Everfuel is quite the ironic name…
Hydrogen won’t go anywhere as long as storage is a problem.
And transportation… and production…
And safety.
Gasoline also explodes. Lithium batteries also explode.
Li-ion batteries explode.
LiFePO4 batteries can’t explode without the aid of some C-4. Im so tired of my boi LiFePO4 being lumped in with their explodey cousins.
I like lifepo4 batteries. You can safely forget about them and then they don’t burn your house down. They last long enough that when you finally do remember and need them for something years later, they’re probably still good.
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You ever hear about “jokes”, boy?
Both make lovely sources of power for cars and lawnmowers though 😍 just don’t inhale the exhaust of the former, or the combustion of the latter 😳
This image, right or wrong, is why hydrogen cars were never going to win. The public gestalt on how they thought of them mimics this photo.
The reason why the Hindenburg exploded like that was because they coated the fucking thing in what is essentially thermite. They doped those things with aluminum powder mixed with nitrate.
Ironically hydrogen works well as a storage solution for the variability of wind and solar. When you have a large excess of them, you can run electrolyzers to generate green hydrogen. And then when the grid needs some more supply, we can use that hydrogen to make up the gap.
Which is basically the same problem with green transportation: A car is usually lightly used, but every once in a while you drive hundreds of miles. That requires a high capacity energy storage mechanism where “efficiency” is not that big of a concern. But that creates the need for hydrogen cars. At best, you can conceive of a plug-in hybrid car where short trips are battery powered. But then you have redundant infrastructure, and it is simpler to just to move everyone to hydrogen.
I will also say that transport and storage of hydrogen is way better than what people are envisioning here. Full disclosure, I work for a hydrogen energy company, so I am biased, but I also have seen things in this space work well
The same will happen to EVs after them libs still all the electricity with their solar panels. /s
Did you mean “steal”?
Shhhh, that’s exactly how the accent sounds!
This is my main problem with hydrogen cars. I think it’s a very cool concept that might eventually overtake pure electric cars but there’s almost no places to get hydrogen yet.
It isn’t going to overtake electric cars, too inefficient.
But it might be the future for airplanes, which need a lot more energy density.
But it might be the future for airplanes, which need a lot more energy density.
Specifically density by weight. By volume, which is more important to cars, hydrogen also loses.
Yes also cargo ships and possibly American sized semi trucks. Although semis are right on border of battety vs hydrogen.
“American sized?”
There are semis all over the world…
Yean but aren’t the trucks in america large. I have seen memes making fun american semi compared to smaller loris.
The trucks in Japan and Europe honestly seemed just as large, albeit the can be were shorter. But then there is Canada and Mexico which trucks are identical.
The problem with long distance airliners though is that the turbofan powered engine has such a huge power output that is only possible using a turbine.
It also requires dedicated infrastructure. EVs can have charging stations at basically anywhere with a power hookup (or a genset. A grocery store here puts small VAWTs to charge off of in their parking lots. And every new-ish building has added charging stations to some of their spaces.
Hydrogen cars would need refueling stations with dedicated pressurized gas hookups, tanks, and fill machines. And the tanks and the tankers to keep the tanks full.
Finally the ultimate problem is it’s rather low energy density.
I thought hydrogen had the highest energy density, like it’s #1 in that metric.
By mass, sure, but not by volume; and that usually doesn’t take into account the mass of the tanks, and hydrogen is rather difficult to keep from leaking.
In cars we’re more concerned about volume than mass, in which it performs very low- aluminum as a fuel actually leads that (but is … impractical…)
For cars, amonia would be the better choice and can be synthesized at home fairly easily. It’s still fairly low energy, though. About the same as hydrogen
Why do you think it’ll overtake electric cars? The energy efficiency of hydrogen cars is significantly worse, as they introduce some extra steps in pipeline of energy-generation -> movement.
The only major advantage they have is “ICE-like” fuelling, which has a bunch of major caveats attached to it (as in: it’s nowhere near as simple a system as ICE refuelling. Everything from generation, to transport to getting-it-in-the-car is way more complex and thus expensive and error-prone).
