitting petrol infrastructure to hydrogen was easy and cheap, this would be the way to go. Or if both were just just getting out of the starting blocks, it could be a runner.

But energy density in batteries is constantly going up, battery costs have dropped 50% in 3 years, and the reality is that trickle or overnight charging is sufficient for the transport needs of 99.9% of vehicle owners. "Distance on a single charge" is a largely useless metric once you go about a few hundred KM, because the amount of journeys which require one to use a full tank/charge are negligible. I can't see hydrogen catching on for ordinary day-to-day drivers tbh. Maybe for trucks, maybe in some markets (like the US) where some drivers might do 3,000 miles a week for work.

But not for the everyday. Charging points will become so ubiquitous that the idea of having to stop mid-journey to refuel your car will seem really odd.

MetzgerMeister

seamus wrote: »

Retrofitting charging points by comparison is incredibly cheap and there are virtually no restrictions on location.

Shouldn't there then in theory be a lot more of them if that's the case?

colm_mcm

This is certainly the way forward, but they are where BEVs were 15 years ago.

Henry Ford III

colm_mcm wrote: »

This is certainly the way forward, but they are where BEVs were 15 years ago.

I'd be inclined to agree. It'll be interesting to see where this technology goes.

liamog

MetzgerMeister wrote: »

Shouldn't there then in theory be a lot more of them if that's the case?

Easy to install, but not much requirement for them. Most people are charging at home. In general, EV makers are only selling high margin models. People who can afford the higher vehicle cost generally have access to private car parking. The UK market is more mature, they've started installing 50kW chargers at supermarkets. Recharge your car whilst doing your weekly shop.

ELM327

This is laughable.
Fool cells.

ELM327

LIGHTNING wrote: »

Good counter point, when can we expect your follow up paper on the topic?

I'll start by quoting the mpge as being less efficient than BEVs, about on par with an average diesel.
Then the fact it takes 3kWh of energy to produce 1kWh of hydrogen energy stored.


Additionally the fact that in order for this to take off we'd have to build a whole new infrastructure. And there's no charging at home either.


The only advantage it offers is range. And that's dying. The model S loaner I have at the moment has 613km range.

seamus

MetzgerMeister wrote: »

Shouldn't there then in theory be a lot more of them if that's the case?

It's a fair point, but as liam says a lot of people have charging points at home (or a cable out the window), so demand for them will never be as high as a petrol pump.

You also have to consider the fact that there's no margin in it for the petrol station. A BEV owner is not going to sit in a petrol station - even for twenty minutes - to wait for the vehicle to charge. They will appear in places where people will be spending some time; supermarkets, shopping centres, office blocks, parks, etc. Whereas with an ICE, filling your tank is an event within your day, with a BEV charging the vehicle is something that happens while you go about your day.

But again, the demand will still be pretty limited. We're not going to see 1,000 car parking spaces with a charger beside them. There'll be a section of any given car park with chargers in it, probably with a surcharge for using it. Because most vehicles will be charged at home.

The cost of fitting a home charger is already pretty small, and I can see it soon becoming mandatory for all new builds to have at least one charge point per unit (or "charge point ready" or something), with even bigger subsidies for retrofitting them when you buy an EV. If Nissan offered a rebate for fitting the home charger when you buy a Leaf, they could drive a much strong uptake.

ELM327

seamus wrote: »

It's a fair point, but as liam says a lot of people have charging points at home (or a cable out the window), so demand for them will never be as high as a petrol pump.

You also have to consider the fact that there's no margin in it for the petrol station. A BEV owner is not going to sit in a petrol station - even for twenty minutes - to wait for the vehicle to charge. They will appear in places where people will be spending some time; supermarkets, shopping centres, office blocks, parks, etc. Whereas with an ICE, filling your tank is an event within your day, with a BEV charging the vehicle is something that happens while you go about your day.

But again, the demand will still be pretty limited. We're not going to see 1,000 car parking spaces with a charger beside them. There'll be a section of any given car park with chargers in it, probably with a surcharge for using it. Because most vehicles will be charged at home.

The cost of fitting a home charger is already pretty small, and I can see it soon becoming mandatory for all new builds to have at least one charge point per unit (or "charge point ready" or something), with even bigger subsidies for retrofitting them when you buy an EV. If Nissan offered a rebate for fitting the home charger when you buy a Leaf, they could drive a much strong uptake.

