BEVs will still exist as short-ranged urban vehicles. That is a niche, and in trucking that is a very small one too.
There is no evidence to support the idea that BEVs (cars or trucks) will remain short-ranged urban vehicle. Even the "entry" level BEVs in NA, like the leaf, have gotten to EPA ranges of 360 km, a number that is only ever going to go up.
Even trucking is slowly getting there as the battery tech improves. In Europe Mercedes is testing trucks, today, which hit 200-400 km before needing to charge [0]. That's not enough for long distance, but that doesn't matter. They can serve this market and when they're ready they can expand to longer ranges.
Further, there is even less evidence that in applications where BEVs don't (and won't) work that hydrogen is the winning solution. What is hydrogen's go to market strategy? Introduce trucks for long range that have higher up front costs and higher total cost of ownership that diesel trucks, plus severely limit where you can drive since you depend on a (non-existent) hydrogen network?
[0]: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/06/11/electric-semi-truck-dri...
https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/9013_energy_requirement...
It is not guaranteed to be 30%. And you're entirely basing your argument on the idea that batteries will get radically more advanced, while hydrogen technology will not. What happens when Toyota makes a Corolla powered by hydrogen at the same level of cost and the fuel is basically free (made from excess green energy)? Will BEVs really have much of a future in that scenario?
It's not guaranteed to be 30% no, but that's what they are now.
> Actual liquefaction energy requirements are substantially higher, typically 10-13 kWh/kg LH2, depending on the size of the liquefaction operation [5,6].
> What happens when Toyota makes a Corolla powered by hydrogen at the same level of cost
Pigs will fly.
Toyota currently sells the Mirai, and it costs more than a model 3. The Mirai uses ~3x more electricity at the source to drive the same amount (assuming very optimistic efficiencies) and costs ~5x more to drive per mile.
So I ask you, who will buy the Mirai instead of a model 3?
The answer, based on sales data, is not many people.
Because the Mirai is not even better for the environment unless you mange to source pure green energy hydrogen.
So how will Toyota sell enough to bring down the cost of production?
How long with it take for the hydrogen network to expand outside of california? A decade? And when that's happened, how will you convince the BEV drivers to sell their 10th gen BEV for a 3rd gen Hydrogen car?
> and the fuel is basically free
That is an absurd thing to claim.
- Green electricity is not free since there's a Capex associated with it.
- wind/solar does not suffer negative electricity rates in the same way that coal/gas/nuclear since they can be turned off on a whim. They do not have to generate excess energy if they don't want to.
- Creating hydrogen from water is not free since there is expensive Capex associated with electrolyzers and other equipment required.
- Combine the above 3 together and you'll find the idea of running your electrolyzers intermittenly for only a few hours when there's excess energy to be a laughable proposition from an economic point of view.
- Compressing, storing, and transporting hydrogen is not free
For reference, hydrogen from methane in the US currently sells for ~1.5$/kg. The idea that green hydrogren will get cheaper than that, much less free, is laughable.
Not to mention that this is recoverable energy. Liquid hydrogen is literally cryogenic energy storage. You can easily find methods of shrinking losses ever further.
Considering Toyota is literally making a hydrogen powered Corolla to go racing, your claim about cost is pure Ludditism. It time for you to stop living in the past. Hydrogen cars will be cheaper than BEVs to build and likely no more expensive to run.
Perhaps its time you ask yourself a simple question: Once all of the facilities have been built, what is the margin cost of further production? It is in fact basically zero. This is for both wind and solar, but also anything made exclusively from it like green hydrogen. In fact, hydrogen could be the cheapest of them all, since it is not limited by the problems of intermittency and long-duration storage.
As a result, it is a matter of when, not if you'll see hydrogen for $1.5/kg. And eventually even less than that.
PS: Your post is just pure anti-progress. Imagine being so offended by the idea of advancements in green energy. So many of your type are just brainwashed BEV fanatics. It's pure short-sightedness.
It is not anti-progress to point out obviously impossible things.
> will be cheaper than BEVs to build and likely no more expensive to run.
