What will it take to make you seriously consider an EV?

99% of hydrogen produced worldwide is from fossil fuels.

 

I don't think that number is correct. Source? There hasn't been nearly the regulation or artificial incentive to switch plus hydrogen is a byproduct of some oil and gas operations already.

Hydrogen as a energy storage medium avoids heavy metal mining and WTF are we going to do with all these batteries in junkyards 20 years from now.

It also won't self discharge like a battery and still works in the cold without waste of having to heat itself up to work.

 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/99-hydrogen-production-today-relies-fossil-fuels-natural-cazes
the [production method most] used - up to 99% - are those using fossil fuels, which are less expensive but particularly emit GHGs. Out of 70 million tons of hydrogen [produced globally], 48% comes from natural gas, 28% from oil and 23% from coal, according to data from the International Energy Agency.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/margoo...en-not-all-hydrogen-is-clean/?sh=383fe9b84bea
About 99% of hydrogen produced globally uses a steam-methane process, where methane comes from natural gas and the steam is produced by burning fossil fuels.

 

Think I mentioned him earlier, but I like how Steve Novella talked about hydrogen as a power source:

He has some blog posts that are fairly good too:
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/hydrogen-takes-another-hit/
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/will-hydrogen-bev-hybrids-be-a-thing/
(more of general science communicator than an expert in this field per se, but I'm fairly confident in his facts, sources, etc.)

Generally speaking, my feeling is that battery powered cars is the clearly superior option (especially since we can iterate on the battery tech itself), though there could be some great uses for hydrogen as a power source in other cases.

 

All vehicles struggle when its cold.

Electric motors is the way to go. There is more to an EV than the batteries. It make for a simpler design all around.

EV batteries can be repurposed for electric storage.

 

H2 is so amazing because it can produce power from internal combustion or fuel cell. Your argument for poisonous batteries because electrical motors are better is irrelevant as H2 can power the batteries and your house. We've had that technology in practice since the 60's. Imagine if it had the push battery chemistry has in the last several decades.

 

Im not advocating heating houses with hydrogen (which on its face is idiotic) . We have electricity transmission to dwellings figured out pretty well. H2 solves problems for transportation better than batteries. The demand for mobile tech pushed battery chemistry decades ahead of H2, as your link points out, H2 is behind the curve development wise. Looking at it as a blank slate, H2 is clearly better and more versatile. Considering we are dumping billions into this, and for environmental reasons, I feel its better to start off on the right foot as soon as possible.

 

Im not going to discount the usefulness of H2. However the topic at hand, H2 at best is a marginal upgrade over petrol...and that is before we get into the infrastructure discussion. I do see a strong use case for H2 in long distance hauling of goods. Current battery technology is not a good replacement.

There are two point at hand
- For transportation, is it better to generate the energy on the vehicle or is it better to use energy storage (battery)? If the generation is happening on the vehicle, that requires more parts across the board. For commuters, that isn't a good thing. More maintenance and more parts to wear and break down. As battery technology evolves using lighter, cheaper and safer technologies, it obsoletes the idea of generating the energy on the vehicle.
-One of the biggest problems with legacy vehicles is they are simply dated. Decades of old ideas built on top of each other. This is why Tesla, Rivian and BYD have better products overall. The process is stream lined and built from the ground up. Massive amounts of energy storage allows the vehicle to run faster and more powerful processors and better sensors. This replaces all of those clunky UI, banks of useless buttons all in exchange for a touch screen. When vehicles are still running on 12v systems, its very difficult to upgrade to more efficient parts and systems. The legacy BUS system is extremely dated. When I sit in a legacy vehicle, it feels dated.

 

CAN bus, info tainment, or the 12v standard have nothing to do with drivetrain. Tesla and Prius still have 12v power available. I prefer a button for my heated steering wheel and seat and a knob for my volume but you do you.

H2 is far superior to gasahol with regards to CO2 emission which is what I thought the entire point here.

China and India won't be our toxic landfill forever, so it's better to think a little more sustainably.

 

The one link you singled out talked about using hydrogen for heating, but I largely shared that as a reference to hydrogen as an energy source in general. I probably could have picked a better one (there are tons out there). The other blog and the video discuss the merits of hydrogen as an energy source for vehicles. You didn't respond to any of that, so I'm not sure if there's any disagreements about the points made there.

Is the biggest issue you have with BEVs the environmental impact of the batteries? I don't disagree that it is an issue, but for the amount of investment you'd need to get hydrogen to be highly green, easily accessible, affordable, etc., I think I'd rather just pump that money into getting batteries to use these other "safer" raw materials (iron, sodium, silicon, etc.). That needs to happen regardless of what energy we use for our cars, especially since grids are investing heavily in battery technology for energy storage.

Again, I like hydrogen, but at the end of the day it adds more steps to the energy conversion process, making it inherently (and likely significantly) less efficient than a BEV. I don't think there's much that can overcome that, and that efficiency is IMO very important for this use case. Now if we're talking fuel cells for planes, certain commercial/industrial applications (maybe even farming/agricultural?), buses, etc., let go crazy with it there. Essentially we need to replace fossil fuels in everything we do (or close to it), and hydrogen can 100% help us get there. But I don't think cars are the right application for hydrogen.

