What really hits me here is the weight of the fuel cells, at only 31kg (+ container) for 400KM range.
Compare that to battery cells which are usually >400kg.
Edit: There is ALSO a 73.2 kW battery.. geesh.
Compare that to battery cells which are usually >400kg.
Edit: There is ALSO a 73.2 kW battery.. geesh.
The trucks also have 72kWh worth of batteries in them and it is not clear if a 400km range includes a fully charged battery pack at the start.
Interestingly Hyundais page has slightly different specs for both fuel capacity as well as battery.
https://trucknbus.hyundai.com/global/en/eco/hyundai-hydrogen...
All hydrogen fuel cell vehicles use small batteries to buffer charge to actually drive the electric motors because the fuel cell power output isn't high enough.
73kWH isn't huge for a large truck, equivalent to current small passenger EVs.
For a vehicle whose fundamental purpose is to haul heavy freight, the excess weight imposed by batteries is uneconomical, which is a why fuel cells make sense - especially when the H2 is renewably generated.
One of the technologies metal organic frameworks (MOF) seems to have been creating some buzz recently.
General overview: https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/materials-based-hydrog...
As a BEV owner, I'll tell you right now that until the H2 can be filled at my house, I'm not willingly giving back the portion of my life I used to spend at a fuel station.
At the rate batteries and charging are improving year-over-year, compared with the practically non-existent hydrogen infrastructure (how many states have -any- hydrogen fueling stations? Two?), I can't see hydrogen ever taking over. We have a grid already which delivers electricity far more extensively than any liquid fuel infrastructure ever will.
It's only on longer distances that it begins to make sense as a tradeoff but even there it's not clear there's much room for it in the market.
I'm not sure how the life-cycle overall energy usage compares, would be interested in reading a study of someone wants to link one.
I'm hoping that hydrogen storage will become easy enough that we'll use that for large scale excesses like those from nation-size grids during excess production. So we can do seasonal shifting at scale.
They're still better than conventional ICE (as long as the hydrogen is made from renewable energy) but just on energy alone BEVs are about 88% efficient, FCEVs 22% and ICE 18% efficient.
A battery lasts for many years. H2 is used more or less immediately.
If batteries take so much space how comes EVs have FRUNKs while no ICE does? Oh because there's no need for a massive engine block, center diff, etc.
If you want to beat the efficiency, why not have everything nuclear powered?
The biggest applications where the volume and weight come into play aren't on the roads.
Can you really though? For EVs they're all using the classic cylindrical shape as far as I've seen.
It's like conflating gasoline with gasoline tanks.
You can extract Hydrogen from hydrocarbons, but you probably don't want to do that, for multiple reasons, if the carbon is fossil carbon.
That is such a dishonest argument. Of course the intention is not to dig up hydrocarbons to then transform them into hydrogen to then later transform them back into hydrocarbons.
Together, solar/wind/nuclear/hydro produce about a third of all the world's electrical generation. Despite this, only 4% of hydrogen production in 2020 used electrolysis; 95% was produced from fossil fuels.
Including nuclear and hydro in the 1/3 is kind of deceptive since both sources are actively been phased out (c.f. Germany).
Wind and solar generate just over 1/10 of global energy, although it's increasing every year.
I don't know why you're bringing Germany specifically into this (misdirection? deception?) The overwhelming majority of hydrogen production comes from fossil fuels no matter what country you look at. If you replaced all the nuclear and hydro in the world with solar power, most hydrogen production would still be coming from hydrocarbons. Germany produces about 10% of their electrical energy with solar power, so do you think they produce 10% of their hydrogen with solar powered electrolysis? Hell no they don't.
Electricity -> hydrogen sucks even if you have a 100% solar grid. "Green hydrogen" cannot compete with batteries. Hydrogen only looks kinda okay relative to batteries if you're getting the hydrogen cheap by breaking apart hydrocarbons instead of water (aka "gray hydrogen"), and even then it sucks and has gotten out competed.
Neither, here's why:
> Germany shut down three of its six nuclear power stations last year [i.e. 2021] and is due to close the remaining trio by the end of 2022.
Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/gas-crisis-germany-nuclear-p....
More recently Germany has removed the 2022 deadline for the remaining 3 and is considering reversing the whole decision.
California is also set to shut down their final remaining nuclear power plant.
Source: https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/06/california-nuclea...
That’s 1.7% of the worlds population, which is definitely a solid representation of the world.
Just as an aside, there is this little known country: China, it has 47 active nuclear power plants with ~10 more under construction and 15-20 more in the planning stage. But maybe they haven’t heard about Germany and California!
Uh .. who has phased out hydro?
> Dams are now being removed at a rate of more than one a week on both sides of the Atlantic.
> The building of dams in Europe and the US reached a peak in the 1960s and has been in decline since then, with more now being dismantled than installed.
A major reason why:
> Many large-scale hydropower projects in Europe and the US have been disastrous for the environment.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46098118
There is not one for hydrogen manufacture (unless you provision heaps of renewables to do it, in which case why waste time on the hydrogen step - just put the energy straight in the battery)