Please explain to the luddites in the room how it will cost the same. How it could ever cost the same. Both would start with electricity. The BEV would charge directly on that. The hydrogen car would require an electrolyzer, cleaning of the gas, compressing it, transmission, distribution, refueling stations, then a fuel cell. Each step along the way being costly and not 100% efficient. Hint: you can’t.
Even if you hook up a perfect fuel cell to a perfect electrolyzer, for each kW you put into the electrolyzer you’ll be getting less than 1 kW from the fuel cell.
Except the marginal costs is not zero. The marginal cost of the next kg of hydrogen is not zero. Electricity is not free, and each kg of hydrogen requires the same amount of electricity as the previous.
Toyota making one car for their racing circuit is very different from them making it cheaply and people buying it on mass. Again, real operating costs of the vehicle they sell on the market today are 5x higher the BEVs, so why would anyone buy it?
The only way you’ll reach green hydrogen for less 1.5$/kg is if you have an army of volunteers working on donated equipment for >0.02$/kWh. There are few of any places that even have electricity that cheap.
It is not me that’s living in the past, it’s the hydrogen hype that has come back for its third crack at things. On the hope that maybe this time around thermodynamics will be different.
I'd like to mention that Toyota is playing with syntetic fuels as well, and that some in the car market see this more as an option for car enthusiasts to keep running their cars when gas will be "obsolete". Much of the marketing of the corolla is about how "the engine is not not-green, it's the fuel that's the issue".
Seeing how gas powered engines are much less efficient (just from the heat waste) than electric ones, I have a hard time expecting hydrogen to become a normal fuel for cars - especially with the risks associated. Can you imagine a transparent flame in your car?
This seems more like rnd into syntetic fuels and alternatives for enthusiasts than their actual horse in the race.
And this is why it is a 100% guarantee that they will displace li-ion batteries. Why on Earth would anyone choose a very expensive and unsustainable battery technology when there is another system that is just as good but does not have any of those weaknesses? It's pure BEV brainwashing that people even think that way. So my advice to you is stop believing in these lies and accept that cars of the future will be hydrogen powered.
The theoretical efficiency for a fuel cell car and a battery electric car are absolutely not the same when you look at well-to-wheel. Not even close.
As for unsustainable. People make a big deal about cobalt in the batteries. Fine, the cobalt is being removed, all that’s left is abundant minerals.
Can you say the same about the platinum-group metals in electrolyzers and fuel cells?
You do not need platinum in a fuel cell. There are several types of them, and only one of them require platinum. Also, the amount required is comparable to a catalytic converter and only grams per fuel cell is needed: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-platinum-week-bosch-fuelc...
Yeah, it means i'd love a refence, and one that includes actual effiency too.
> It also helps not to spam FUD about efficiency, and in the real-world they are much closer than you are thinking.
BEV well to wheel is 77% while hydrogen is 33% [0]. A 2x is what I have in mind.
> In fact, hydrogen cars are the second most efficient form of transportation possible
Yes, a far far second behind electric and far far ahead petrol, which is not particularly hard to do.
[0]: https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2020...
The maximum possible efficiency of a fuel cell is 100%. It follows directly from the realization that they are not limited by Carnot's cycle. Hence why in the long run, it is pretty much a guarantee that a hydrogen based solution will win out. If two solutions are equally efficiency, than the only that is vastly cheaper will be the solution.
These types of comparisons of efficiency comparisons are ultimately just nonsense. Most of them are all over the place, from 2x difference to sometimes 10x or worse. That's because they are just cherry-pick numbers in order to create a narrative. It is not really based on any sort of real analysis.
In reality, a large portion of renewable energy is lost or never utilized, largely due to its intermittency. Without any way of storing it, renewable energy is very inefficient overall. They pretty much always have to be backed up by fossil fuels today. Adding a way to store vast amounts of it, such as hydrogen, makes renewable energy significantly more efficient and eliminates the need for fossil fuels.
But if you make that realization, then it also becomes obvious that running cars off of hydrogen does not imply any kind of major loss of efficiency. The problem basically becomes irrelevant, since you are running cars off of energy that would've been lost anyways.