You already get a rebate from SEAI of 600 quid.
Agree with the rest of your post.

listermint

galwaytt wrote: »

Charging at home is never going to work for a huge amount of people: on-street parking, apartments etc etc.

Hydrogen has more potential for wider and easier use imho.

[edit] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/esb-ecars-advises-electric-vehicle-owners-to-disregard-its-own-app-1.4108892 [/edit]

LOLZ

They can't even tell you where and if you can charge your car now. At least a petrol/H2 station would be.

just have to call out this nonsense argument. because ive seen it pulled out a few times.

The VAST majority of people in ireland DONT live in apartments AND do have space available for car out front and charging.

Its the minority that you are saying is 'huge' figures. Its a pain in the arse that this crap keeps getting rolled out as a negative reason for EVs. no basis in fact.

ELM327

listermint wrote: »

just have to call out this nonsense argument. because ive seen it pulled out a few times.

The VAST majority of people in ireland DONT live in apartments AND do have space available for car out front and charging.

Its the minority that you are saying is 'huge' figures. Its a pain in the arse that this crap keeps getting rolled out as a negative reason for EVs. no basis in fact.

+1
As an apartment owner it really does get annoying to be told repeatedly that apartment owners can't have charging stations. especially when I have one outside!

mikeecho

CNG will be available long before Hydrogen.

There are plenty of CNG vehicles in asia. (i'm not talking about LPG)

Gas Networks Ireland have already started the CNG rollout, and i believe that Circle K will be fitting out stations with CNG pumps.

https://www.gasnetworks.ie/business/natural-gas-in-transport/cng-refuelling-stations/

MrMusician18

ELM327 wrote: »

I'll start by quoting the mpge as being less efficient than BEVs, about on par with an average diesel.
Then the fact it takes 3kWh of energy to produce 1kWh of hydrogen energy stored.


Additionally the fact that in order for this to take off we'd have to build a whole new infrastructure. And there's no charging at home either.


The only advantage it offers is range. And that's dying. The model S loaner I have at the moment has 613km range.

BINGO!

drunkmonkey

ELM327 wrote: »

The model S loaner I have at the moment has 613km range.

It does if you live in California, Tell the truth what would the range be if you had to drive from Dublin to Tralee and back yesterday. If you had half of that I'd be surprised.

Eric Cartman

MrMusician18 wrote: »

BINGO!

no rare earth metal involvement really and its very possible to build a load of hydrogen processing plants powered by purely renewable energy that can produce when the power is available and not when its not. Hydrogen production is perfect for solar or wind installs instead of building thousands of miles of cable and huge battery stores you can just have a truck collect the hydrogen from remote sites and drop it off to fuel vehicles.

The entire hydrogen economy can be done without really involving china, without using fossil fuels to provide power in the background and provide the user the same convenient range and fill experience theyre used to .

Also from generation to charge you could be losing anywhere from 20-51% on electricity.
https://blog.se.com/energy-management-energy-efficiency/2013/03/25/how-big-are-power-line-losses/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544217303730

vectra

listermint wrote: »

just have to call out this nonsense argument. because ive seen it pulled out a few times.

The VAST majority of people in ireland DONT live in apartments AND do have space available for car out front and charging.

Its the minority that you are saying is 'huge' figures. Its a pain in the arse that this crap keeps getting rolled out as a negative reason for EVs. no basis in fact.

I am one that can't have a charger as I live on a street of 20+ houses, and would all be in the same situation.
There are hundreds oh houses in this town that are in this situation.

liamog

Eric Cartman wrote: »

no rare earth metal involvement really and

Just to clarify as I see this a lot by EV sceptics, the main use of rare earth minerals in an EV motor, well the permanent magnet type any. H2 powered cars use exactly the same motor types as BEVs. Current lithium-ion batteries generally don't use rare earth minerals.

liamog

vectra wrote: »

I am one that can't have a charger as I live on a street of 20+ houses, and would all be in the same situation.
There are hundreds oh houses in this town that are in this situation.

Not sure as to your exact circumstances, but it's a problem that is already solved. Takes a little more effort, here's what we installed at our house. https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=104941705

The Netherlands and some UK councils will tender for public slow chargers in an area based on resident demands. Not only is it a non-issue, but we can also look to other EU countries for their experience.

H2 is plentiful. If we all change to battery cars where will all the electric come from? If battery cars are now 30% renewable fuel, what will it be when there are 80 times as many? Battery cars cannot sustain here without fossils fuel.

