Hydrogen Cars Take to Britain's Roads | Hacker News Reader

Hydrogen Cars Take to Britain's Roads

theguardian.com

13 pointsjsnathan23 comments

I don't think Hydrogen cars will take off. I worked on an industrial site where Hydrogen was decanted from large trucks into smaller cylinders. On the same site we produced Acetylene. The Acetylene reaction is very volatile, and even after it is in the cylinders a hard knock is enough to create a run-away exothermic reaction.

I was once in a toilet, doing my business, when I heard a fire alarm go off. I stood up, pants still round my ankles, and looked out towards the acetylene filling plant. Nobody was running away, so I knew I had time to sit back down and wipe.

The last major accident on our site was an acetylene cylinder exploding, which immediately amputated a man's leg.

With all that in mind, all the workers on the site were STILL more afraid of doing Hydrogen filling than acetylene, due to its inherent volatility.

Why??? There is no environmentally friendly way to produce hydrogen. Either it is stripped from natural gas producing CO2, or from hydrolysis with currently about 30% efficiency. That means an equivalent electrical car can drive about 3 times as far on the same amount of electricity. Finally, refueling stations are extremely expensive to build because hydrogen is a rather volatile substance.

Hydrolysis from solar is '30% efficient' of nearly limitless solar radiation. Hydrogen fuel cells emit no CO2. Its hard to underestimate what a gigantic win that is.

Unless we have enough photovoltaic energy production to close down all coal plants, the "limitless" part isn't really there. And even then it is cheaper to store the electricity directly in batteries - they are even cheaper than the devices required for hydrogen fuel cell cars. Hydrogen fuel cell cars still need a battery, though a smaller one, then the expensive fuel cell and finally the gas tank which has plenty of issues by itself.

But the relevant comparison is to batteries, which are more efficient.

But you have to ship it and store it.

Nit pick: Electrolysis is more like 70% efficient, but once you add the losses from compression and turning that hydrogen back into electricity, your 30% figure sounds about right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water#Efficien...

Because electricity comes from a wall socket and so renders a whole petrochemical industry irrelevant. Do you think they're going to take that lying down?

Maybe to save VW, the new management will switch to all-electric or hydrogen vehicles. It would be a huge change, but maybe necessary to save their brand. And it would be a huge win for customers, the industry as a whole, and the environment.

I would like to have an estimation of total hydrogen leaks we could have if everybody used this technology everywhere. Hydrogen is so light that it's going into space when it's released in atmosphere.

If the computation shows that we will send 1% of earth's hydrogen into space every 5 billion years, no problem.

If we will send 1% of earth's hydrogen every 1000 years or less, I will prefer not to use this technology.

The water in the oceans weighs 10^24 grams[1] this equates to about 10^23 grams of hydrogen (2/18ths of water). This mass of hydrogen is about 10^21 cubic metres or 1.1 times the volume of the earth [2]. Think we are fine.

[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28volume+of+oceans%29...

[2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=volume+of+10^23+grams+...

So if we destroy irreversibly as much water as we consume petrol (1.5 * 10^10, very pessimist hypothesis IMHO) we have for 10^12 years before consuming more than 1% of water.

This should be fine.

Reading this book about the history of EV's atm: The great race: the global quest for the car of the future (http://amzn.to/1kxnT0c).

China had great plans but has been quite slow to implement them since the provinces kept competing for funds. The role of Europe has been quite limited.

Interesting. I didn't even know these existed. So the big question. I live in the US. Should I save up for an electric car or save and wait for a hydrogen car?

I'm not sure what they intend to accomplish with hydrogen, really.

It is difficult to store, expensive to produce, expensive to run. Zero emissions and range are the only things I can see that can make a difference.

You see, people are complaining about electric infrastructure even in California. And all it requires is a beefy power outlet - to reduce the charging times, as you can use even a standard outlet if you can wait. You can imagine how that will go with hydrogen.

The article says nothing about the technical challenges. Presumably, they are storing hydrogen as gas. What about hydrogen embrittlement? Also, I don't think drivers would be very happy to know that their fuel tanks are slowly but surely letting their hydrogen escape. The atoms are too small, they can escape from anything.

Electric cars are awesome right now and will only get better. Don't plan on buying a hydrogen car unless you want to see your fuel costs go up, you still want to be tied to fuel stations, and are willing to wait a long time (maybe forever) for anything good to become available.

Go electric. Hydrogen is a zombie technology.

Twenty or ten years ago hydrogen seemed like a pretty good way to go, and these products are the end result of projects started way back then. But batteries have pretty much leapfrogged hydrogen in every way, and I can't see hydrogen staging a comeback.

What about range and recharging speed though? I would imagine hydrogen would have an advantage there...

Range, a little. Current hydrogen cars offer 300ish miles of range.

Recharging speed depends on how you're using it. On a road trip, hydrogen wins (if the stations ever get built out). For daily driving, electric wins, because the effective recharging time for plugging in overnight is zero, since you're not waiting for it.

Both are likely to improve for batteries much more that for hydrogen, too.

Energy density of batteries increases by about 7% per year. So within a decade battery range should match the average passenger car range. At that point, continuous driving is the last challenge. Fast chargers would need to scale with battery capacity for a roadtrip use case of say 5 hours of driving between stopping for meals and charging.

If you need a car now then the question is redundant, only electric exists.

If you don't need a car now then the question asked today is also redundant, since you'd evaluate the benefits in the future, not now.

Right now you have three viable choices: petroleum, diesel, and electric. A few limited areas also offer natural gas, bio-fuels, etc, but they're niche to set markets.

Reserve a Tesla Model 3 in 2 years. I'm sure Tesla will be far ahead of hydrogen cars with respect to self-driving, too.

They'll be accepting reservations in March of 2016.

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