Hydrogen makes sense for long haul, ships, trucks and possibly airlines. Ideally we just bring back hydrogen airships. Hindenburg was primarily caused by flammable paint, not hydrogen.
The popular narrative that airships were ended by the Hindenburg disaster is a misleading oversimplification; the truth is the Hindenburg was only the final straw and helium airships had already proven themselves to be very dangerous as well. They were marginally safer, but not substantially so. Even when they didn't burn, airships were prone to being destroyed by a stiff breeze. The deadliest airship disaster of them all was a helium airship broken up by the wind, the USS Akron: 73 dead, 3 survivors. Compared to the Hindenburg's 36 dead, 62 survivors.
This said, in some of those accidents the hydrogen's flammability played a larger role in the fatalities. When R101 crashed, a lot of people survived the crash to the ground but subsequently perished in the hydrogen fire. Contrast that with the USS Shenandoah, which broke up midair in the wind. 14 men were killed but 29 survived by riding pieces fragments of the destroyed airship down to the ground.
No, no it isn't inefficient.
The heart of this often claims that h2 is polluting, based upon the fact that currently, we source a lot of h2 from Ng.
Of course this disregards that electricity is often derived from dirty sources too, meaning, all the same arguments should be levied against battery based power sources too.
What we need, is to get non polluting engine/point of use tech out there, asap! And h2 is the only tech which provides the range, due to refueling speed, to replace many applications.
Without end of use clean tech, we have zero hope.
Any environmentalist should be happy, joyful, exuberant with h2.
Sadly, endless division exists.
Wonder how people will deal with burying very stiff pipes without them breaking when the ground moves. Maybe sections with rubber joints, though the joints would leak.
There are endless h2 vehicles on the road. Do you think the tanks used, are apt to become brittle, and leak?!
There are h2 refueling stations for said vehicles, all over the place.
Do you think these leak, and become brittle?
And amusingly, your comment is redirecting from the claim that transporting h2 is hard. You are now poking at storage, instead of at transport (which can be done with pipelines, and is done with them).
[1] https://ds.jerrysgarageinc.com/service-schedule/complete/toy...
Did you read this? Or just pass it off, as disinformation?!
First two I checked, were tires, joints, wipers, fluid levels, etc.
Oh yeah, that's so expensive!
Listen, this new tech. Yes, Toyota is playing it safe, and examining said new tech regularly.
Way to use actual corporate responsibility against them!
Meanwhile, this is a diversion away from storage. You're just responding with unrelated info. What is it with the anti h2 crowd?!
The question is can this interval be reduced once the technology matures?
Let's look what the Miria II brings in that regard.
Compressed or chilled hydrogen storage is hard. I am huge fan of using geological structures for it (salt caverns f.e.), as they are voluminous the pressure route will be an unnecessary cost and security risk.
What is it with H2 crowd and their persecution fetish?
All sorts of claims against h2 tech came out, such as the "there is no way to store it!", which was solved in the 90s and before!
These relentless claims, not just about storage, but anything h2 related, were used to erode public trust. BC, Vacouver had h2 buses in the 90s!
But that all failed, h2 evaporated, and who do you think pushed an endless whisper campaign back then, with said falsehoods?
It wasn't environmentalists!
Now, decades later this junk bull is repeated endlessly, by environmentalists, who ignore the buses and cars from the 90s, and all the current vehciles, and just repeat "oh, it's dangerous and you can't use h2. how silly"
Yeah. Sure. No reason for me to be upset.
So don't blame me if you get flack, for repeating oil industry lies from 30 years ago, which were not true even then.
You deserve to be hassled for this!
And now, you ignored my comment about Toyota safety verifying their cars, as it is new tech, because they want to know.
They aren't inspecting because they have to, or because the tanks are unsafe, they are doing so out of prudence, and correct procedure.
So there is nothing to improve with the next model.
If being on HN causes you this much mental anguish that it justifies hassling people.
> So don't blame me if you get flack, for repeating oil industry lies from 30 years ago, which were not true even then.
I blame you giving me flak as you are giving me flak. I was not alive nor in other ways able to influence the behaviour of companies 30 years ago.
Basic math suggests if all H2 in a Mirai where to react with 02 ignoring the energy released when compressed is 340 kg of TNT. And unlike liquid gasoline or solid batteries gaseous hydrogen will disperse enough to almost instantly release all that energy with in a second of of catastrophic tank failure.