Del2005

liamog wrote: »

Not sure as to your exact circumstances, but it's a problem that is already solved. Takes a little more effort, here's what we installed at our house. https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=104941705

The Netherlands and some UK councils will tender for public slow chargers in an area based on resident demands. Not only is it a non-issue, but we can also look to other EU countries for their experience.

The UK has it's light poles on the kerb we don't. So how do you run a cable across a footpath to charge, even digging up the footpath can be hard but then you'd be installing furniture on the footpath which should be left clear for pedestrians and the mobility impaired

ELM327 wrote: »

+1
As an apartment owner it really does get annoying to be told repeatedly that apartment owners can't have charging stations. especially when I have one outside!

So you are one of the few apartment owners with an assigned space and your meter close by. What percentage of apartment owners are that lucky? As most I've seen have unassigned parking and the meters are nowhere near the parking spaces.

liamog

Del2005 wrote: »

The UK has it's light poles on the kerb we don't. So how do you run a cable across a footpath to charge, even digging up the footpath can be hard but then you'd be installing furniture on the footpath which should be left clear for pedestrians and the mobility impaired

So you are one of the few apartment owners with an assigned space and your meter close by. What percentage of apartment owners are that lucky? As most I've seen have unassigned parking and the meters are nowhere near the parking spaces.

I have a townhouse with unassigned parking. Which is very common in my part of Dublin.
As to kerbside charging, there is a lot of innovation in this area, I've seen everything from the aforementioned lampposts, kerbside "bumps", or even posts that remain underground most of the time and are only pulled up during charging. It's all a lot cheaper than rolling out a national H2 infrastructure.

timsey tiger

Deleted User wrote: »

H2 is plentiful.

Where? The interstellar void!:rolleyes:

Interslice

timsey tiger wrote: »

Where? The interstellar void!:rolleyes:

Water.

Eric Cartman

Interslice wrote: »

Water.

photo voltaic hydrogen production from sea water is now up to 14% efficient which sounds terrible but is actually pretty good considering commercial solar cells are usually only 22% efficient.

liamog

Interslice wrote: »

Water.

Your not wrong, the most efficient method to separate the hydrogen from the water is using proton-exchange membrane. That process is about 80% efficient, the fuel cell is then 60% efficient at converting the H2 back to water and releasing the energy. So for a given 100kWh of renewable energy, you get around 48kWh of electricity back to the motor.

The general idea behind PEM systems is that you do the conversion on site. That means when comparing H2 versus Lithium Ion we can pretty much ignore gird loss. Charging/discharging lithium-ion is around 85% to 90% efficient. So let's say grid to motor in an EV results in 85kWh versus grid to motor in H2 vehicled gives 48kWh. H2 vehicles use the same electric motors, so no need to get into motor effiency when comparing.

In answer to the poster who asked where we'd get the electricity from? Maybe we could just stop producing H2 and use the saved capacity.

timsey tiger

Interslice wrote: »

Water.

Very drole, but incorrect. H2, molecular hydrogen is not in water. It can be made from water.

ELM327

Deleted User wrote: »

H2 is plentiful. If we all change to battery cars where will all the electric come from? If battery cars are now 30% renewable fuel, what will it be when there are 80 times as many? Battery cars cannot sustain here without fossils fuel.

H2 does not exist without it being "created" from another source.

Currently this is generally done by electrolysis using fossil fuels.

drunkmonkey wrote: »

It does if you live in California, Tell the truth what would the range be if you had to drive from Dublin to Tralee and back yesterday. If you had half of that I'd be surprised.

Over 500km easily possible prorating out the wh/km and available energy. Tesla rated range (as opposed to WLTP/NEDC) is easily achievable.

MrMusician18

liamog wrote: »

I have a townhouse with unassigned parking. Which is very common in my part of Dublin.
As to kerbside charging, there is a lot of innovation in this area, I've seen everything from the aforementioned lampposts, kerbside "bumps", or even posts that remain underground most of the time and are only pulled up during charging. It's all a lot cheaper than rolling out a national H2 infrastructure.

I doubt it would be. H2 infrastructure would only need to be rolled out to a relatively few sites (there are only a couple hundred filling stations in the country now anyway).

Kerbside charging would need to see every footpath in every residential street ripped up.

drunkmonkey

ELM327 wrote: »

Over 500km easily possible prorating out the wh/km and available energy. Tesla rated range (as opposed to WLTP/NEDC) is easily achievable.

