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Comment by raxxorraxor | Hacker News Reader

This isn't a good argument to be honest. Sure, it won't save the climate, this is a problem of energy generation. We will always need more than yesterday so we need to look at how we can generate it.

The main disadvantage of hydrogen is that it is very difficult to store. It is the smallest element and simply diffuses through almost everything. The efficiencies of energy conversion of hydrogen are quite good for that matter.

But BEV (how the author calls them) have major disadvantages as well. Infrastructure needs are unfulfilled, the recycling is maintenance intensive, ...

It is still more environmental friendly to drive that 10 year old used tincan than to buy a new electric car. Advantage here is that you don't have local polution, much cleaner city air etc.

But neither hydrogen cars nor BEV will save the climate.

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> The main disadvantage of hydrogen is that it is very difficult to store.

> It is the smallest element and simply diffuses through almost everything.

The people currently most serious about the immediate expansion of green hydrogen supplies (by a significant factor over current global production) are not looking at storing hydrogen for export | transport | storage, they're looking at ammonia - three hydrogen and a nitrogen.

eg:

[1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/forrest-promises-to-convert-firs...

Yeah, I guess it will probably end in it being stored in some compound that can be directly used. Looks like a promising project.

> It is still more environmental friendly to drive that 10 year old used tincan than to buy a new electric car.

No it isn't, what do you base this on? Production of a new electric van takes a limited amount of CO2, and the CO2 saved while driving it compensates for that within a couple of years. I don't know how this rumor still persists.

I'm interested in this calculation. Do you know of some data to support it?

Interactive web app that calculates this for various vehicles.

https://www.carboncounter.com/#!/explore

Note the customisation options that let you choose a state for the electricity mix, miles driven per year and so on.

I would go so far as to say it's a sunk cost fallacy to run the old carbon emitting car even one more mile.

There is no savings to be had by waiting to convert to an EV, the total emissions are always going to be higher if you drive the polluting car rather than switching today.

That’s demonstrably false. Each EV is an immediate ~13k kg hit on CO2. Average ICE passenger car is .4 kg CO2 per mile. Even if you have a source of zero carbon energy to power the EV, that’s 32500 miles of driving an ICE before you break even on CO2.

https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.html

Note the "choose a state" and compare Wyoming or West Virginia for a regular hybrid car (e.g. Prius or Insight) to an EV... and that is quite different than if you pull up California, Oregon, or Washington.

In WY and WV, the plugin hybrids have a larger carbon footprint than a regular ICE hybrid car (Prius or Insight).

So every car that does more than 32500 comes out ahead, which is basically all of them.

Youd need to commit to keeping the car for over a decade while only doing 3000 miles per year, then blowing it up out of spite to fail that.

Only if the electricity is net zero carbon though (and, really, only if the generation of that low-carbon electricity somehow is related to driving the car and wouldn't have been generated anyway).

Right, if you live in West Virginia, it is entirely possible to never have a break even point, as in, it will never save CO2 to buy an EV.

You could always move somewhere energy generation isn't so dirty especially as its probably also effecting your air quality not to speak of the employment options.

According to the Energy Dept site listed upthread, even in WV with 92% coal generation an EV emits half the CO2 per mile as an ICE.

You really have to consider all the variables, ie grid carbon intensity, miles driven and car manufacturing. People seem to get focused on one of the variables in the carbon lifecycle.

Why does it have to be net zero? That would certainly get you to breakeven in less miles but it is by no means a requirement for an EV having a carbon advantage over an ICE.

Is it ahead really?

The total carbon is still gonna be higher than not doing all that travel

If you can actually avoid the travel, sure.

I have been able to avoid travelling by car[0], but I have the luck of being in a city with good public transport and local-sized shops, so there are 5 tram stops (and several bus stops and a suburban rail station) and 8 supermarkets closer to me than the gap between the middles of Apple's south car park and their duck pond.

And back in Cambridgeshire, roads were quiet enough I was comfortable commuting (and shopping) by bike.

Not everyone is in such a well-designed place.

[0] I don't own a car, and the last time I was behind a wheel was, I think, 2017.

such comparsions are mostly stupid, since there are too many factors that would make it really hard to analyze. i.e. as long as cars are produced the 13k kg hit on co2 will be made no matter if you buy it or not, your old ice car will probably be resold and probably to somebody that can than save co2 emissions per mile, not every electricity is green, your old card was probably produced with more co2, it depends if you upgrade/downgrade/keep your car class, it depends how you drive (and if you ever driven an ev, you will see that its easier to drive it economically), and so on.

of course the plain numbers might make sense on paper but not on the real world.

It depends how much running around you do and how much CO2 the energy mix where you live generates. For someone doing a few thousand miles per year it could easily be the case that a new car would never pay off the additional CO2 emissions during it's manufacturer.

Of course you can then make argument that they aren't doing enough mileage to justify having their own car in the first place.

I drive maybe 1500 miles per year and if I calculate in petrol usage for the next 10 years where a car wasn't produced for me, it will use less CO2 overall.

Since I live where the electric grid is already at the limit, my options to install a charger are limited as well. I could use 230V 16A to maybe charge it very slowly...

Batteries also degrade with age and we will have to see how a used car market will look like. I have a car for luxury only since my work is a few hundred meters away.

If you buy a new car anyway, an EV would be a good choice provided you have the means to charge it. Many people in the cities don't have that option. But it wouldn't be too helpful if you replace your current car just for the sake of it.

1500 miles a year is a huge caveat to your earlier prouncement. Of course if you drive rarely^, an existing ICE vehicle could result in less emissions than building an entirely new EV.

^Average annual KMs driven by Europeans is 12k, Americans average 15k Miles a year.

https://short-fact.com/how-many-miles-does-the-average-europ...

You can't simultaneously posit that you drive 1500 miles a year, and then complain about the charging speed. 1500 miles a year doesn't need 230V 16A. You would achieve the level of charging speed literally with a laptop charger.

200Wh/Mi -> 200 * 1500 -> 300,000Wh required -> 300,000 / 365 * 24 -> 35W charger needed.

> Infrastructure needs are unfulfilled

But infrastructure is currently being built out for that. There are very few places in the US (lower 48) that you can't drive a BEV to and back. For some of the remote ones you will need to plan your route around chargers, but you can get just about anywhere. For more dense areas you can just wait until your battery is getting low to start looking. It isn't like gas where you can wait until you are "running on fumes" before starting to look for a charger, but it isn't a big deal.

Hydrogen is far behind - maybe it will be built, maybe it won't, I won't predict the future. What I can tell you is if you buy a hydrogen car today you will have to buy the place to fill it at the same time, and you have to assume you will never go out of range.

Hydrogen also has a lot of problems that make it expensive for car use. But the real problem electric cars have to beat is battery and resource life cycle. You can charge your car now but think about how it would look like if even 30-40% of people would need to charge at the same places.

Problem is there is very little incentive for anyone to invest in energy infrastructure. That is a problem affecting EVs, but also a problem that needs to be solved anyway.

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