The inspections are necessary to ensure the intactness of the pressure vessel meant to prevent that. Yet if a Miria would get hit by a train at high speed or fall of a cliff even a perfect tank won't fail catastrophically and the slow release mechanism burning off hydrogen in a controlled flame over minutes would make no difference. The tanks are unsafe in these situation. Regular inspections are needed to detect damage to tanks because those would make them as unsafe in more and more common situations the worse the tank is degraded. Regular inspection are necessary, not just because of some good will of Toyota. As for how regularly i can not comment.
> they are doing so out of prudence, and correct procedure.
Procedure on hydrogen tanks is not procedure because it is. Procedures are man made and high pressure tank (and especially high pressure hydrogen tanks) have those procedures for safety reasons. I ignored your assertion that Toyota requires these inspections and cars lose their road worthiness (at least in the EU) if they are not performed because i am utterly unconvinced that Toyota developing hydrogen cars for decades does this to gain insight into the technology or out of goodness of their heart.
> So there is nothing to improve with the next model.
If you think there is nothing that can be improved with regard to safety hydrogen cars are doomed as dead end tech. If you think that less frequent inspections wouldn't be an improvement you are out of touch with reality. Either way you seem possessed by some really vitriolic memes.
Storing hydrogen compressed is a horrible idea unless you really have to (the Miria has to, due to volume constraints of cars). Due to the fact that a catastrophic tank failure even in a small tank for cars leading to a explosion you should not place grid scale tanks to things you care about such as other grid scale tanks. This negates any volume/area advantage of compressed storage of stationary hydrogen storage and just introduces a horrible failure mode. Just store uncompressed hydrogen on sorta leak proof caverns with sensors to monitor O2 concentration.
The reason why H2 didn't take of the nineties is cost, lack of range and performance and no obvious way to improve storage and lack of infrastructure. H2 combustion cars and busses would actually be worse for the climate then gasoline cars. For H2 fuel cell cars i am not certain. Government action could have made H2 cars competitive but it did not. Oil companies would have sold the hydrogen anyway but their refineries would have become stranded assets so it makes sense to implicate them in a conspiracy against H2.
The reasons why electric cars could take of is because for the rugged early adaptors the charging infrastructure was their home and car companies only had to service highways with charging stations where ever existing electricity infrastructure made it easy. All things oil companies could not sabotage. The transition happened when it happened because Tesla started to sell cars which beat the range of hydrogen cars of the 90s handedly and provided an omnipresent charging infrastructure (the normal grid) which didn't slow down travel to much on long trips (super chargers).
But rather than ghost you, I am leaving this so you know not to keep checking for a reply.
Batteries are more efficient at storing energy, but I'm not convinced we can build enough of them as quickly as we need to.
Possibly ammonia.
There are all sorts of problems to solve with hydrogen, but I think we’re closer to solving those problems than we are to increasing battery density by an order of magnitude.
Can you clarify? Currently have a Chevy Bolt and it is great...
As example compare the Model 3 and a CRV. This is an absurd example because the CRV is an SUV, but the comparison is telling given the weight differences.
The Model 3 weighs 4,200 pounds with 97 cubic feet of interior passenger space.
A Honda CRV weighs 3,500 pounds and 103 cubic feet of interior passenger space.
So we have a smaller car that is quite a bit heavier and it’s almost exclusively due to the battery. Tesla can’t cram more battery into that car so the only option is to dramatically increase energy density. There is nothing in the horizon except incremental improvements.
And I think your point on space is out of date. I have no idea about the Tesla M3. In my mind I hate how that car looks and so I've never even tested one. But, for space, try an ioniq 5. Magic.
For you.
>Internal combustion cars can't go 500 miles on a tank of gas either, and trips longer than 300 miles are a tiny, tiny, tiny minority for most people.
Internal combustion doesn't need to go 500 miles on a tank. Gas vehicles can go 300-400 miles and then add an additional 300-400 miles in <2 minutes.
Hydrogen vehicles can have that same benefit.
For a large number of people. Nobody is claiming EVs are ready to replace all use cases for ICE vehicles, that would be silly. It is equally silly to point out shortcomings of EVs and say they're irrelevant in the current marketplace.