It is under ideal conditions, why are people in the Tesla thread seeing their range half and even more on brand new cars. A simple call to Tesla and they'll tell you there's not a hope of seeing 500km on a day like today on a motorway spin.
Diesel and Petrol range goes up on the motorway, EV's goes dramatically down. Then you have to worry about other things like tempature, pre heating your car for half an hour before you set off, wind speed etc.
Hydrogen might not be the final answer but lithium is definitely not. Now if the glass battery becomes real them EV is the way forward but that hasn't been invented yet.

ELM327

drunkmonkey wrote: »

It is under ideal conditions, why are people in the Tesla thread seeing their range half and even more on brand new cars. A simple call to Tesla and they'll tell you there's not a hope of seeing 500km on a day like today on a motorway spin.
Diesel and Petrol range goes up on the motorway, EV's goes dramatically down. Then you have to worry about other things like tempature, pre heating your car for half an hour before you set off, wind speed etc.
Hydrogen might not be the final answer but lithium is definitely not. Now if the glass battery becomes real them EV is the way forward but that hasn't been invented yet.

If you ask them can a raven model S long range with 100kWh battery do 500km on the motorway they will tell you yes. I had one on loan and I know what it can do.


My car (2016 S90D) has a current rated range of 410km on a full charge and will get around 75% of that in this weather on the motorway. I don't worry about preheating or wind direction.


I know where you are coming from and the argument might have been true a few years ago with crappy leafs and the like but EVs have moved on.


What happens in a hydrogen car when suddenly you need hydrogen? If you havent preheated your nexo and your range is down to 300km and 8 of the 11 H2 stations in the UK are out of range and the other 3 are offline?

Not to mention that H2 cars are inefficient compared to BEVs

seagull

liamog wrote: »

Your not wrong, the most efficient method to separate the hydrogen from the water is using proton-exchange membrane. That process is about 80% efficient, the fuel cell is then 60% efficient at converting the H2 back to water and releasing the energy. So for a given 100kWh of renewable energy, you get around 48kWh of electricity back to the motor.

The general idea behind PEM systems is that you do the conversion on site. That means when comparing H2 versus Lithium Ion we can pretty much ignore gird loss. Charging/discharging lithium-ion is around 85% to 90% efficient. So let's say grid to motor in an EV results in 85kWh versus grid to motor in H2 vehicled gives 48kWh. H2 vehicles use the same electric motors, so no need to get into motor effiency when comparing.

In answer to the poster who asked where we'd get the electricity from? Maybe we could just stop producing H2 and use the saved capacity.

How likely is it that there will be widespread PEM systems? Under current electricity system, what is the efficiency from power generation to charging the car? I'm not arguing either way. I'm asking the question as I don't know.

Then there's the question of where the electricity is coming from. Electric cars are advertised as zero emission. They may be lower, but they're getting that power from the grid, which means in Ireland at least, they are significantly powered by fossil fuel, so hardly zero emission in reality.

Ubbquittious

mikeecho wrote: »

CNG will be available long before Hydrogen.

There are plenty of CNG vehicles in asia. (i'm not talking about LPG)

Gas Networks Ireland have already started the CNG rollout, and i believe that Circle K will be fitting out stations with CNG pumps.

https://www.gasnetworks.ie/business/natural-gas-in-transport/cng-refuelling-stations/

Might as well use that for a while first since burning natural gas to turn it into electricity and fill a crappy lithium ion battery is a hugely wasteful system. CNG cars should not be hard to convert to hydrogen when the time comes

Quackster

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Might as well use that for a while first since burning natural gas to turn it into electricity and fill a crappy lithium ion battery is a hugely wasteful system. CNG cars should not be hard to convert to hydrogen when the time comes

Exactly this. And the CNG pumps will easily convert into H2 pumps when the natural gas network is eventually converted to run on hydrogen.

But it doesn't really make sense to be subsidising, and funding infrastructure roll-out, for HEVs in the meantime in parallel with BEVs unless there's a question mark over the future availability of sufficient batteries or the ability of the grid to handle a growing BEV fleet.

10-10-20

Personal opinion: EV has a limitation, an external factor which will create a plateau.
I don't know when we'll see it, but it's going to initially appear in affluent areas where EV take-up is high; and that is the local grid.