The problem with synthetic fuels isn’t the technology, it’s the economics.
Synthetic fuels, to be remeotely green, need hydrogen created from electrolyzing water. That need to be done with 100% green energy (and new green energy, not simply pull from the grid to cause fossil fuel plants in o come online).
Then you need carbon from someone here other than fossil fuels. Direct air capture is what many look at, and that’s very expensive because of the chemistry and thermodynamics. (You’re trying to pull co2 out of the air, something in concentrations in the parts per million).
At the end of this Rube Goldberg operation you’re left with a fuel that’s going to cost 10x the price.
And the only way the price goes down is if people buy a lot of it so that the technology can improve and so the plants increase to get economies of scale.
Porsche is building a plant for this. But idk about you, but I doubt there are enough people who care enough about their car, and could afford, to pay >40$/gallon for gasoline.
It is pure Ludditism because you are refusing to accept the possibility of technological progress. Some of which already exist. As renewable energy scales up, it will approach the marginal cost of zero. We even see negative price electricity at times. As a result, hydrogen could also approach zero cost.
$0.02/kWh is fully possible and is already realistic now: https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/30/new-record-low-solar-pr...
You are the one living in the past. Imagine thinking that a fuel made from water can never catch on. This is so deep into BEV brainwashing it will be eventually talked about in the same way as bloodletting.
Look at how people use hydrogen now, all 90 million tones a year. Do they produce it at central facility where economies of scale help them? No. They all produce it in small and expensive plants less than a 1km from where it’s used. Strange. Perhaps they simply haven’t heard the good word.
Negative prices exist because power plants cannot curb their production quickly enough to match falling demand. These are not a thing for solar and wind operations since you can shut them off much faster.
If their electricity is soo incredibly cheap, why in the world would we bother with all this hydrogen problems, then simply overbuilding solar and wind like crazy? It does my matter how cheap you think hydrogen is, it doesn’t produce electricity at the end of the process cheaper than what went in.
Hydrogen can be made from water. But not for anywhere near the prices you discuss. Again, this is predatory detail by the fossil fuel companies. As long as they can make people believe that eventually green hydrogen will be cheap, they can build out their methane- based hydrogen infrastructure.
Go read some sources which do not have a direct conflict of interest in hydrogen: https://h2sciencecoalition.com/
For starters, most hydrogen today is made from natural gas, so all infrastructure is just natural gas based. If there was a vast source of hydrogen, it will switch over to hydrogen infrastructure. This story resembles the rise of LNG and how people dismissed it as impossible for multiple years.
Negative prices literally create the very incentive for cheap green hydrogen. Your dreams of overbuilding wind and solar makes this even more self-evident that green hydrogen will be nearly free. Seriously, your whole plan is to waste the vast majority of green energy, while simultaneous denying the possibility of any method of utilizing it. It is pure self-contradiction.
Again, virtually free electricity will imply virtually free hydrogen made from it once it reaches mass production. This is so obvious that only people brainwashed by BEV propaganda can refuse to accept it.
PS: H2 Science Coalition is a anti-hydrogen propaganda organization. It only exists to spread FUD about it.
You are seeing what you want to see. And what I see is someone showing a complete lack of knowledge about material science.
> If there was a vast source of hydrogen, it will switch over to hydrogen infrastructure.
The existing natural gas infrastructure will not simply "switch over" because it fundamentally is incapable of safely transporting hydrogen. You need different material properties in your metal to handle hydrogen (see hydrogen embritlement as one reason), to say nothing of the other equipment involved. These cannot be "switched over", they must be completely replaced.
This in fact is the thinking that's backwards: continue to think about chemical energy carriers and moving them around in pipes. This made sense when we started with chemicals (fossil fuels), but it makes no sense when our starting point is electricity. Simply store and more that electriicty around.
> Negative prices literally create the very incentive for cheap green hydrogen. > Again, virtually free electricity will imply virtually free hydrogen made from it once it reaches mass production.
No it won't. It doesn't matter how many times you say it.