Also, level 3 charging is pretty fast - it's not as fast as filling up on fossil energy, but the bigger issue is simply one of availability. If there were even half as many charging stations as gas stations, the feasibility of longer trips would change considerably. You'd be trading a slightly slower trip for vastly reduced costs.
“Just install a network of hydrogen filling stations, and hydrogen production facilities, and trucks that ship hydrogen daily to all of those filling stations” … ?
The Model 3 long range is almost 1,000 pounds heavier than a Camry, and the Camry has more range (and a faster “charging” time). Interior volume is similar, with a slight advantage to the Camry, though given the Model 3 has smaller exterior dimensions I’d give it the edge there.
26000$ vs 57000$
Who on an 800 mile road trip is upset about a 50 minute stop?
Most effort today is going into decreasing costs via economies of scale. What's the path to an electric vehicle with a 1,500 mile range? Hydrogen "gen1" cars are already over 400 miles of range, and you can add 400 more miles of range in 3 minutes.
Basically... batteries seem more like a stopgap than a permanent solution. Do you really think batteries will ever power an airplane, for example? I do think it's plausible that planes could run on hydrogen.
Electricity on the other hand - we already have that infrastructure, and it basically costs nothing to move it huge distances.
We are no where near the edge of what is possible for batteries, every couple of years cars are released with 10+% more range. There is more efficiency, and chemistry to be done here.
Also hydrogen vehicles ARE EVs so how can you say batteries are a stop gap while also saying they are the obvious future… the fuel cell charges a battery, the battery delivers the energy to the motor.
Nope. Not even close. The Tesla Model S had a range of 265 miles in 2012. The top end Model S today has a range of 375 miles. If we were truly extending range 10% every couple of years we would have vehicles approaching 700 miles in range on the market today.
Instead we have seen about 42% range growth paired with a 91% increase in price over the last decade. The majority of electric vehicles on the market or hitting the market in the near-term have EPA estimated range less than 300 miles.
There is no path this decade to an electric vehicle with a range that is even approaching 700 miles.
>Also hydrogen vehicles ARE EVs so how can you say batteries are a stop gap while also saying they are the obvious future… the fuel cell charges a battery, the battery delivers the energy to the motor.
You are overstating battery requirements of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. The Toyota Mirai, for example, has a 1.24 kWh battery pack that weighs 45kg. There are also literal hydrogen combustion engines which require no batteries at all. Future hydrogen fuel cell vehicles may not require a battery at all, and may instead rely on a bank of super capacitors.
This giant heavy duty truck we're discussing has a 72kWh battery. Tesla sells sedans with bigger batteries than this.
>We need to build hydrogen filling infrastructure across the world, and then manufacture and ship hydrogen across the world.
Hydrogen can be made with water, locally. We're basically one electrolysis (or other) invention away from trivially mass manufacturing hydrogen wherever there is water. We've already solved every other problem with hydrogen.
If you're betting on BeV you're basically betting that we will quite literally never solve hydrogen production problems. I wouldn't take that bet.
But according to you batteries are getting more expensive, so does that mean hydrogen vehicles are also going to suffer from this price inflation?
Electrolysis requires energy… so you think it’s more sustainable to turn energy into hydrogen then back into energy than instead just store the energy?
The well-to-wheel efficiency of an BEV is double to triple that of hydrogen, and the well in hydrogen = fossil fuel, where as the well of an BEV is renewables.
Betting on BEV is betting on the fact we already have global electricity infrastructure (which is a pretty safe bet, because it exists). And so far hydrogen at scale has involved processing methane… so just make a methane car, and stop pretending you’re being sustainable. Build the hydrogen car once you’ve solved electrolysis at scale. Because before then you’re just making another gas powered car.
Methane can then replace natural gas. We already have huge storage infrastructure, power plants, and also cars and trucks that run on natural gas.
This hasn't been true for years. Not sure where you're getting your information from.
Exactly! I see hundreds of H2 generation facilities adjacent to trucking routes near the massive wind resources of the US great plains.
Each would have a fuel stop with high efficiency H2 electrolyzers and tanks that buffer H2 using wind piwer when it's available, so intermittency won't matter, since stationary hydrogen storage is a solved problem. Hydrolysis is also a solved problem, and getting more efficient constantly (currently up to 70%). Oh, and the facility's only exhaust is oxygen.
Substitute wind with the locally abundant source of renewable energy, and presto, no shipping of hydrogen needed.