We're not physically wired for such a mass adoption of electron-volts over hydrocarbons. You cannot make that shift with the current state of the national grid.
We're not in a position to upgrade the infrastructure to the local substations to the max residential MIC rate for each residence for the nightly power surge at the night-rate.

So hence H2 has a place as it's energy dense and isn't a hydrocarbon.

Affluent suburbs beware: Council EV charging bowsers will be made available at times of peak grid demand.

Ubbquittious

10-10-20 wrote: »

Personal opinion: EV has a limitation, an external factor which will create a plateau.
I don't know when we'll see it, but it's going to initially appear in affluent areas where EV take-up is high; and that is the local grid.

We're not physically wired for such a mass adoption of electron-volts over hydrocarbons. You cannot make that shift with the current state of the national grid.
We're not in a position to upgrade the infrastructure to the local substations to the max residential MIC rate for each residence for the nightly power surge at the night-rate.

So hence H2 has a place as it's energy dense and isn't a hydrocarbon.

Affluent suburbs beware: Council EV charging bowsers will be made available at times of peak grid demand.

This comes at a time when they are also promoting the absolute fxxk out of heat pumps for heating. That is pulling a lot of extra load onto a fairly under-maintained grid. Even if we don't see dramatic outages, cascading failures and sparks flying off of pylons as we drive along it will probably be the harbinger for much higher standing charges and PSO levies, followed by a lot of posts on boards and other places about how we've all been caught a second time after the diesel codology

Padre_Pio

Honest question, where does the hydrogen come from? How is it transported and what are the benefits.

Hydrogen is created using electrolysis, which is hugely energy hungry, far more so than charging EV batteries.

Hydrogen has a miniscule molecule, so every storage tank, transportation vehicle and pipeline will have to be scratch built to far higher standards than what's currently on market.

Hydrogen production is small scale right now, nowhere near where it needs to be to feed millions of cars.

Hydrogen is flammable and explosive so safety is absolutely paramount.

Will hydrogen be able to roll out and overtake BEV before BEV batteries can advance to a competitive level?

Where does it win over batteries?

Where does it make sense to create electricity to create hydrogen, transport and store hydrogen, put hydrogen into car, use car to transform hydrogen back into electricity, when you can simply put electricity straight into a car and get the same effect?

Another question is cost. BEVs are quite simple. Battery, electronics, motor.

Hygrogen has storage tanks, compressors, converters, air purifiers, batteries, electronics and motors.

Definitely potential in large scale transport, shipping, trains etc, but not for personal transport.

liamog

Even if you use a terribly conservative figure of 20kWh/100km for efficiency, to recharge average Irish drivers average daily usage requires just 9.3kWh per day.
With 85% home charging your looking at adding around about 15,800 MWh worth of energy to the grid overnight. Spread that over an 8 hour period, and we need an extra 1,980 MW of electricity supply.

System demand at 4 am yesterday morning was 3,178MW, and at 9 am it was 5,186MW. So if we need to find an extra 2,000 MW of supply between 11 pm and 7 am we can just use the current Irish grid/network.
Incentivised charging at night (by suitable smart meters and rates) is actually better for the grid, as it stabilises load between night and day. We've already got the capacity and the grid built. It's just the fancy plug sockets and the consumers we are missing.

timsey tiger

Padre_Pio wrote: »

Will hydrogen be able to roll out and overtake BEV before BEV batteries can advance to a competitive level?

Where does it win over batteries?

Another question is cost. BEVs are quite simple. Battery, electronics, motor.

I understand that bevs are already price competitive. I think it is just that supply is behind demand, so car manufacturers are price gouging. Supply (with economies of scale and experience) however will inevitably catch up even as demand increases.

I guess cost of cars will fall in future as bevs are so much simpler than ice vehicles and that we'll see manufactures try to monetise use, by charging for autonomous features and software updates.

I think it will be hard for hydrogen to compete with bevs as for a hydrogen car you need a bev car ( with small battery) plus hydrogen tank and fuel cell.

So it will be cost of extra battery vs tank and fuel cell up front. I'm not sure which will cost more but currently the batteries have the advantage and head start. On top of that running cost of the hydrogen will be higher.

I don't see hydrogen fuel cell vehicles beating bevs at the moment. I think that bevs are just too far ahead. Also if hydrogen does begin to look competitive it would be such an easy target for propaganda to kill it off. Don't buy a hydrogen car, you and your family will die in a huge fire ball.