 

I don't buy that it is less efficient until they are on equal playing fields. You are converting electricity (DC-AC-DC/DC voltage boost) all the time and like I noted before, the self discharge problem EV's have isn't a problem for H2. If I take a 4 hour road trip and 35 minutes of that is spent at superchargers with the AC/Heater battery heater blasting how is that efficient? H2 fillups are FAST, cold H2 tanks are even better. When the real cost for mining and disposal start to be paid, efficiency can truly be calculated. I wouldn't say it's the "biggest" issue I think it's an issue being pushed off on future generations that is taking advantage of the worlds toxic waste dump AKA the PRC. My biggest issue is as a society we are spending money in the MOST inefficient way if the idea is to get rid of atmospheric CO2. You would be miles ahead just pumping it back in the rock.

Alternative battery chemistries have less watt density for volume or be much heavier (FePO4). And again, the reason we are so far advanced on battery chemistry as it stands is from decades of billions being put into them. Mobile devices and power tools pushed that which are a great application for batteries. This is already a very advanced and refined tech. The BMS software on Teslas are amazing to have capacity loss of only 10-20% or so after several years with supercharging is unreal.

 

You are hitting on an important point. I stopped caring about the environmental impact when it became very apparent society is more concerned about their wealth and quality of life than the environment. The reality is we can all greatly reduce our environmental impact if we reduced consumption. Reducing consumption has the negative effect of slowing the economy, which then in turns hurts innovation. We can consume less, drive smaller and more efficient cars and hold on to the vehicles longer. The most environmental friendly car a person can drive is the one the already own...but quality of life is clearly more important.

I am not anti H2. EV's are removing emissions from the most heavily populated zones and I think that is very important. I am ok with kicking the can down the road if we can segregate those emissions to localized areas. We shouldn't wait another 2 or 3 decades, at best, for H2 to become mainstream.

 

There is no way to put them on equal playing fields. That's the point. It is physics.

I generate a unit of energy. I can either:
1) Use that energy (preferably directly) to generate hydrogen via electrolysis, process and physically transport that hydrogen to a hydrogen filling station, insert hydrogen into tank of car, then convert that hydrogen back into electricity for use (I'm assuming a FCEV in this scenario)
2) Transport that energy via the grid to a charger, push that charge into a battery, then use that battery to power the EV

#2 will be the more efficient usage of that energy. You can optimize certain things (things that probably are shared with both models), but by dropping that conversion of energy both into and from hydrogen, you get a much more efficient result.

You can probably offset that by the amount of energy wasted physically moving your car to a hydrogen filling station vs just charging your car at home (or something along those lines) during your non road trip usage.

I do think EVs and more importantly the charging infrastructure for EVs needs to improve substantially to lessen the impacts of things like this, though that would still be cheaper, easier, and more likely than getting a hydrogen infrastructure set up IMO.

I think this is a reasonable point, though I'd suggest not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This is an issue with the current implementation of BEVs, but not necessarily an issue for all types of potential BEVs. I am strongly in favor of investments that can result in batteries with fewer (ideally no?) toxic materials. Never mind rare ones that cause huge societal issues just through the mining process alone.

And FWIW, this is also why I'm not a fan of the current hydrogen approach. As mentioned, that industry has yet to demonstrate a method to affordably and reliably produce hydrogen without using fossil fuels. I'd probably argue that exacerbating this issue today is worse than exacerbating an issue we'll need to plan for in 20, 30, 40 years or so.

Battery tech is advanced and refined, and yet there are still more advances to make. Think I mentioned earlier, but apparently using silicon for anode can dramatically increase energy density:
https://amprius.com/technology/
This is 100% company PR, so take with a grain of salt (and silicon). I'm still a bit skeptical on if this can be scaled up, but the company apparently plans to use this in EVs in the near future. We'll see how that goes.

I might be misremebering, but I think I recall an interview with an engineer from that company who said they could do something similar with non-lithium batteries (at least in theory). So maybe you can mix and match various configurations, resulting in a battery with similar densities to the batteries we see today. You can even use multiple different battery technologies in the same vehicle, though I don't expect that to happen even if it is a neat idea.

And honestly...I think current densities are fine. Maybe even too much, especially if the grid and charging infrastructure vastly improve. I know there are people in this thread who don't want an EV until it can go something like 600 miles on a single charge, but that seems like super overkill to me. Of course, I've been driving a plug-in hybrid vehicle for the last ~12 years, which only has maybe 30-40 miles of electric range...and that usually is fine for me on the vast majority of days. If it was up to me, we'd probably get rid of most huge road trips (at least as a norm), and instead we'd go with something more efficient for those scenarios (e.g., high speed rail). If we're talking about decades of time and billions/trillions of investment dollars, then stuff like that is probably more impactful than either BEVs or FCEVs.

 

Americans will build anything but a rail infrastructure.

There's a better chance of double decker interstate system all over America..

 

I agree. Just saying if I was made God King of humanity, that's what I'd do. I'd also ban coffee, alcohol, the NFL, the Yankees, etc., and anyone who resists will be put to death immediately. It would be pretty cool.

But yeah, we don't live in that reality.

 

Sad

 

not to be confused with:

https://electrek.co/2021/01/19/how-to-make-your-tesla-fart/

How to make your Tesla fart on command

 

The sound waves acts like a turbo booster if you turn it to eleven.

 

I saw a cyber truck in person this weekend. Thing looked wild, like it came out of a movie. Not my taste, but I could see how it might grow on someone.

Would be cool if they made another back to the future movie, using the cyber truck.