Wait getting in the car is more complex?
I hadn’t thought of it before but it’s obvious, hydrogen is a gas at room temperature, it had to be stored under pressure in order to get any significant mass into the volume of a tank. So it’s under pressure in the refueling station and in the car’s tank. How does it get from one to the other without boiling away?
Hydrogen is a gas, under very high pressure but you will never find it in a liquid form unless you cool it down to -250 C or so. It’s not used in liquid form for such applications.
There is though the need to chill the hydrogen to about -20/-40C before delivery to the vehicles due to some anomalous properties of hydrogen respect to ever other gas known to humans.
oh there are a few ways. One group is researching turning H2 into a paste. the paste mixes with water and breaks down into water and Ca+ ions. You now have a energy density around liquid hydrogen and it only add some calcium to the exhaust. There is also storing hydrogen in metal disks.
They’re still electric cars at their base. They just use a hydrogen reactor in lieu of a battery to power the motors.
I don’t see a future where hydrogen supplants electric cars, unless there’s some revolution in storage technology for it. In that case, progress in battery tech is more likely.
Is there even a possibility of better storage tech for hydrogen? It’s not like batteries where you can use different elements in the battery out of different things. It has to store hydrogen. The processes surrounding that can be made more efficient, but the storage is just a physical limitation, not chemical.
not really. It’s a gas. and a really low density one at that. physics is a bitch
I don’t think there is, but I also gave up on predicting the future a while ago.
Another problem to the already mentioned ones (expensive, expensive dedicated infrastructure needed) is the range. Hydrogen is not very energy dense. For example the Toyota Mirai has a range of 500 km (310 miles) and its a pretty big, fuel-efficient car and the fuel storage is as big as the vehicle allows it.
So while you can refuel faster than electric, you need to do it more frequently and its less convenient.
What’s wrong with that range? It’s bigger than my bladder.
Just spitballing here, please pretend I’m some rando on the Internet and not some kind of expert.
On its own, there’s not much wrong with it. It takes a little longer to fill than a normal gas dispenser, but not bad. But you’ll still need to put hydrogen fuel stations everywhere similar to gas stations now.
Hydrogen’s biggest competitor is pure electric. I love my EV in part because I can charge at home. There’s just something really nice about waking up to a full battery every day, and realizing you haven’t been to a gas station in months (I have an ICE as well, but it’s not my daily driver). Having to go to a fueling station every week or so again would feel like a big step backward, especially if we need to create a from-scratch infrastructure for it. We already have power lines pretty much everywhere, and can generate power relatively easily, so much of the hard part is done.
Going back to range: in theory this problem could be alleviated if the range were enough that one had to refuel less often, but going through all that trouble to be in a similar situation to what you’ve had, when a better alternative exists? Nah.
500km is pretty close to the typical range for gas vehicles(500-600 usually).
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Km you numpty, not miles.
Use the context of the km from my first number.
The XLE does 410 miles. Few electric vehicle can touch that and EV ranges decline over time so almost no EV that’s more than a couple years old could match it.
Same problem with gas waaaaay back in the day.
True, but “gas” is not a gas in the way that hydrogen is a gas. Hydrogen presents some unique storage and distribution issues.
Weird that this hasn’t been on the local news. I see Drivr cars all the time.
Relevant bits:
“According to the Danish Car Importers association, there were 147 fuel-cell cars on Danish roads at the end of last year, with only one sold so far this year — all of which now have no means to refuel.”
“He added: “There is no doubt that hydrogen cars are not an option in the short term and that electric cars will win the vast majority of the passenger car market.”
As a former Betamax owner, even I could see that hydrogen wasn’t going to win this one.
Hydrogen is guaranteed to win this one. Batteries are just another unsustainable greenwashing idea. People are falling prey to BEV propaganda.
Hydrogen is guaranteed to win this one.
I wish I knew if you lived in Denmark or not.