Further, if you're buying electricity for a negative price, you're getting it from a coal/gas plant which is decidedly not green. Or if you're lucky from a nuclear plant.
Very cheap electricity is a necessary condition for cheap green hydrogen, not an incentive for it.
Again, cheap is not free, and at the energy requirements needed per kg of H2, even cheap adds up quickly. Further, the equipment to produce, store, and transport it are not cheap, and are certainly not free.
> Seriously, your whole plan is to waste the vast majority of green energy, while simultaneous denying the possibility of any method of utilizing it. It is pure self-contradiction.
All together now: the sun shines and wind blows even if you turn off your solar panels and wind turbines. Nothing is wasted.
> anti-hydrogen propaganda organization. It only exists to spread FUD about it.
Again, see my point about being fixated on Hydrogen as the goal rather than the means. You can label criticism as FUD but it won't make it any less true.
As for the H2 Science Coalition, they clearly are not. They are very clear that hydrogen has it's uses (and its own major decarbonization problems). But that it's simply very poorly suited to be "an energy carrier".
What I know is that your position on hydrogen is pure FUD. I know as a matter of fact that your views on the material science side of things are false.
You can send hydrogen via natural gas pipelines. It is fully possible to "switch over." At worst, you will have to line the insides with some kind of coating: https://www.ul.com/sites/g/files/qbfpbp251/files/2023-02/Hyd...
And yet a pipeline is 10x cheaper than sending electricity. As it turns, basic physics does not change no matter how strongly you describe it as "backwards": https://www.brinknews.com/could-hydrogen-replace-the-need-fo...
You are continuing to deny reality with this post: If you are talking about massive overprovisioning, then you are going to have negatively priced electricity coming from renewables. This is the most obvious and most irrefutable point here.
And you can beat around the bush all you want; it does not change the fact that practically free electricity is happening right now, and it will lead to practically free hydrogen. Again, the only necessary resource is water. The cost floor is far lower than any other idea you can conceive of. And since it is cheaper to store and move hydrogen around that electricity, you will eventually abandon an all electricity-based solution in favor of one that moves energy around with hydrogen.
> Again, see my point about being fixated on Hydrogen as the goal rather than the means. You can label criticism as FUD but it won't make it any less true.
No one is fixated on hydrogen. It is the anti-hydrogen Luddites that are fixated on stopping it. This inevitably causes a conflict where rational and non-brainwashed people come out and say "No, you really do have to accept this that this is a necessary part of the solution."
> then you are going to have negatively priced electricity coming from renewables. This is the most obvious and most irrefutable point here.
Solar and wind do not have negative electricity rates. Negative electricity rates are caused by a fixed/hard to ramp down source (nuclear/coal/gas) whose electricity is not needed. These plant cannot be turned on and off quickly ebnough to not produce this excess electricity, and because the grid must remain balanced (all the production must be immediately met by demand) they have to pay people to take the electricity off their hands because it's the cheapest option for them.
Solar and wind you can simply turn off, they do not have to pay peopel to take excess energy off their hands since they can simply choose not to make it.
Adding solar and wind will cause negative rates to occur, but it is not the solar and wind that are paying those negative values, it is the gas/coal/nuclear.
If you are buying electricity at a negative rate you are helping out a fossil fuel plant (or if your lucky a nuclear one).
> it will lead to practically free hydrogen.
Nope. Equipment still has a cost, no matter how many times you ignore it.
As for who is fixated, and/or brainwashed. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Funny how that never happened until recently. Only with the introduction of renewables did such things happen.
I agree that there's no point in continuing to talk to you. Your mind is made up.
I will leave it up to history to debunk your argument. It is a repeat of anti-wind and anti-solar rhetoric, that something made from free electricity and water cannot ever be cheap. It is obvious that that cannot be true, but for some it will take more than words to convince them otherwise.
The supposed overwhelming advantage results in saving 20 minutes on a 1000km trip (if nobody else used the hydrogen station before you, otherwise fuelling times are the same).
With current state of the art batteries being put into next model cars that last bit goes away too.
In what possible world do hydrogen passenger cars have a future?